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Stop this anarchy: Repeated violence within court precincts is indefensible, enforce

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prasad1

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Very objectionable and provocative slogans were likely shouted during the course of a rally on the JNU campus, though not necessarily by JNU students. They are not reason enough to suspend the rule of law. The beating up of JNU students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar by errant lawyers within the precincts of Delhi’s Patiala House court, despite express instructions from the Supreme Court to ensure his safety, is shameful. That journalists and students were also beaten up, for the second time, in the same court is equally reprehensible.
These shocking incidents have forced even the apex court to wonder if the JNU sedition trial should be transferred out of the national capital. That must make every thinking Indian worry. The lawyers who orchestrated the violence have dishonoured their oath and the Bar Association must suspend their licences.
Moreover, Delhi Police commissioner B S Bassi has lost the moral right to lead his force. His response that “use of force would have been inappropriate” because “lawyers are officers of the court” is indefensible. A licence to practice law is not a licence to practice hooliganism; nor does it confer immunity from the law.
Arun Jaitley, minister for information and broadcasting, has condemned the violence. That is also BJP’s official position. But if BJP is serious about this, it must first suspend its MLA O P Sharma who was caught on video beating up a student.
Moreover, there is enough video and eyewitness evidence available of who orchestrated the violence in the Patiala court; they must all be booked. The government’s handling of the JNU crackdown goes against the 4-D mantra outlined earlier by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
When courts are not listened to and rule of law suspended, that undermines the first D – democracy. The second D – demography – is supposed to be in India’s favour because it is tilted towards youth. But from FTII Pune to Rohith Vemula’s suicide to the present demonisation of JNU as a whole, the government’s treatment of young students has been harsh.
The fourth D is deregulation, but the Smriti Irani-led HRD ministry has undermined for a long time even the very limited autonomy universities used to enjoy. It is still not too late to repair the damage. But the government must act now.

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-editorials/stop-this-anarchy-repeated-violence-within-court-precincts-is-indefensible-enforce-rule-of-law/?utm_source=TOInewHP_TILwidget&utm_campaign=TOInewHP&utm_medium=Widget_Stry

Mr. Rajeev wrote:
Very well written editorial. bjp government is anti-intellectual. anti-dissent, anti-democracy.this government gave worst hrd minister to the nation, where she is not ready to hear voice of students community.
 
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JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar, who is accused of sedition, received multiple injuries in an assault by some lawyers at the Patiala House Court here early this week, shows his medical report released on Friday. This information contradicts the version of the Delhi Police which still maintains that the president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Student Union (JNUSU) was not assaulted. "There are multiple abrasions on Kumar's nose and thighs. There is a tenderness present on the right toe and several external injury marks on him," said the report released by the Ram Manohar Lohia hospital here. Kanhaiya Kumar was produced in the Patiala House Court, where a section of advocates attacked him and several journalists. But Delhi Police Commissioner B.S Bassi said that all allegations of Kanhaiya Kumar being assaulted were false.

Read more at: http://www.sify.com/news/multiple-i...dical-report-news-national-qctpayeiccbcf.html

The charge is biased and the police is lying. The sympathy factor turns towards Kanhaiyya Kumar, even if found guilty of this trumped up charge.
I do not agree with KK for what he did. But he should be treated as human being.
 
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Coming down heavily on Delhi Police, an NHRC probe team on Friday said that the physical assault on JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar in the court premises appeared to have been "organised and pre-planned".

It also said Kumar was subjected to psychological pressure and was made to issue a statement before he appeared in the court, owing allegiance to Constitution which was dictated by police.

"Kanhaiya Kumar was abused and physically assaulted by some persons dressed as advocates in the Patiala House court premises on February 17.

"He was even physically assaulted inside the adjoining court room in the presence of police who did not do anything to prevent the assault or apprehend the attackers even though they were identified by Kanhaiya Kumar then and there. The physical assault on Kumar in the court premises appears to be organized and pre-planned," a report submitted to the NHRC by a fact-finding team of the Commission said.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...ars-pre-planned-NHRC/articleshow/51060018.cms
 
7110e64b6cc18d3b3c84b0d3e6fada2e61d1b731-tc-img-web.jpg


This police officer licks BJP boots. He has been used against Kejeriwal, and now being used against Kanhaiya. He should be fired and prosecuted.
 
Advocates, of late, are under the impression that they are law unto themselves. A person accused is only accused and the regular trial has to go on and advocates of both sides are free to put up the facts before the Court for a logical conclusion. Instead of that, if the accused is manhandled, it is condemnable. Such action will only result in more sympathy for the person accused of sedition.
 
The Police Commissioner is set to retire on February 29 this month.

Delhi Police Chief B S Bassi on Saturday hit out at Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and a TV journalist terming them as "self-styled appraisers" following a tweet from a "parody account" ridiculing him.
Bassi was responding to a tweet that questioned his "commitment" towards the khaki and wondered whether his loyalty was for the uniform or "knickers", a veiled reference to RSS.
Kejriwal had retweeted the twitter message critical of Bassi from the handle @raviishNDTV, which is not run by TV journalist Ravish Kumar.
"@ArvindKejriwal & @ravishndtv Committed to CONSTITUTION, NATION & TRUTH. SelfStyled Appraisers may better introspect," Bassi tweeted in response.

The Commissioner, who is set to retire on February 29, has been facing intense flak for Delhi Police's alleged mishandling of the JNU row.
The tweet in Hindi that irked the police chief read, "When Bassi says that his commitment is towards the khaki, then it's not clear whether he is referring to the uniform or knicker." The last tweet from Kumar's verified account was on August 22 last year. He had stopped tweeting over the "silence" of liberals against online abuse.
Bassi tagging Kejriwal in his response assumes importance in the light of the persistent animosity between the two and the Chief Minister's recent statements slamming police for "flouting" Supreme Court orders leading to violence inside court premises.

I am sure Mr. Bassi will end up in the Modi cabinet somewhere. After all a loyalist must be rewarded, even if they are inefficient, ignorant, and/or corrupt.
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/repor...a-fake-twitter-handle-of-a-journalist-2180059
 
There are a lot of Bassis in all States.
These corruptive Police officials will always be pro Govt.
Whoever may be in power,these Bassis would over react by swinging their tails.
 
JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar, who is accused of sedition, received multiple injuries in an assault by some lawyers at the Patiala House Court here early this week, shows his medical report released on Friday. This information contradicts the version of the Delhi Police which still maintains that the president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Student Union (JNUSU) was not assaulted. "There are multiple abrasions on Kumar's nose and thighs. There is a tenderness present on the right toe and several external injury marks on him," said the report released by the Ram Manohar Lohia hospital here. Kanhaiya Kumar was produced in the Patiala House Court, where a section of advocates attacked him and several journalists. But Delhi Police Commissioner B.S Bassi said that all allegations of Kanhaiya Kumar being assaulted were false.

Read more at: http://www.sify.com/news/multiple-i...dical-report-news-national-qctpayeiccbcf.html

The charge is biased and the police is lying. The sympathy factor turns towards Kanhaiyya Kumar, even if found guilty of this trumped up charge.
I do not agree with KK for what he did. But he should be treated as human being.

Wow, what did kk expect from a mob that was against him; was he not educated or literate enough to know that his actions would have repurcussions? And, btw, he did not do any noble deed to so gravely point out the tenderness of his right toe.

I think the issue is magnified for all the wrong reasons.
 
Renowned thinker and academician Noam Chomsky has questioned JNU Vice Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar's decision to allow police on its campus in connection with the row over an event there against the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

"Many of us remain very concerned about the crisis in JNU, which was apparently created and precipitated by the government and university administration with no credible evidence of any seditious activities on campus.

"Why did you allow the police on campus when it is clear that this was not legally required?" Chomsky said in an email today to the JNU VC.

Students and teachers are protesting against the alleged "mishandling" of the issue by the university administration and have questioned the decision to allow the police "crackdown" on the JNU campus.

The administration in its defence has been maintaining that "the university was bound to do so" even as it was contended by the protesting students and teachers that the matter related to indiscipline and not sedition.

"I never invited the police to enter the campus and pick up our students. We only provided whatever cooperation was needed as per the law of the land. We were bound to do so," the VC had said.


Chomsky, along with Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and 86 other academicians from renowned universities abroad, had last week condemned "the culture of authoritarian menace that the present government in India has generated" and said those in power are replicating the dark times of the oppressive colonial period and of the Emergency of the 1970s.

"We have learnt of the shameful act of the Indian government which, invoking sedition laws formulated by India's colonial rulers, ordered the police to enter the JNU campus and unlawfully arrest a student leader, Kanhaiya Kumar, on charges of inciting violence -- without any proof whatever of such wrongdoing on his part," the joint statement had said.


http://www.deccanherald.com/content/530241/why-did-you-allow-police.html
 
Editorial Director of The New Indian Express, Prabhu Chawla, has analysed the issue of JNU in his Sunday Column
in the issue of TNIE dated February 21, 2016.

Save Symbols of Nationalism from Becoming Victims of Divisive Agenda of Neo-liberals

Nations whose nationalism is destroyed are subject to ruin— Mahatma Gandhi.

The poignant irony of ideology is that the Father of the Nation would have never imagined that India would be debating the concept of nationalism seven decades after his martyrdom. And that too over the arrest of a student leader from one of India’s 500-odd universities. The paradox of patriotism is that the noble notion of nationalism is under threat from those individuals who swear by Gandhi’s nationalistic legacy. Last week, the entire Indian society was dangerously divided over the definition and desirability of swearing by one’s nation and her integrity. For a class of liberal opportunists, nationalism is just another adjective to be used or misused to propagate the idea of a country without borders and exercise the freedom to damage and insult the avowed symbols of India’s pride. There are many counterfeit liberals, who bask in the illusion that nationalism is just another marketable product, which can be peddled on the auction block to the highest bidder from India or abroad. They don’t seem to understand that for a mammoth number of people, nationalism is an article of faith. India’s National Anthem, its Tricolour and borders are the three undisputed and non-negotiable pillars of nationalism.

Hence it is tragic that in India exists a cabal of conspirators, who, bound by their idea of education and political predilections, has made these three symbols a matter of dispute. The questionable activities that happened at the Jawaharlal Nehru University were aimed at demolishing the idea of India. The involvement of JNU Students’ Union President Kanhaiya Kumar may be a matter of dispute and judicial scrutiny. In a free country like India, anyone can legitimately question the invoking of a dubious sedition charge against Kanhaiya. But there is not even a shred of doubt that the motives of the organisers and participants at a gathering on campus were to glorify Afzal Guru, the Indian Guy Fawkes who was hanged for conspiring the 2001 Parliament attack. Yet, ever since Guru went to the scaffold and an unmarked grave, a section of the intelligentsia and illiberals has been mocking the Indian state and its highest judiciary for sending him to the gallows. Such is the fate of all traitors worldwide, ever since the history of nation-states began. None of the propagandists of “freedom of speech” are questioning an undisputable anti-national event where slogans like ‘Bharat Ki Barbadi (destruction of India)’ were raised. Even the pro-Guru event organised by a former Delhi University teacher SAR Geelani at the Press Club of India was ignored by them. They have been able to convert it into an episode celebrating freedom of opinion and academic autonomy. Many of them have been educated in the US or UK. Have any of these professional pundits of pseudo-patriotism ever heard of any American or British institution lauding and eulogising the killers of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King or John Kennedy? Have they ever attended any seminar held by the American establishment to discuss water boarding at GITMO? American, Russian and European forces are killing hundreds of terrorists in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere on a daily basis. Why have none of our modern freedom fighters ever raised a finger against them? The current US Presidential election is dominated by the issue of saving the nation from the terror threat and debating the morality of banning a certain community from entering the US. Never before has an American derided the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ or mutilated their national flag. Instead, they display it with pride even in their front yards to signalise the power of democratic beliefs.

But in India, invent-a-cause and hire-a-crowd has become remunerative for political parties, which have been dining out on secularism ever since the word became an apology for cynicism. The protest against Kanhaiya’s arrest wasn’t confined to New Delhi. A bigger protest march was organised in Jadavpur University, where students raised anti-India slogans and supported the ‘Azadi’ rhetoric raised by Guru. Even media organisations and journalists took sides in the fight between supporters of nationalism and its opponents. Many of them pleaded to understand the psyche of the student, which is rebellious by nature. But the modern Indian student is more interested in MBA than Marx.

Undoubtedly, it was the loony faction of the BJP, which provided a handle to the illiberals to pillory the government by attacking journalists, while the issue of the deification of terrorists and their tool-wielders was pushed under the secular carpet. Since the JNU event was organised by some extremists from J&K, it was clearly an attempt to jeopardise India’s unity. These are the same elements that refuse to sing the National Anthem or hoist Tricolour in the Valley.

The current confrontation between the Left and Liberal Lampoonists on one side and the Saffron forces on the other is an attempt to weaken the symbols of nationalism by converting the JNU issue into a cry against suppression of dissent. If intelligence agencies are to be believed, the country will face more attacks on the idea of an inclusive India, its flag and its National Anthem. Some parties even questioned the timing of the HRD ministry’s decision to direct Central universities to hoist the Tricolour in campuses. Both the Jana Gana Mana and National Flag were conceived by genuinely nationalist and secular leaders like Gandhi, Nehru, Sardar Patel and Maulana Azad. But in India, the duplicity of dissenters is being passed off as virtues. Many of them call themselves Hindus, yet they oppose integral Hindu traditions. They support the ban on cow slaughter but relish a Kobe beefsteak, well done. The bathos of their crocodile tears is that even as they mourn the killing of our jawans, they toil to prove their secular credentials to Pak diplomats. They take out candle light processions and lobby for the continuation of the Indo-Pak dialogue over the graves of our soldiers. They turn a blind eye to the Obama administration’s duplicitous decision to provide F-16s to Pakistan, which will be eventually used not for peacekeeping but against India.

The blame for the revival of ersatz-liberalism lies at the door of a section of the ruling establishment. The trigger to shrink PM Modi’s gigantic stature was provided to his detractors from within. Modi has to evolve a mechanism to prevent India, the Tricolour and Tagore’s immortal ode to nationalism from becoming victims of the divisive agenda of the neo-liberalists. After all, nationalism threatens their luxurious existence.

[email protected]

http://www.newindianexpress.com/pra...of-Neo-liberals/2016/02/21/article3288294.ece

Brahmanyan,
Bangalore.
 
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Stop this anarchy: Repeated violence within court precinc

The Pioneer, has published the following analysis of the JNU issue by their Columnist Kanchan Gupta
in their Sunday edition dated February 21, 2016.

Brahmanyan,
Bangalore.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE POIONEER
YOU ARE HERE : Home » Columnists »Coffee Break
COLUMNISTS
CRISIS IN JNU IS MERELY A SYMPTOM OF A MUCH DEEPER MALAISE
Sunday, 21 February 2016 | Kanchan Gupta | in Coffee Break

The Left-liberal outrage and sanctimonious posturing at home and abroad notwithstanding, the idea is to fix a broken system that has been held hostage by the Left. The time has come to reclaim our groves of academe from those who thwart academic freedom and choke free thought with ideology

Last week, the Associate Editor of a Left-leaning news portal called me and requested an interview. My comments were sought on the still unfolding and rather unedifying Jawaharlal Nehru University saga.

I was sort of surprised. My political views and those on the JNU spectacle are not exactly unknown to the Editor of the portal. So why would she want to publish them? I was told the portal wanted to put out a contrarian position and assured that my replies would neither be edited nor hacked.

On that assurance I agreed to the interview. The questions were e-mailed to me. I was requested to mail back my replies, preferably late night or early morning. I sat up late into the night, framing my replies and sending them to the Associate Editor. The next morning I sent a revised paragraph. Both the e-mails were acknowledged.

A short while later, around midday, the Associate Editor called back to say her bosses had decided not to run the interview. Apparently first they wanted to cut off chunks and then just spiked all of it.

The Associate Editor, a decent person, was flustered and I did not wish to pursue the point. Also, ultimately it’s the Editor’s discretion to run or not run copy, even when it has been specifically solicited for publication.

But that does not prevent me from publishing my views and putting them in the public place for others. We may be living with the many terrors inflicted on us by the Commentariat, we have not yet become a Stalinist state. So here are the questions and my replies.

With reference to the JNU incident, do you think the Government overreacted? Are you content with the way the situation was handled?

The audiovisual evidence of what happened at JNU on February 9 suggests three things. First, it was not a spontaneous burst of misplaced or misguided student fervour. The slogans, ranging from “Kashmir ki Azadi” to “Bharat ki Barbadi”, had been scripted and rehearsed for the event. Second, the perverse celebration of the ‘martyrdom’ of two convicted terrorists, Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat, who were executed after due process of law, was intended to provoke a blowback given popular sentiments. Third, the organisers and participants of the event were clearly pushing the envelope by taunting the state and daring authorities to act against them.

The Vice-Chancellor and other officials were misled into believing that the event was no different from other such shows that litter campus life. It was titled “Poetry reading the country without a post office”, whatever that means. It turned out to be nothing as innocuous as that. The banner at the venue read “Against the Brahmanical collective conscience, Against the judicial killing of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat, In solidarity with the struggle of the Kashmiri people for their democratic right to self-determination”.

From ‘poetry reading’ to caste denigration, glorifying terrorists and promoting secession, it was a huge jump. The organisers had been intentionally deceitful. The university officials withdrew permission for the event after realising the mischief potential and likely consequences. Yet the students went ahead in a show of intended belligerence and defiance.

On Monday night news TV reported that the Intelligence Bureau has tracked questionable links between one of the student leaders and a Pakistan-based terrorist organisation. Apparently he has visited Pakistan too. I have no independent corroboration, but if students and young men and women can be picked up on similar suspicions or charges from lesser known institutions and corporate offices, there is no reason why JNU should get preferential treatment.

Given this backdrop, it was inevitable for the police to act. The JNU students union president, who was present at the venue, was arrested. The others responsible for the deed are absconding. This was not an anti-Government or anti-establishment protest, it was an anti-India demonstration. The state would have acted against anything similar anywhere else.

The traditional inviolability of a campus was violated by the organisers and participants of the event. A close scrutiny of the tapes that have emerged suggest call to action which could have only been call to violence. None of those responsible for the deplorable show (even the university acknowledges it was unacceptable) is a teenager. They are young adults fully aware of consequences, legal and otherwise, of separatism and terror glorification.

The police has done what is expected of it. The police has acted within its remit. Now it is for the courts to decide. That is the rule of law.

JNU has been the home of dissent and protest for decades. Where should the line be drawn by students?

What was witnessed on February 9 was neither dissent nor protest. It was unadulterated promotion of separatism, a call for secession. It’s all about crossing the proverbial Lakshman Rekha or, if that offends some people, it’s about crossing the Rubicon. That was done knowingly, intentionally. It’s all about reaching the tipping point. It was reached on February 9.

Frankly, nobody cares for silly protests and irrational dissent. That may entertain and gratify a clutch of wannabe activists and pretentious students, the outside world has no time for it. People lead real lives with real problems. They couldn’t care less for the make-belief concerns of JNU students. It’s only when youthful exuberance metastises into spiteful hate that people sit up and take notice.

Is the repeated intrusion of Government in universities justified?

If it is a tax-funded institution, yes. Academic institutions need and must have academic autonomy. That’s a sine qua non. Problem begins when academic autonomy becomes a cover for non-accountability. Let us not forget that these institutions owe their very existence, the teachers owe their jobs, and students owe their affordable campus life, to the millions of taxpayers of India.

The institutions really belong to them, held in trust by the Government. The taxpayers are stakeholders and they have the right to demand accountability from Government on how their money is spent. The Government, in turn, has the right to seek accountability from these institutions.

Sadly in India institutions resent accountability. Autonomy becomes a cover of convenience. We have reached a stage where autonomy has come to mean “Write me a cheque, don’t tell me what to do with the money.”

Take a look at the annual financial statement of JNU or any of the 120-odd institutions, including 46 Central universities, funded by the Union Government. It would tell you the extent of investment by we the people with shockingly low returns on that investment.

For more evidence look at Nalanda University. This has to change. If I do not have a say in how my tax money is spent, then sorry, you can’t have that money. I have the right to accountability, the Government is the vehicle through which I exercise that right.

Your comment on the sedition charges slapped on JNUSU president. Is that fair? Do you think this falls under the legal ambit of sedition?

Sedition is a complex issue. The law is written in black and white but several judgements have injected the law with shades of grey. Also, we must remember that sedition is a colonial era concept. There is natural resistance to the use of this law. Given the gravity of the charge of sedition, judges are cautious and the intelligentsia is reluctant to embrace it without raising discomfiting questions.

I am not too sure about the wisdom of using it as an instrument of law in today’s India. But that is my view, possibly a minority view given popular opinion which at the moment is extremely enraged and enormously hostile to what has happened at JNU. A far more useful debate would be possible in a calmer situation.

What will be the long-term impact / significance of this incident?

Campuses need to be cleaned of malcontent, both among students and faculty. This is universally acknowledged. Politicians admit the need to cleanse campuses, but that is in private. In public, they cynically misuse campus politics to further their own shabby and sinister agendas.

A college or an university is primarily meant for education, for knowledge dissemination and acquisition, for free inquiry and intellectual liberation. Which college, university or institute can claim, with any degree of honesty, to meet these standards? If the JNU fracas initiates the process of restoring the primacy of academic activity over debilitating activism, then that would be a huge achievement. But it is a big if. Let us see how this plays out.

I am not particularly bothered about Left-liberal outrage and sanctimonious posturing at home and abroad. The idea is to fix a broken system that has long been held hostage by the Left, held to ransom by the Left. The time has come to reclaim our groves of academe from those who thwart academic freedom and choke free thought with ideology.

A law introduced by the British to silence Indians is being used against our own. Isn’t that ironical?

I have addressed this point. The only other thing I would like to add is that sedition should not be viewed in isolation. The First Amendment in America enshrines free speech. The First Amendment in India, ushered by Jawaharlal Nehru, curbs free speech.

We had something as evil and diabolical as 66A till the Supreme Court struck it down. We still have 69A, the first cousin of 66A, on the statute books.

A country which imposes undefined reasonable restrictions on free speech, loses the right to agitate against a sedition law. A country whose Constitution promises not to discriminate on grounds of caste, religion and gender, and yet legitimises discrimination in the guise of a twisted definition of secularism, cannot afford to militate against a sedition law, irrespective of its vintage. My concerns are more fundamental and less fashionable.

Is our democracy so fragile that it needs a sedition law?

We are an ancient land but a young nation-state and a younger democracy. We have weaknesses that are debilititating. We face internal and external threats that are unique.

Unlike the US, we have sought to resolve issues of unity and integrity of the nation without taking recourse to a civil war. We have diversities that are seemingly irreconcilable. We have sub-nationalism that is constantly in conflict with the idea of nationalism.

We have identities, real and imagined, that are yet to be subsumed to a unifying national identity. We are the only nation without a national language that bridges regions and communities.

At some point in future things will settle down. Perhaps we will have Second Republic, a democracy that is truly robust and self-sustaining, strong and confident enough not to worry about sedition and secession. At the moment we and other nations live in challenging times, troubling times, unsettling times.

Let’s not forget that the US, the world’s oldest and most robust democracy, has felt the need for a Patriot Act to cope with the times. We, the world’s largest democracy, are trying to cope without a similar law — but the limits of moral persuasion are there for all to see.

Is it time to examine whether we need a treason law rather than a sedition law?

Laws do not a nation make. Loyalty does a nation make. And loyalty is something that comes from within, not because disloyalty fetches punishment. If you are not loyal to your motherland, if you are not true to the country that has given you your most precious belonging, your identity, what use is either a treason or sedition law?

(The writer is a current affairs analyst based in NCR)
http://www.dailypioneer.com/columni...erely-a-symptom-of-a-much-deeper-malaise.html
 
The Pioneer, has published the following analysis of the JNU issue by their Columnist Kanchan Gupta
in their Sunday edition dated February 21, 2016.

Brahmanyan,
Bangalore.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE POIONEER
YOU ARE HERE : Home » Columnists »Coffee Break
COLUMNISTS
CRISIS IN JNU IS MERELY A SYMPTOM OF A MUCH DEEPER MALAISE
Sunday, 21 February 2016 | Kanchan Gupta | in Coffee Break

The Left-liberal outrage and sanctimonious posturing at home and abroad notwithstanding, the idea is to fix a broken system that has been held hostage by the Left. The time has come to reclaim our groves of academe from those who thwart academic freedom and choke free thought with ideology

Last week, the Associate Editor of a Left-leaning news portal called me and requested an interview. My comments were sought on the still unfolding and rather unedifying Jawaharlal Nehru University saga.

I was sort of surprised. My political views and those on the JNU spectacle are not exactly unknown to the Editor of the portal. So why would she want to publish them? I was told the portal wanted to put out a contrarian position and assured that my replies would neither be edited nor hacked.

On that assurance I agreed to the interview. The questions were e-mailed to me. I was requested to mail back my replies, preferably late night or early morning. I sat up late into the night, framing my replies and sending them to the Associate Editor. The next morning I sent a revised paragraph. Both the e-mails were acknowledged.

A short while later, around midday, the Associate Editor called back to say her bosses had decided not to run the interview. Apparently first they wanted to cut off chunks and then just spiked all of it.

The Associate Editor, a decent person, was flustered and I did not wish to pursue the point. Also, ultimately it’s the Editor’s discretion to run or not run copy, even when it has been specifically solicited for publication.

But that does not prevent me from publishing my views and putting them in the public place for others. We may be living with the many terrors inflicted on us by the Commentariat, we have not yet become a Stalinist state. So here are the questions and my replies.

With reference to the JNU incident, do you think the Government overreacted? Are you content with the way the situation was handled?

The audiovisual evidence of what happened at JNU on February 9 suggests three things. First, it was not a spontaneous burst of misplaced or misguided student fervour. The slogans, ranging from “Kashmir ki Azadi” to “Bharat ki Barbadi”, had been scripted and rehearsed for the event. Second, the perverse celebration of the ‘martyrdom’ of two convicted terrorists, Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat, who were executed after due process of law, was intended to provoke a blowback given popular sentiments. Third, the organisers and participants of the event were clearly pushing the envelope by taunting the state and daring authorities to act against them.

The Vice-Chancellor and other officials were misled into believing that the event was no different from other such shows that litter campus life. It was titled “Poetry reading the country without a post office”, whatever that means. It turned out to be nothing as innocuous as that. The banner at the venue read “Against the Brahmanical collective conscience, Against the judicial killing of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat, In solidarity with the struggle of the Kashmiri people for their democratic right to self-determination”.

From ‘poetry reading’ to caste denigration, glorifying terrorists and promoting secession, it was a huge jump. The organisers had been intentionally deceitful. The university officials withdrew permission for the event after realising the mischief potential and likely consequences. Yet the students went ahead in a show of intended belligerence and defiance.

On Monday night news TV reported that the Intelligence Bureau has tracked questionable links between one of the student leaders and a Pakistan-based terrorist organisation. Apparently he has visited Pakistan too. I have no independent corroboration, but if students and young men and women can be picked up on similar suspicions or charges from lesser known institutions and corporate offices, there is no reason why JNU should get preferential treatment.

Given this backdrop, it was inevitable for the police to act. The JNU students union president, who was present at the venue, was arrested. The others responsible for the deed are absconding. This was not an anti-Government or anti-establishment protest, it was an anti-India demonstration. The state would have acted against anything similar anywhere else.

The traditional inviolability of a campus was violated by the organisers and participants of the event. A close scrutiny of the tapes that have emerged suggest call to action which could have only been call to violence. None of those responsible for the deplorable show (even the university acknowledges it was unacceptable) is a teenager. They are young adults fully aware of consequences, legal and otherwise, of separatism and terror glorification.

The police has done what is expected of it. The police has acted within its remit. Now it is for the courts to decide. That is the rule of law.

JNU has been the home of dissent and protest for decades. Where should the line be drawn by students?

What was witnessed on February 9 was neither dissent nor protest. It was unadulterated promotion of separatism, a call for secession. It’s all about crossing the proverbial Lakshman Rekha or, if that offends some people, it’s about crossing the Rubicon. That was done knowingly, intentionally. It’s all about reaching the tipping point. It was reached on February 9.

Frankly, nobody cares for silly protests and irrational dissent. That may entertain and gratify a clutch of wannabe activists and pretentious students, the outside world has no time for it. People lead real lives with real problems. They couldn’t care less for the make-belief concerns of JNU students. It’s only when youthful exuberance metastises into spiteful hate that people sit up and take notice.

Is the repeated intrusion of Government in universities justified?

If it is a tax-funded institution, yes. Academic institutions need and must have academic autonomy. That’s a sine qua non. Problem begins when academic autonomy becomes a cover for non-accountability. Let us not forget that these institutions owe their very existence, the teachers owe their jobs, and students owe their affordable campus life, to the millions of taxpayers of India.

The institutions really belong to them, held in trust by the Government. The taxpayers are stakeholders and they have the right to demand accountability from Government on how their money is spent. The Government, in turn, has the right to seek accountability from these institutions.

Sadly in India institutions resent accountability. Autonomy becomes a cover of convenience. We have reached a stage where autonomy has come to mean “Write me a cheque, don’t tell me what to do with the money.”

Take a look at the annual financial statement of JNU or any of the 120-odd institutions, including 46 Central universities, funded by the Union Government. It would tell you the extent of investment by we the people with shockingly low returns on that investment.

For more evidence look at Nalanda University. This has to change. If I do not have a say in how my tax money is spent, then sorry, you can’t have that money. I have the right to accountability, the Government is the vehicle through which I exercise that right.

Your comment on the sedition charges slapped on JNUSU president. Is that fair? Do you think this falls under the legal ambit of sedition?

Sedition is a complex issue. The law is written in black and white but several judgements have injected the law with shades of grey. Also, we must remember that sedition is a colonial era concept. There is natural resistance to the use of this law. Given the gravity of the charge of sedition, judges are cautious and the intelligentsia is reluctant to embrace it without raising discomfiting questions.

I am not too sure about the wisdom of using it as an instrument of law in today’s India. But that is my view, possibly a minority view given popular opinion which at the moment is extremely enraged and enormously hostile to what has happened at JNU. A far more useful debate would be possible in a calmer situation.

What will be the long-term impact / significance of this incident?

Campuses need to be cleaned of malcontent, both among students and faculty. This is universally acknowledged. Politicians admit the need to cleanse campuses, but that is in private. In public, they cynically misuse campus politics to further their own shabby and sinister agendas.

A college or an university is primarily meant for education, for knowledge dissemination and acquisition, for free inquiry and intellectual liberation. Which college, university or institute can claim, with any degree of honesty, to meet these standards? If the JNU fracas initiates the process of restoring the primacy of academic activity over debilitating activism, then that would be a huge achievement. But it is a big if. Let us see how this plays out.

I am not particularly bothered about Left-liberal outrage and sanctimonious posturing at home and abroad. The idea is to fix a broken system that has long been held hostage by the Left, held to ransom by the Left. The time has come to reclaim our groves of academe from those who thwart academic freedom and choke free thought with ideology.

A law introduced by the British to silence Indians is being used against our own. Isn’t that ironical?

I have addressed this point. The only other thing I would like to add is that sedition should not be viewed in isolation. The First Amendment in America enshrines free speech. The First Amendment in India, ushered by Jawaharlal Nehru, curbs free speech.

We had something as evil and diabolical as 66A till the Supreme Court struck it down. We still have 69A, the first cousin of 66A, on the statute books.

A country which imposes undefined reasonable restrictions on free speech, loses the right to agitate against a sedition law. A country whose Constitution promises not to discriminate on grounds of caste, religion and gender, and yet legitimises discrimination in the guise of a twisted definition of secularism, cannot afford to militate against a sedition law, irrespective of its vintage. My concerns are more fundamental and less fashionable.

Is our democracy so fragile that it needs a sedition law?

We are an ancient land but a young nation-state and a younger democracy. We have weaknesses that are debilititating. We face internal and external threats that are unique.

Unlike the US, we have sought to resolve issues of unity and integrity of the nation without taking recourse to a civil war. We have diversities that are seemingly irreconcilable. We have sub-nationalism that is constantly in conflict with the idea of nationalism.

We have identities, real and imagined, that are yet to be subsumed to a unifying national identity. We are the only nation without a national language that bridges regions and communities.

At some point in future things will settle down. Perhaps we will have Second Republic, a democracy that is truly robust and self-sustaining, strong and confident enough not to worry about sedition and secession. At the moment we and other nations live in challenging times, troubling times, unsettling times.

Let’s not forget that the US, the world’s oldest and most robust democracy, has felt the need for a Patriot Act to cope with the times. We, the world’s largest democracy, are trying to cope without a similar law — but the limits of moral persuasion are there for all to see.

Is it time to examine whether we need a treason law rather than a sedition law?

Laws do not a nation make. Loyalty does a nation make. And loyalty is something that comes from within, not because disloyalty fetches punishment. If you are not loyal to your motherland, if you are not true to the country that has given you your most precious belonging, your identity, what use is either a treason or sedition law?

(The writer is a current affairs analyst based in NCR)
http://www.dailypioneer.com/columni...erely-a-symptom-of-a-much-deeper-malaise.html

hi sir,

well said....real words.....thanks...
 
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