JNU imbroglio: Government scored a self-goal arresting Kanhaiya Kumar

Agreed, Kanhaiya Kumar is not, repeat, not an anti-national. And did not deserve to be slapped with the sedition charge.  Still, the question is why did he have to convene a meeting on February 9, which happens to be the anniversary of the hanging of Afzal Guru, the man convicted, after a  lengthy trial which had the imprimatur of the country’s highest court, for the attack on the sanctum sanctorum  of Indian democracy? If the intention was not to pay tribute to Afzal Guruji, as the Congress  spokesperson addressed the terrorist the other day, — just like  Digvijay Singh had called Osama bin Laden Osamaji  — why was a meeting of students convened on February 9?  Clearly, Kanhaiya was not devoid of ulterior motive, though he is certainly not an anti-national.
If despite their insistence that Guru’s hanging was a `judicial murder,’ we are still not ready to believe that Kanhaiya is an anti-national it is because it is necessary to give a lot of slack to students. Youthful insouciance is  often reflected in open questioning of  what others might consider accepted national cause. Challenging the authority, any authority, is the calling card of student-activists. And when it is the JNU Students’ Union, you have to make bucketfuls of allowance for the fact that the successors of Prakash Karats and Sitaram Yechuris need to burnish their ultra left credentials by embracing negation and  negativism as core philosophy. Hopefully, neither Karat nor Yechury will deny that slogans raised at the meeting convened by Kanhaiya, who heads the Students’ Union, were in no way in advancement of the national cause.
Having said that, the Government cannot escape blame  for scoring  yet another self-goal, for  needlessly elevating what was essentially a hyperlocal brouhaha into an all-India standoff. Apparently, on every anniversary of Afzal’s hanging such meetings are held in JNU where the same slogans heard this time are shouted. But those horrible slogans at the meeting convened by Kanhaiya  receded into the background due to the folly of the Ministry of Home Affairs. The entire non-NDA block is now training its guns at the Government. National  and  international academics and student bodies have weighed in on the side of the Government’s critics.

Activists shout slogans against Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the late Kashmiri separatist Mohammed Afzal Guru at a protest outside the university in New Delhi on February 17, 2016. PIC/AFP.

No doubt that  Rajnath Singh grossly mishandled the issue. Political immaturity was written all over the  warrants issued against Kanhaiya. If the good Thakur had as much faith in tact and tactics as he seems to put in `thanedar’s danda,` he would have given the JNU hotheads who chanted `death to India’ a long rope. Slapping the sedition charges first and thinking of the consequences later was typical of a government which has been most amateurish in its dealing with such crises. Whether it was Rohit Vemula’s suicide at the Hyderabad University a few weeks ago, or it is Kanhaiya’s detention under the archaic Section 124 A of IPC now,  the ruling party has courted unpopularity on university campuses due to its ham-handedness on issues concerning students.
In HRD Minister Smriti Irani you have someone who is constantly at pains to prove that she is better than anyone who might hold a proper degree. Her unpleasantness, nay, aggression comes across every time she interacts with the bureaucracy, vice-chancellors, even the media. May be someone will arrange to get her a  degree. For, otherwise, she is clever and has a command over the language and a  grasp of the issues on which she holds forth. Her problem is psychological  — she believes her interlocutors are skeptical about her intellectual abilities and, therefore, she must put them down to show she is in command. Even her over-the-top intervention in the JNU imbroglio reflected an anxiety to please her superiors in the Sangh parivar whereas the right thing  as HRD Minister would have been to ascertain  facts before publicly commenting. Wrapping oneself up in the flag is easy; transforming  a rotten and rote-reliant educational system, however,  will  be a true patriotic act.
Meanwhile, Rahul Gandhi made the same mistake of acting in haste — and in hate of the Modi Government  — as made by the Home Minister. If Rajnath Sihgh ordered `tough’ action against the JNU boys for raising anti-India slogans, the Gandhi scion rushed to the JNU campus to identify himself  with the slogan-shouters. As it is, a section of Rahul’s party had always been ambivalent on the issue of Afzal Guru, with the party’s MLAs in J and K even signing a memorandum seeking the remains of the terrorist for his family. In any case, Gandhi needs to remember that Afzal Guru was hanged by the UPA  Government  after the rejection of his plea for mercy. He can hardly expect to draw  support of those who cry from housetops that Afzal Guru’s was a judicial murder.