Bloodbath in the brook: JNU, the anti-national debate and the 'national project'

Much controversy has arisen over the past few days due to the hosting of a function related to Afzal Guru, tied to the broader theme of human rights and state oppression.

Before I start, let me make something clear to the typical argument spun by the media. Such an assertion would look like: “But there is a clear demarcation between criticising the government and blatantly disrespecting the nation. How is it acceptable to glorify a convicted terrorist and chant for the destruction of the nation?”

The answer is: There is something called a fair trial. Maybe one has to face trial once to be able to truly value that.

The same Afzal Guru event happened a year before. No one said anything. Now, because the main critiques of the Modi regime are coming out from JNU, the state wants to discredit JNU. 
The police didn't hesitate before lathicharging our fellow students whenever they protested against anything — at UGC, Jantar Mantar, or for that matter, anywhere. They even attacked journalists and broke cameras. When the event happened this time, the police just stood there vacantly for over two hours, and let the cameras soak in the crowds and slogans. Clearly the state is up to only 'good governance' and 'development', here. 
This was a trap for the students. They followed the bait and the government and media pounced, clearly. I only wish some of my fellow students had seen through it in time.

The idea of the government is to let JNU stay as an island of dissent, consistently portrayed as anti-national, to justify thousands of cases of suppression of dissent by the state nationwide. It is indeed the othering of liberalism as unpatriotic.

One now has to put this event in a broader perspective and time frame. This is not the first time that the Modi government has clashed with not only the people of JNU but also the idea of JNU itself, and its democratic space. Many conflicts overlap here. It was JNU, DU and Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD) students in Delhi that occupied the University Grants Commission building and opposed the government’s fund cuts in education (that amounted to selling us out to the private sector). It was students at the forefront of the protests at the 16 December gangrape case.

It was JNU students who picked up the issue of saffron lynch mobs and Dadri. And finally, in the Rohith Vemula case, it was students all over the country that challenged the Modi government into admitting that the caste system does in fact exist! Being a central university in the national capital, with an enthusiastic and activist student society, JNU did, of course, get more exposure as the main student challenger body to the Central Government, whether it was on corruption, communalism, caste, or welfare. It is this critique they want to silence. It is also an island where the NSUI presence is negligible and the ABVP has to always function on its back foot. Perhaps with all the bad press, someone believes the political fortunes of the ABVP can be boosted, or all critiques of government policy anywhere be dismissed.

But let us not be mistaken, attacking our university (JNU) in particular is first and foremost an attack on liberalism and social scientists. The current administration has made no secret of the fact that in its eyes, social conservatives are ideal and obedient replacements for real social scientists. Rewriting history is a top priority for them, as they envision an altogether different national project than the one that had been put in place in 1947.

While communal historiography itself has older antecedents than communal school textbooks, in part due to first British rule and then a markedly secular Congress government under Nehru, RSS education and the proliferation of its institutes should be viewed as an investment into the creation of an ideologically communal commonsense that translates into a political base that can’t help but think in line with the RSS and the BJP.

It also functions as the reproductive mechanism that keeps churning out a potential cadre base and a constant minimum electoral support base – which keeps growing as the cumulative effect of more and more generations indoctrinated with the beliefs peddled by the RSS, the sanatanis and the Arya Samajis being around today than in the 1950-70s. The consequence of this educational investment is also “the communal penetration of the government, bureaucracy, police, media and even the judiciary”.

Perry Anderson, eminent historian, argues that in addition to the Hindutva ideology and its foot-soldiers, another ‘Indian ideology’ existed, which was sponsored by the Nehruvian state and endorsed by the liberal intelligentsia. He points out that when Nehru asserts the innate tolerance of Indians, he essentially means it is a Hindu trait. After all, if no one was considered an outsider, then who were we supposed to be tolerant towards? The two ideologies also seem to agree on the historic unity and territorial integrity of India. Both are, in short, to some extent tied to the nation-state project. Both mentioned traits are, it is safe to say, ‘quite modern’.