The arrest of kanhaiya kumar, president of the students union of the admittedly leftist Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), on the charge of sedition by the Central government-controlled Delhi police, provided another instance of the BJP-led NDA government’s clampdown on fundamental rights to freedom of speech and expression, under the cover of nationalism. Kumar is accused of raising ‘anti-national’ slogans at a protest rally in JNU to mark the third anniversary of the execution of Kashmiri terrorist Afzal Guru, who was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court after an exhaustive set of trials and appeals in 2005. Further, after gangs of ‘nationalist’ lawyers ran amok at Delhi’s Patiala House court on February 17 beating up Kumar, journalists, and JNU faculty and students, the BJP government in charge of law and order in the national capital, has yet to arrest any of their leaders, clearly identified by the print and television media. It isn’t difficult to discern the strategy of the BJP and its ideological parent the Hindu hard core Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), to make its student wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) a force to reckon with on Indian campuses, especially of the 46 top-ranked centrally-funded universities. Over the past 20 months since the BJP led by Narendra Modi took charge at the Centre, the ABVP has made a concerted bid to assert itself on university campuses countrywide, hitherto dominated by Left and/or pro-Congress student unions. For instance, ABVP leaders played a key role in events leading to the tragic suicide of Rohith Vemula, a Dalit student of the Central government-funded University of Hyderabad. Vemula was suspended from the varsity following an on-campus brawl with ABVP office-bearers after which they petitioned the Union HRD ministry, which directed the vice chancellor to take action, resulting in Vemula’s suspension and subsequent suicide. Similarly in other cases, the HRD ministry was quick to act on ABVP complaints. In the JNU imbroglio, the government should have left it to the university administration and vice chancellor to take action against students raising alleged ‘anti-national’ slogans. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that raising slogans and making speeches which don’t provoke violence don’t attract the provisions of s. 124 of the Indian Penal Code which defines sedition, a grave criminal offence. But the BJP government’s cavalier invocation of s.124 of the IPC against students on college campuses reveals its intent to tightly regulate the higher education system and supress freedom of speech and expression, which is an inherent part and parcel of academic life. It’s not too late for the BJP to acknowledge that social, cultural and intellectual freedom in the country’s 37,000 colleges and 835 universities is a rite of passage for youth. An autonomous, inclusive and progressive higher education system which produces free-thinking graduates with discursive and debating skills is the prerequisite of national progress. Devolve power for clean India With the stock market in the doldrums, public sector banks flooded with bad debts, farm suicides continuing unabated countrywide and the Budget session…
