New Delhi, Feb 15 : With Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s statement about Hafiz Saeed
“supporting” the JNU protest attracting criticism from a few quarters, BJP leader Sudhanshu Trivedi on Sunday sought to defend the senior party leader, saying people
should protest this in unison rather than questioning it. ”As per a
political viewpoint, the Home Minister had appealed to people from different
areas of society to come and unitedly protest against anti-national powers. But
sadly, rather than protesting, why are you becoming advocate for a terrorist
who has made a statement,” Trivedi asked.
Singh on Sunday claimed that the JNU university event in Delhi in
memory of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru had received “support” from
terror outfit LeT’s founder Hafiz Saeed, a statement that sparked a political
row with opposition parties asking him to provide evidence. Reacting to
Singh’s claim, National Conference leader Omar Abdullah said it is a “very
serious charge” to level against the students and that the evidence must be
shared with all. CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said the Home
Minister has to come out and share the evidence he has with the country to back
up his “serious allegation”. CPI leader D Raja also demanded that the evidence
be made public.
Dismissing the opposition charges, Trivedi said “This could not be
a subject of public discourse. The ways, timings and the medium that terrorist
and anti-national activities use is a subject of consideration for intelligence
and security agencies and cannot be a subject of public discourse.”
escribing the Opposition’s reaction as “unfortunate”, Trivedi said, “Despite
this, to blame the government on a particular issue, without going into details
is utterly wrong and unfortunate.”
Making a counter-attack on Congress, Trivedi said this is “very
surprising in itself”. ”I would like to say that those who talk about
blaming are the same people who had said Hafiz Saeed as Hafiz Sahab. These are
the same people who had merged their voices, while sitting in India, with Hafiz
Saeed who was the sole person to oppose Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Pakistan
tour in December last year.”
Targeting former UPA Home Minister, he said, “All other people,
whether in opposition or power had welcomed the Prime Minister. If ever, any
Indian Home Minister has been patted at back by Hafiz Saeed, then it was in
January 2013. The then Home Minister under UPA was appreciated by Saeed for the
former’s subject on Hindu Terrorism.”
Make no mistake, this is one of those moments when your children
and grandchildren are going to ask you where you stood when cynical
politicians, mercenary police bosses, thuggish lawyers, callous university
administrators and rotten, corrupt journalists ganged up to destroy the life of
a young man, Kanhaiya Kumar.
If this scenario sounds familiar, I have two words for you: Rohith
Vemula. The country failed that student, driven to suicide by the false cases
foisted on him by the corrupt men and women in authority who oversaw his life.
The national remorse we felt then has evaporated in the heat of our present
hyper-nationalist grandstanding.
Not satisfied with tormenting a student by helping to pin a
concocted case on him, or by inciting vigilante violence against him with their
incendiary coverage, Zee TV, NewsX, Times Now and other channels like India
News have gone a step further and broadcast a clearly doctored video clip
purporting to show Kanhaiya shouting slogans in favour of Kashmir’s
independence.
Most of us had never heard of Kanhaiya before the Delhi Police
arrested him for sedition on February 12. He was charged with one of the most
serious offences on the Indian statute books for an incident involving nothing
more than the shouting of slogans on campus: An incident in which he
played no direct role. An incident that a self-confident, democratic country
should never have turned into a police matter.
Since then, Kanhaiya has been vilified by the Home Minister of
India, by official spokespersons of the Bharatiya Janata Party, by the Delhi
police and black-coated thugs who masquerade as lawyers – and by television
anchors. He has been violently assaulted inside court premises. “We have all the evidence we
need,” Delhi police chief B.S. Bassi declared, while Rajnath Singh went one
step further and sought to connect Kanhaiya to Pakistan-based terror groups on
the basis of a Tweet from a parody account.
A young man India can be proud of
Those of us who tried to look for evidence of these grave charges
have, instead, discovered a vibrant young man who is anything but the
“anti-national” of the Home Minister’s description.
I challenge you to watch video recordings of his speeches and not
come away with the feeling that young Kanhaiya has better political sense and
greater command over language than most of our national politicians and
journalists. You don’t have to agree with his unabashedly left-wing politics
and his pungent criticism of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to recognise his
passion and commitment to the people of India.
As a member of the All India Students Federation – the oldest
extant student organisation in India, and an affiliate of the Communist Party
of India, which has fought more general elections than any other party other
than the Congress – he obviously could not support the demand for the “azadi”,
or independence, of Kashmir. But he has the wisdom and political skill to know
how to converse with advocates of that cause, and to seek to channel their
demand for azadi into the wider struggles for dignity of the people of India.
His azadi is the freedom for which all of India’s people yearn: azadi from
hunger, azadi from feudalism, azadi from communalism.
Like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who put aside a narrow
constitutionalism in order to talk to the advocates of azadi in the Hurriyat
Conference when he was prime minister, Kanhaiya’s politics on campus embraces insaniyat
(humanity) and insaf
(justice). He is a patriot who knows his India is not so fragile that it will
break into pieces because a handful of people on campus shout provocative
slogans.
Listen carefully to Kanhaiya in this clip from a speech he made at JNU a day before the police arrested him:
What is he doing here? By anchoring the idea of freedom in rights
that belong to all Indians equally, he is doing more to secure the future of
the country – including its territorial boundaries – than those who treat every
political challenge to the state as a military threat. Kanhaiya is challenging
the superficial attraction that secessionism might have in Kashmir or elsewhere
in a far more effective way than the state – which doesn’t seem capable of thinking
beyond the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, sedition and other purely
coercive methods.
I don’t know what is driving the Modi government’s insane
persecution of this vibrant young man. Some argue that his arrest was,
initially, the result of sheer incompetence. This theory is comforting, but the
facts that have emerged since then make it harder and harder to believe.
Fabrication to forgery
Plainclothes ‘sleuths’ from the Delhi police were present at the
February 9 meeting where Kanhaiya allegedly performed his seditious acts.
Despite having been alerted by a complaint from the ABVP, the policemen noticed
nothing untoward and took no action.
The next day, someone on campus provided cell phone footage of the
slogan-shouting which had taken place to Zee TV, which went to town. The
channel’s owner, Subhash Chandra, is very close to the RSS. Zee TV’s lead was
quickly followed by Times Now and NewsX. For two days, the TV channels whipped
up a frenzy; and on the morning of February 12, Rajnath Singh tweeted,
“Whatever has happened in JNU is extremely unfortunate. I have instructed Delhi
CP to take strong action against the anti-India elements.”
Later that day, Kanhaiya was arrested and charged with sedition.
Since it had acted under political pressure and done no proper investigation of
its own, the police then frantically went about trying to obtain footage of the
incident from TV channels – hoping to find a clip on which they could hang
their absurd allegation of sedition. They found nothing.
The blatant partisanship of Bassi became evident on February 15,
when a BJP MLA, OP Sharma, was filmed viciously beating a CPI leader outside
the Patiala House court, and a pro-BJP lawyer, Vikram Singh Chauhan, was also
found attacking students. Instead of filing charges against them, Bassi claimed
that the MLA had been attacked first. Sharma’s astonishing statement that he
was even prepared to shoot dead someone accused of being “pro-Pakistan” has
been endorsed bySudhanshu Trivedi, the BJP’s national spokesman on
live television. To date, no BJP leader has sought to distance the party from
Sharma’s words and deeds, and no prosecution has been brought against Sharma
for incitement to violence.
Two days later, despite clear instructions from the Supreme Court,
the police allowed thugs to go on the rampage at the Patiala House court.
Section 124A of the IPC defines sedition thus: “Whoever, by words, either
spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise,
brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to
excite disaffection towards,the Government established by law
in India,” commits sedition. The courts are a vital part of the Indian
state and indulging in violence inside a court certainly “brings into …
contempt” the government established by law. Yet it is Kanhaiya who faces
sedition charges despite the absence of any evidence.
In order to salvage his tattered reputation, Bassi has been
claiming that the police now have clinching evidence of Kanhaiya shouting
anti-national slogans. Predictably, this ‘evidence’ soon found its way to TV
channels like Zee, Times Now, NewsX and India News, whose anchors triumphantly
rushed to broadcast it:
As ABP News pointed out on Thursday, this clip is an edited
version of the original clip we saw at the beginning of this article.
Kanhaiya’s call for azadi from bhukhmari, samantvad, sanghvad etc. has been cleverly
converted into a call for Kashmir’s azadi – something he never said.
When Kanhaiya is eventually released from jail and the charges
against him are dropped – as they surely must – the Supreme Court must set
up a Special Investigation Team to root out the criminals who fabricated this
“evidence” and put it into circulation. The politicians and policemen
responsible for this false and malicious prosecution must be arraigned and
brought to justice. No one, not even Bassi, must be spared, if it is found that
they played a role in the fabrication or its dissemination. The lawyers and BJP
leaders who attacked students and teachers and journalists and others inside
and outside the Patiala House court must be prosecuted. The lawyers should be
debarred for life.
There is no criminal law that readily applies to the journalists
who engaged in the character-assassination of Kanhaiya Kumar, putting his very
life in danger. Some of them have sons and daughters who are Kanhaiya’s age,
and yet felt not a twinge of guilt in feeding a young man to rabid dogs. Let
our contempt for them be their punishment. They are a disgrace to
journalism—and to India.
Earlier in the day, journalists, students and
many others were beaten up outside Patiala House in Delhi, while the police
stood mute and watched. They didn't move, they didn't stop the perpetrators and
they certainly never raised their voice. And these were journalists who were
actually doing their jobs. OP Sharma, a BJP MLA, was one of the main
perpetrators. When he was interviewed, he said that people who raise
pro-Pakistani slogans will be beaten up and if necessary be killed too.
Whatever
happened to Freedom of Speech!?
What happened next was even more shocking. A few
hours ago, BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi, along with Mani Shankar Aiyar,
Aseem Trivedi and many others were on the panel of the live segment on CNN-IBN's
India at 9, with Zakka Jacob.
When Zakka Jacob asked Sudhanshu Trivedi,
BJP spokesperson, if what OP Sharma said was the official BJP statement, he
fervently went on to say "Yes of course, why not?".
We are pretty sure that the BJP
will soon retract this statement and go on to say that the spokesperson did not
mean to say that. But before they do that, you should question the government
who's ruling you, question the things they say and the things they do. Because
your basic right is under threat now.
For whatever
reason that statement by him was not followed up by CNN-IBN. The tweet was also
deleted from their Twitter account, but not before some people took a screen
shot of it-
New Delhi: The
Patiala House court complex was the scene of chaos and violence Monday when a
group of lawyers and BJP activists – including one party legislator – attacked
and manhandled students and teachers from Jawaharlal Nehru University who had
gathered to show solidarity with arrested student union president Kanhaiya
Kumar. Even journalists were not spared, with at least five of them sustaining
injuries after being set upon by right-wing activists.
The charge of being “anti-national” was flung inside and outside
the courts at all those who had come from JNU. In the court room itself, a
group of 40 lawyers accompanied by the police tried evicting 10 JNU
teachers from the premises, badly beating one academic. Outside, the lead was
taken by BJP MLA from Delhi OP Sharma. Captured on camera assaulting
Ameeque Jamai, a leader of the Communist Party of India, he not only justified
his action but said he was even prepared to murder someone if he thought
they were pro-Pakistani : “If you ask me, there is nothing wrong in
beating up or even killing someone shouting slogans in favour of Pakistan,” he
said.
Asked by Zakka Jacob on CNN-IBN on the 9 pm news on Monday night
whether he approved of Sharma saying it was alright to kill someone shouting
pro-Pakistan slogans, Sudhanshu Trivedi, national
spokesperson of the BJP said he did.
Inside the court, Kanhaiya Kumar, who is facing charges of
sedition, had his judicial custody extended till February 17. Though Kumar, who
is a member of the All India Student Federation – the student wing of the CPI –
has flatly denied the police charges of sedition, Delhi Police
Commissioner B.S. Bassi claimed there was “irrefutable proof” against him.
So far, however, in all the video “evidence” circulating on television and
social media, no footage of Kumar shouting “seditious” or “anti-national
slogans” has emerged.
Legal experts say that the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that
the charge of sedition cannot apply to mere words and that an accused person
has to have sought to instigate violence in order for his speech to be
criminalised.
On Tuesday, the Delhi high court will hear a petition filed by a
private individual urging that investigation of the JNU case be handed over to
the National Investigation Agency – the specialized anti-terrorism arm of the
government.
Drama in court
For the moment, however, the JNU teachers who were forcefully
evicted from the Patiala House courtrooms spoke to the media about their
ordeal.
“A group of these people in lawyers garb came into the court room
shouting ‘Bharat mata ki jai’. They asked us to leave, and when we questioned
this they caught hold of one of our male colleagues, Rohit, and slapped him”,
Neera Kongari, professor of Japanese studies told The Wire. Ayesha
Kidwai, professor of linguistics, added that several of the female professors
present including her, Janaki Nair and Chitra Harshvardhan were molested and
manhandled by these lawyers. All this time, police were present but did not
take any action, and the professors had to specially request a police escort
till the exit. The professors are exploring all legal
options available to them.
But Kidwai’s main fear was what would happen to Kanhaiya once he
entered the room, as all the exits were blocked by BJP lawyers. Since he was
their prime target, she was afraid he would receive much harsher treatment.
Students and media persons also received the same violent
treatment at the hands of the protesting lawyers. Varun Chauhan, a close friend
of Kumar’s, said he and his friends were called “Pakistanis”, and when they did
not respond they were hit and pushed out of the court room. The All India
Students’ Federation (AISF) general secretary Biswajit was also badly beaten,
and his clothes were torn. “Look at what they are doing”, he told The Wire.
“And they can still call Kanhaiya a terrorist?”
Bystanders and journalists who were in the open areas within the
court complex were also pushed around. Those who tried to record the on-goings
with their cellphones were threatened, and some had phones snatched from their
hand and thrown to the ground. While the police told the journalists to leave
in order to avoid getting hurt, they did not do anything to stop the lawyers
and BJP members.
Rahila, a JNU student and friend of Kanhaiya’s who had also been
pushed out of the court room, expressed her outrage at what was happening. “I
am ashamed that these are the people who are supposed to uphold our
constitution. They behave like this, that too in a public court room, yet you
call JNU students anti-national? And the police are only bystanders, not
intervening on our behalf. The entire country should be ashamed”.
Growing anger
More than 40 universities from all over the country have now
expressed their support and solidarity with JNUSU and JNUTA. Public
universities in Karnataka, Osmania University in Hyderabad and Calcutta
University have planning action including strikes and public meetings to show
their support.
In spite of the widespread support they have received from
political, cultural and academic groups, the persecution and branding of JNU
students continues. A website has created profiles of JNU students who are
“anti-national”, in order to “know them and expose them”. In addition to names,
the website also has links to their Facebook profiles, exposing these students
to online threats and harassment.
