Battle lines drawn in JNU: it’s BJP versus the rest

With BJP workers, including a Delhi MLA, seen roughing up students, members of the JNU faculty and journalists at the court complex where JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar was produced on Monday, sharp battle-lines were drawn on the issue of alleged anti-national activity at an event organised at the premier varsity last week.

Students have declared a strike in the campus till Kumar, the Students’ Union President who was arrested on charges of sedition, is released.

The entire Opposition stood united against the BJP, which took a hard, nationalistic line. Home Minister Rajnath Singh was specifically targeted for using a tweet from a fake Twitter account of LeT chief Hafiz Saeed as proof of the students’ “anti-India” activities. The Minister’s line was further peddled by BJP chief Amit Shah, who demanded to know whether the government should be a “mute spectator” when a university campus is turned into a hub of “secessionist activities”.

While students, faculty members and a large media contingent waited in the precincts of the Patiala House Courts, they were attacked by men wearing lawyers’ robes who chanted “Vande Mataram” and pushed the faculty members and the students out of the court room. Journalists were also attacked and their cell phones snatched.

BJP MLA OP Sharma was seen thrashing an unidentified young man. While he later denied that he was actually beating up the man, he asserted, “We were trying to catch hold of all those who raised anti-India slogans. I never beat anyone.”

Other black-robed men in court precincts asserted, “You (JNU) produce anti-nationals and terrorists. You should get out of the country. Long live India, shut down JNU.”

All India Students Federation (AISF) President Waliullah Qadri said, “When the proceedings were going on, some people wearing lawyers’ gowns first started hurling abuses at us. And then suddenly some of them, without any provocation, started beating us badly. They pushed us and beat us all, including women students.”

The students alleged that the heavy posse of policemen present on the court complex did not take action against the belligerent lawyers. The policemen later drove away all the students, teachers and media persons out of the court complex.

Meanwhile, Opposition parties asserted that they would “fight out” any threat and were “not worried” about being labelled “anti-national” for their stance on the JNU row after CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury allegedly received threat calls over the issue.

Condemning the episode, the JD(U), which has been supporting the students, termed the alleged threats to Yechury an “attack” on the freedom of speech and likened the developments to a “new kind” of Emergency.

“All this (threat calls), we are prepared to face, we are not worried. We are not worried about being labelled as anti-national. We are prepared to face this and we will fight it out,” CPI(M) leader Prakash Karat said.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar demanded that the Centre produces proof of sedition before it levels these charges at JNU and its students.

“Like others, I too demand the proof of sedition charges against the protesting students. BJP is trying to impose its ideology in JNU.”

The incident drew a response even from the usually reticent Bahujan Samaj Party Chief Mayawati who said the BJP has branded a prestigious institution like JNU as “anti-national” in order to implement the “extreme and offensive agenda of the RSS”.

“The arrest of JNU Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar on charges of sedition looks wrong in the first place itself. Police has made the arrest on sedition charges under political pressure. He is nowhere seen in the video raising the objectionable slogans,” she said, adding it seems that Modi government was using a “new weapon of declaring its opponents as anti-national”.