Where Will JNU Developments Lead To

Punchline
Spark Born in JNU
Z. G. Muhammad

Millions of Kashmiris, of all ethnic groups living all-over 218, 780 Sq. Kilometers area of the State has no love for the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru. In the history of India, he may pass as the architect of the modern India. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority in our land remember him as a promise broker. He betrayed the promises held out to the people of the State inside the highest temple of Indian democracy and the comity of nations on the floor of the United Nations Security Council. Through his sweet tongue, he won over the gullible Kashmir leadership cheated the people of the state of the State of their right to self-determination.
Notwithstanding, people in the South Asia suffering uncertainty and people in Jammu and Kashmir paying the highest price for Nehru’s Machiavellian role in perpetuating the dispute over future of the state a spark of hope for an intellectually honest and emancipated India was born on 9 February 2015 in an institution of learning named after him. In connection with the third anniversary of hanging to death of Mohammad Afzal Guru students of Jawaharlal Nehru had organized an academic event on the campus to discuss his trial. Since the day of his hanging questions about the ‘fairness of his trial’, have been part of public, legal and academic discourses in the state, New Delhi and other metropolises in India. The phrase “satisfying collective conscience of society” for awarding death to Kashmir youth used by the highest temple of justice in its judgment that added another day of commemoration to the Kashmir narrative has been evaluated by scores of legal luminaries and intellectuals in India and across the globe. An eminent Indian novelist and winner of prestigious Brooker Award Arundhati Roy described it as “a stain on India’s democracy.” Some have described his execution as “a form of retributive justice” and some have seen it as “glaring failure of justice and miscarriage of justice.”
So there was nothing unusual that the students of one of India’s premier university were to discuss. Holding debates and discussions on critical or controversial issues on the university campuses speaks about the intellectual growth of a nation. Denying a discussion on Kashmir or Kashmir related issues in universities or institutions within India will be behaving ostrich. Scores of scholars in various international universities have been working on the genesis and dynamics of the Kashmir Dispute. In the United States, some institution from the Harvard Kennedy School Carr Center to Brookings Institution have been debating and discussing the dispute over the future of Kashmir and its various dimension. Lots of scholars of Indian origin have been discussing the human rights situation in Kashmir and criticizing the denial of the promised right to self-determination of the people of the state. Some speak as candidly as Nehru had spoken at a public meeting in Calcutta on January 1, 1952, “If people of Kashmir tell us to get out, we will do so.” But, their honest views about the Kashmir or telling New Delhi that India cannot get a seat on the big table unless Kashmir is resolved on the basis of justice does not make them less patriotic but adds to India’s prestige as a democracy. Seen in right perspective, of some “ultra-nationalist commentators” blindfolded to historical realities, who are internationally damaging India’s image.
The question arises why the BJP government came with such a heavy hand on the JNU students who had organized an event on the campus in connection with Afzal Guru’s hanging. Have unpalatable slogans raised by some students been the reason for the arrest of the JNU Student Union President Kanhaiya Kumar or it is an old game of using Kashmir card for gaining space in this University, a nursery for producing emancipated intellectuals. The student president saw the reason for police arresting him in defeating the ABVP candidate in the presidential election of the students union.
Historically, the Hindutva party from its birth as the Bharatiya Jan Sangh has tried to use Kashmir card for making a political fortune. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee after leaving Nehru’s cabinet becoming the founder President of Jan Sangh’ faired poorly at the general elections of 1952- ‘only three of its members were elected to the Parliament.’ In the Parliament, he made ‘blistering attacks’ on Nehru’s man Friday in Kashmir. He ‘sarcastically asked who made Sheikh Abdullah King of Kings in Kashmir.’ To boost his “dispirited cadres” he encouraged agitation in Jammu. Sheikh Abdullah at that time to quote Noorani, ‘strongly disapproved plebiscite, when Nehru was profusely claiming his commitment to hold a plebiscite.’ The Jammu agitation set a rethinking in Sheikh Abdullah. Nehru sharing his worries about the emerging scenario in Kashmir wrote to Rajagopalachari that developments in the state were unfortunate, for anything that happens there has larger and wider consequences. The movement led by Mookerjee writes contemporary Indian historian of repute Ramachandra Guha, “Planted seeds of independence in Sheikh Abdullah’s mind, and outcry following his (Mookerjee’s) death seems only to have nurtured it.” Nehru about it wrote to B.C. Roy, “Psychologically we have lost Kashmir it would be difficult to get back to older position.”
Ironically, since coming to power, the BJP government besides caste and communal politics has again been using the Kashmir card to convert the Universities into bastions of the Hindutva politics. This is dangerous move with the potential of snowballing into a bigger crisis, and as we have seen in the Hyderabad University, it will be resisted by the student community and intelligentsia. As India’s younger generation tears apart the Brahmanical mindset and underprivileged youth grow up intellectually the voice raised in support of the oppressed in the JNU will echo on every campus in India. One day certainly the JNU sparked fuelled by sedition charges is bound to become as good a student movement in support of oppressed as that in the US against the Vietnam War in the late sixties.

Published in Greater Kashmir. on 15-2-16