Category Archives: South Asia Bulletin

Hinduva nation

South Asia Bulletin
 The Hindu, thehindu.com
Editorial
Updated: February 20, 2016 01:42 IST

The emperor’s new nationalism

From Hyderabad to Jawaharlal Nehru University, from the death of Rohith Vemula to the arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar, a clear political agenda by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party can be discerned. At first flush, this is a party whose top leaders — and they include members of the Union Cabinet — are all too willing to pick fights with student leaders and give establishment cover to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the Sangh’s student wing. But to see events that have unfolded over the past week only as the government’s battle for ideological control for India’s universities, as real and as condemnable as the effort is, would be to miss the gravity of the moment. In the national capital this week, the Home Minister gave currency to parody accounts of Pakistani terrorists to build a case against JNU students and yet remained visibly unmoved by the obstinate refusal of the city’s police force, which comes under his charge, to arrest “nationalist” lawyers and a party MLA who beat up students on and around court premises. BJP spokespersons affected condemnation of the violence, but breathed outrage about the allegedly seditious sentiments voiced at a meeting on the JNU campus to mark the death anniversary of Afzal Guru, convicted in the 2001 Parliament attack case and hanged in 2013. Such false equivalence has never been seen since Independence, between a Central government virtually refusing to honour the state’s essential compact with its citizenry to enforce the law and the right of Indians to freely express their sentiments, that too in the especially free zone that university campuses are meant to be. And its utterance should frame an anxiety the Prime Minister must respond to, that “nationalism” is being adopted as a political and executive touchstone by which Indians are sought to be divided between those with the ruling dispensation and those not.

Besides taking the fight to the country’s campus that is most identified with Left politics, the JNU development was obviously a chance for the BJP to recover from the excesses of Hyderabad. With it, the party has reframed the ABVP’s adoption of “nationalist” outrage from a Sangh versus Dalit binary to one in which the identities of “anti-nationalists” are insinuated, and not overtly specified. It is, thus, a curious overlay to agitations over the JNU incidents that all Central universities are now required to fly the national flag. It is a dangerous phase in this country’s history when the government at the Centre is seen to be actively assisting in a right-wing effort to shape the discourse on nationalism. This is why the use of Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code on sedition acquires greater menace than in instances in the past, when it has mostly been used by thin-skinned politicians to fend off critiques. Its application against JNU students and the unchecked violence against students and activists at Delhi’s Patiala House courts have sent out a message that the rule of law could be enforced selectively. If Prime Minister Narendra Modi differs from this dark reading of events, he needs to speak up.

South Asia Bulletin

 

http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/jnu-sedition-case-kanhaiya-kumar-arrest-afzal-guru-event/

An act of tyranny: ‘Modi govt threatened democracy; that is the most anti-national of all acts’

jawaharlal nehru university, Kanhaiya Kumat, jnu protest, jnu, afzal guru event, jnu sedition case, jnu case delhi police, jnu case NIA, jnu student arrest, india news, latest newsA student shouts slogans as JNU teachers and students form a human chain inside the campus in protest against arrest of JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar on Sunday. (Source: Express Photo by Oinam Anand)

Pratap Bhanu Mehta

February 16, 2016

The arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar and the crackdown on political dissent at JNU suggest that we are living under a government that is both rabidly malign and politically incompetent. It is using nationalism to crush constitutional patriotism, legal tyranny to crush dissent, political power to settle petty scores, and administrative power to destroy institutions. The instigation of this crackdown was the alleged chanting of some anti-national slogans at JNU, and a meeting to mark the death anniversary of Afzal Guru. But the government’s disproportionate response smacks of tyranny of the highest order. It ordered the arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar, whose speech had nothing anti-national about it.

The fury with which the home minister and HRD minister intoned on defending “Mother India” and wiping out anti-national events, suggests several things. This was a political decision taken at the highest levels of government. It represents an open declaration by government that it will not tolerate any dissent. It clearly put on display this government’s imperiously presumptuous claim that it has the monopoly on nationalism. It was meant to be a display of brute force against a speech that was not in any way an immediate instigation to violence. The crackdown was an act designed to revel in ignorance of the law of sedition. Indeed, it was insidious in its remarkable ability to make ignorance the flaming torchbearer of nationalism. The government does not want to just crush dissent; it wants to crush thinking, as its repeated assaults on universities demonstrate.

Watch video: JNU Students, Left Activists Protest At Jantar Mantar

They want to peddle a patriotism whose condition of possibility is the wiping out of all thought. It is important not to confuse several issues. Some of the students may have been deeply misguided in the beliefs they hold. But a university is the space to debate them: yes, even the hanging of Afzal Guru. But nothing they said amounts to a definition of illegality that should befit a liberal democracy. As a society, we are also losing sight of a basic distinction: the threshold of justification required for using the coercive power of the state is not satisfied merely because someone disagrees. In fact, the critique of what the students were doing has been vitiated because it has resorted to force. It is also important to remember that what is at issue here is not the definition of patriotism, or who is or is not anti-national. Large sections of the media and intelligentsia are gullibly letting the question of nationalism frame the terms of debate. So, even at the risk of hyperbole, it is a moment to assert that being anti-national is not a crime. Indeed, if the definition of nationalism is narrow and pinched-up, if it does not brook serious criticism, if it is aligned with tyranny, if it trades on an anti-intellectual ignorance, and its purpose is to unleash a frenzy of destructive passion, then being anti-national might even be an obligation. Make no mistake: the purpose of such a use of state power is to put all defenders of liberty, all radical critics of the state, on the defensive. Its purpose is to make traitors of all of us.

Express Editorial | Do not disagree: JNU arrests are ill-judged, threaten basic rights

But besides being malign, the government’s actions are politically stupid. In a narrow sense, the crackdown fulfils the government’s agenda: polarise and confuse the population by constantly debating nationalism; give full rein to the politics of resentment that the government harbours against institutions it has declared “Left.” But it does long-run damage to the government’s credibility in several ways. It gives the opposition exactly the pretext to unite that they need. It is hard to see the government being able to carry much of the country with it, if it constantly uses such vendetta. It will not be a surprise if another parliament session is the casualty of such overreaction. And the opposition would be well within its rights. Dissent is not something to be trifled with. As atrocious as the Congress and Left’s record on freedom of expression is, this is an opportunity for them to signal a new beginning. But they have to learn this lesson. The Congress and the Left have been hiding behind their own self-declared virtue for far too long, to the point where they created and used all the legal instruments of suppression the BJP is deploying with such effect. The politics of dissent will have to be rescued from the politics of opportunism.

The crackdown signals an utter lack of judgment in the government, where ministers manage to manufacture a national crisis out of what were always, at best, minor affectations in student politics. The ABVP’s constantly seeking government interference in university affairs on ideological grounds does not portend well for the future. It has even given all those not on the Left a reason to rally with the “Left.” JNU’s importance to national intellectual life had been waning; the BJP has just resurrected it. Even from the point of view of their own critique of the Left, this is an own goal. It suggests that the BJP is a party that cannot repress its own base instincts, whose petty politics of resentment will always subvert whatever long-term goals it might have. The BJP has still not learnt any lesson from its fate over the last two years. The toleration debate will overshadow everything else it does, not because of some congenital anti-BJP conspiracy: it is because the protection of freedom is the life blood of a democracy. And in this case, it is the BJP that upped the ante. The BJP does not also understand one subtle point: that unless there is real and immediate violence involved, a democracy that cuts “anti-nationals” some slack is a robust democracy. For the fact that even people who push the boundaries of expression are safe makes us all feel safe.

Nothing that the students did poses nearly as much threat to India, as the subversion of freedom and judgement this government represents. The honourable ministers should realise that if this is a debate about nationalism, it is they, rather than JNU, who should be in the dock. They have threatened democracy; that is the most anti-national of all acts.

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi, and contributing editor, The Indian Express

Attack on students in India

South Asia Bulletin
FEBRUARY 13, 2016
by 
Statement by JNUTA
JNU has always been a University where there has been a vibrant democratic culture, where diverse political ideological and academic views have engaged with each other in a spirit of peaceful dialogue and debate. The JNU teaching community is extremely concerned at the threat to the democratic ethos, which has played a critical role in ensuring that the University serves its social functions and secures its position as one of the premier institutions of higher education.
The University, having already instituted an enquiry to ascertain the facts and to take necessary action and there being no disruption of academic or any other regular functioning of the University, JNUTA strongly believes that the current excessive police action is totally uncalled for and it has only aggravated the situation. In view of this, JNUTA expresses its deep anguish over the University Administration’s decision to give a carte blanche to the police to enter the campus to search different premises and even make random arrests.
The teachers of JNU have always stood for upholding the Constitution of India and values enshrined therein and are opposed to any unconstitutional activity in the campus or outside. This very sentiment makes us express our strong opposition to attempts to use the law and the police to suppress democratic dissent and conduct a witch-hunt on our campus. The fact that the JNU Students Union (JNUSU) President is the first to be arrested establishes it. The JNUTA, following its Emergency Meeting, expresses its deep concern on the recent developments on our campus. The teachers of the University condemn the massive police presence and the attempt to escalate tensions.
JNUTA stands with the entire JNU community to maintain normalcy on our campus by immediately withdrawing the police and releasing all those detained.

Death of Dalit Scholar, Rohith Vemula

South Asia Bulletin

thehindu.com, January 26, 2016

 Discrimination on the campus

Supporters of Opposition parties join a march in Mumbai on Sunday, seeking action against those responsible for the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula. —PHOTO: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Supporters of Opposition parties join a march in Mumbai on Sunday, seeking action against those responsible for the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula. —PHOTO: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

 Even as the student population has become increasingly diverse, the high incidence of suicide among Dalit students points to continuing discrimination, exclusion and humiliation.

There is a need to apply our minds in a calm manner to address the problems that Dalit students face in institutions of higher education and find a more durable solution, now that the University of Hyderabad has revoked the suspension of students in the context of Rohith Vemula’s death. However, given past experience, there is no guarantee that the Rohith Vemula story will not be repeated. While his suicide has caused great shock and resulted in outrage, similar sentiments were expressed when Senthil Kumar from Salem, another student from the University of Hyderabad, killed himself in 2008. There have been up to 11 cases of suicide by students, mostly Dalits, in various institutions in Hyderabad between 2007 and 2013. In north India, besides two cases of suicide by Dalit/Adivasi students at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi, an additional 14 cases of suicide by Dalit students were reported between January 2007 and April 2011.

It is almost as if we have become immune to these frequent instances of suicide mainly by Dalit students. The student population on campuses of higher education has become increasingly diverse: according to 2008 data, of the total number of students in higher education in the country, 4 per cent were Scheduled Tribes, 13.5 per cent Scheduled Castes (SC), and 35 per cent Other Backward Classes (OBC). Hindus accounted for about 85 per cent of students, followed by Muslims (8 per cent) and Christians (3 per cent). And yet, 23 out of 25 were of Dalits.

Reasons for discrimination

What explains such a high incidence of suicide among Dalits? Research indicates that experiences of discrimination, exclusion and humiliation are the predominant reasons. After analysing some cases of suicide, academic Anoop Singh concluded that “there seems to be more than enough evidence to believe that caste discrimination played a significant role in driving these extraordinary individuals into committing suicide”, and that “elite professional institutions are the places where caste prejudice is so firmly entrenched that it has become normal”. A study in 2010 by Professor Mary Thornton and others of five higher educational institutions in India and the United Kingdom observed that “separation of groups on the higher education campus is pervasive and ubiquitous. While some such separation may be for supportive reasons, at other times it is due to overt discrimination on the grounds of race, region, nationality, caste, class, religion, or gender”. In 2013, Samson Ovichegan, in a study on the experience of Dalits in an elite university in India, observed that “this university is yet another arena in which the practice of caste division continues to exist. The university environment reinforces and maintains a divide between Dalit and non-Dalit. Dalit students do, indeed, experience overt and covert discrimination based on caste at this premier university”.

In the wake of a spate of cases of suicide by students in Hyderabad, the Andhra Pradesh High Court, in April 2013, had taken suo motu cognisance of a newspaper report and directed the universities to take measures to address the possible causes. At that time, a group of 29 academicians, in a petition to the court, identified failure, fear of failure, administrative indifference, hostile regulations, insults, social and academic stigmatisation and rejection as some of the reasons for suicide by students from marginalised groups. Political scientist N. Sukumar’s research gives us an insight into the general milieu of stigmatisation and discrimination faced in particular by Dalit students in the context of Senthil Kumar’s suicide, and on how caste comes into play in interactions of Dalit students with upper caste students, teachers and administrators. It is this exclusionary social milieu that pushes Dalit students to the wall, and those who lack the capacity to deal with the psychological pressure of humiliation resort to suicide.

Also read: A series on Dalit unrest on campuses

There are solutions provided we accept the persistence of caste discrimination and stigmatisation as a problem bedevilling higher education campuses. There is constant denial and attempts are made to attribute the suicides to incident-specific situations with disregard for the links with the larger social milieu of exclusion. True, there are incident-specific reasons, but it cannot be a coincidence that out of 25 cases of suicide, 23 were of Dalits. Thus, the first thing for policymakers is to come out of denial mode.

Need for legal safeguards

It is not that the situation has not improved — indeed it has. But the legacy of caste continues in modified forms in many spheres, if not all, of relations Dalit students have with other students and teachers and administrators. In my view, steps are needed on four fronts to address the problems of Dalit/OBC and other marginalised students. These include legal safeguards against discrimination, civic education, academic assistance to students who need support, and participation of Dalits in all decision-making bodies of universities/colleges.

If we acknowledge the persistence of exclusionary practices associated with caste on higher education campuses, we need legal safeguards to act as a deterrent. Currently some legal provisions exist such as the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act, 2015, and the University Grants Commission (UGC) regulations. However, the provisions related to education in the Act are limited. Similarly, UGC regulations fall short in terms of effectiveness. Therefore, we need a separate law against discrimination in colleges/universities, to treat an act of discrimination as a punishable crime, in specific spheres, with detailed administrative guidelines as in the case of gender discrimination and ragging. The legal route should help. For instance, when ragging was made a punishable offence, instances of ragging dropped dramatically. In fact, the near elimination of ragging is one of the most successful stories of the Ministry of Human Resource Development/UGC.

Importance of civic education

While legal safeguards are essential, they need to be supplemented by civic learning. Laws help to prevent, but not cure. Civic education in schools, colleges and universities can help students unlearn discriminatory and undemocratic values and behaviour that they pick up through socialisation and sensitise them to how the practice of discrimination associated with caste, ethnicity, gender, race, religion and other identities undermines the citizenship values of equity, freedom and brotherhood. Unfortunately our education system, with its curricula and pedagogy, has less to offer by way of civic learning that builds good citizens out of youth. “A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future”, a 2013 report by the Association of American Colleges & Universities, observed that “unlike liberty, civic knowledge, and capability are not bestowed at birth. They are hard won, though education at all levels. Democratic insights and competence are always in the making, always incomplete”. It went on to warn that “we dare not be passive about revitalizing civic capacity any more”.

Therefore, civic learning needs to be an integral component at every level of education. Many countries have proper civic education at school and in higher education. Some, like the United States, have special courses, while others have a civic learning component included in all courses with themes of diversity, inequality, racism, sexism, religious oppression, classism, anti-Semitism and heterosexism. To develop individual capabilities and skill, the U.S. developed new pedagogical methods, such as inter-group dialogue and mixed peer groups, where students from diverse groups come together and interact, thereby unlearning many prejudices and developing capacities to deal with diversity and difference. Given the widening diversity in schools and higher education campuses in India, we badly need a similar structure for education for citizenship.

Another initiative relates to academic assistance. In 2008, about 65 per cent of SCs entering higher education had a Hindi/regional language background, compared to 43 per cent of higher caste students; 52 per cent of SCs came from a rural background when compared to 34 per cent of higher castes. Obviously, SC students need more support in language improvement and core subjects. Remedial coaching schemes are in place, but a majority of institutions lack the will to implement them in full. They need to be modelled on the pattern of the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s “personalised Academic Support System”, which has yielded good results.

The last suggestion is the provision to give representation to Dalit students and teachers on all bodies of the university and enable them to participate in governance. Effective participation by Dalits in governance is a much better safeguard against the policies and rules detrimental to their interest.

The government can make a beginning by sending out a strong message by removing two symbols of inequality and exclusion. One is a fresco on the wall of the waiting room of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), by a painter from Maharashtra in 1924, depicting the caste system. On the 125th birth anniversary of B.R. Ambedkar, the PMO should do something to replace it. The government must also shift the statue of Manu in front of the Rajasthan High Court to a museum. The fresco and the statue can hardly be presented as symbols of equality, fraternity, justice and democracy.

(Sukhadeo Thorat is Professor Emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Chairman, Indian Council of Social Science Research.)