JNU Diary Part 1 - Communists Fake It All

Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, the Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University since 27 January, is a man of his words. He has proven so this far, at least. On 12 February, when a group of students of the university, members of the civil society and I met up with him, he informed us that an in-house inquiry committee had already been set up to look into the incident of a student union’s members raising anti-India slogans at the campus, and that the report of the committee was expected by that evening. The report came that evening indeed.

“I am strong. Once a decision is taken, no amount of pressure can force me into a rethink,” the vice chancellor said. In fact, since that evening when eight student union members were found guilty of the wrongdoing, their suspension has not been revoked.

M Jagadesh Kumar was warm and receptive. He heard out the delegation of citizens concerned about the overall antinational atmospherics of the campus before describing the situation to us. The scholar from IIT Delhi rued the fact that an untoward incident in the premises of the varsity should trouble him so early in his tenure as the vice-chancellor. Responding to the letter we had handed to him, pleading for an end to the air of rebellion created by some unions, he said, “I have been telling my colleagues and students, let me settle down first.”

Outside the administrative block, students with apparent leftist leanings, worry writ large on their faces, were crowding up. A few constables of Delhi Police looked on from a distance — no way looking menacing, though. They were relaxed (as were the cops at the gate opposite Munirka Enclave from where we had entered), chatting amongst themselves. Students affiliated to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad were few and far between. None exulted at the ‘plight’ of fellow students from communist unions.

Tension in the leftist camp, borne out of a guilty conscience, was building up nevertheless. A student, rather man who looked old enough to father half-a-dozen children, sought to address the situation. With a raised but shaky voice, he said, “Comrades, what is happening in our campus is fascisistic (sic)...” This address by the leader of one communist union was soon disrupted and unceremoniously terminated as another communist union did not agree with the content and tenor of the speech. Yes, infighting — so typical of the right wing — had begun in the communist camp.

The immediate fallout of the administration’s permission to police to enter the premises of JNU and arrest the culprits of 9 February was a needling concern for every leftist student that he or she shouldn’t be the one to go behind bars! Ergo, what the All India Students Federation guy said sounded to All India Students Association guys as though he was owning up slogans like “Bharat ki barbaadi tak jang rahegi jaari” (Our battle will continue till India is destroyed) and “Bharat, tere tukde honge, insha’Allah, insha’Allah” (India, you will be broken to pieces, God willing). Panicked, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Revolution’s student wing shut up the Communist Party of India’s counterpart.

The unnerved leftist students made for a study of ironies. The lone arrest was that of Kanhaiya Kumar, the JNUSU president. Not belonging to the belligerent Democratic Studentss Union that had organised the 9 February event, his faction and all other leftist unions should have been concerned by his arrest alone, as they had already declared the previous night on national television that they “condemned” the anti-India slogans. But no, this act of teaming up — ganging up, if one chooses to see it that way — was not for Kanhaiya; it was for further anticipated arrests.

The crowd on that fateful night was sizeable. Out of that DSU grouping, as many as 75 students are reportedly absconding. Now that they were no longer on the campus, other communists should have moved around relaxed, distancing themselves from the act.

The fact is that these little differences in ideologies, agendas and programmes of AISA, AISF, AISRF (of which DSU is a part), DSF, SFI, etc are only of academic interest. Hence, one cannot say there was not a single student affiliated to non-DSU unions who participated in the anti-India demonstration of 9 February.

In fact, wherever I have used the term “leftist” to describe them, I have made an understatement. You wouldn’t find socialists such as followers of Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan here. They are plain communists.

And the elderly professors who had pleaded innocence on the night of 11 February on national television were simply bluffing. Look at the tweets of Kamal Mitra Chenoy of the time when he was a CPI functionary before he joined the AAP:

https://twitter.com/kamalchenoy/status/342534921555955712

http://twitter.com/kamalchenoy/status/298686507420614656

http://twitter.com/kamalchenoy/status/308152779476713472

http://twitter.com/kamalchenoy/status/303133009048137731

Well, you can’t. Unable to live with such secessionist propaganda, Twitter blocked KM Chenoy’s account. So, here are the screenshots:

Before this, these elders have celebrated the killing of CRPF jawans in a Maoist ambush in Dantewada, demanded a Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, come out in support of Naga and Manipuri insurgents, organised Mahishasur Shahadat Diwas, etc.

The last ‘commemoration’ also shows the desperation of these communists. Never mind that they do not believe in Hindu Puranas. Hindus’ “non-existent” or “mythological” demons and gods, however, surface in their political agenda to turn every story on its head. To them, Mahishasura was a Dalit leader who was seduced to defeat by a scheming, upper caste Durga!

Kanhaiya’s case is no exception. In Hyderabad Central University, they got away with passing off an OBC Rohit Vemula as a Dalit. Mercifully, here, before the plot could be hatched, enough people from Bihar, including those from Begusarai who know the family, circulated the information that Kanhaiya is a Bhumihar — a section of Brahmins located historically in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh.

This should come as no surprise to those who have followed these communist unions’ genesis and evolution. A hell of a lot of Pandeys, Mishras, Tripathis etc masquerade as “backwards” in their corridors of power, sporting fanciful surnames like Anarya (meaning, not an Aryan) to relate to the Scheduled Castes. Tough luck! Just as everybody in Ballia district knew that India’s former Prime Minister Chandrashekhar — who never used his last name officially — was a Singh, every Dalit knows that these communists are fake Dalits. This perhaps explains why the communist parties could not spread their electoral footprint in the hinterland. As Udit Raj had said in an interview to Swarajya, Dalits do not buy sermons by the upper castes; they listen only to one of their own.

Yesterday, targeted incessantly by the society at large for bearing nothing but contempt for everything essentially Indian, these communists took out processions across the city, holding in their hands the National Flag along with their red ensignias. This is the first time since India’s independence that gatherings of communist activists — not an occasion like 26 January or 15 August that even communist state governments are constitutionally bound to observe — have been noticed with the tricolour. The onlookers might not have found this sudden surge of Indian nationalism in the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist gentry credible either.

Kanhaiya did try. Under coercion of the police or in a bid to wriggle out of the law, he has gone back from “India, go back” — he may or may not have raised slogans for Kashmir’s aazaadi (independence) — to owing allegiance to the Constitution of India! Any takers?

Breaking news: The JNU Students’ Union Council has passed a resolution this 19 February after its meeting at 11:30 am, which says it “condemns the anti-India and pro-Pakistan sloganeering”. Refer to this file for the union’s official release.