THE developments in India's prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is in a sense symptomatic of a larger crisis afflicting Indian polity after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Narendra Modi came to power. It just happens that a university with its tradition of open debate and lively exchange of views is the latest target of those who define nationalism in too exclusive Hindu terms. Complicating the situation is the willingness of some sections of the media to serve as echo chambers of the ruling party. The story begins with the arrest on Feb. 12 of Kanhaiya Kumar, president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU), affiliated with the Communist Party of India, on charges of raising anti-India slogans during a meeting on Kashmir in the campus. Zee News, a television channel, broadcast an amateur video that showed JNU students shouting slogans in favor of Kashmir's independence and against the 2013 execution of Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri accused of attacking the Indian Parliament in 2001. Some other channels repeated Zee's charge about JNU students being "anti-national." The thrust of the panel discussions that followed in several channels was that the varsity is indeed a den of such elements. Home Minister Rajnath Singh quoted a tweet that showed Hafiz Saeed, a notorious Pakistani militant, supporting JNU students. Human Resource Development Minister Smirthi Irani saw in all this an "insult to Mother India." Delhi police raided the university campus and arrested Kumar and four others, charging them with sedition. Enraged by the insults to "Mother India," a mob of politicians and pro-Narendra Modi lawyers at a Delhi court beat up journalists as well as JNU students, including the one accused of treason. Those arrested are in police custody. But it emerged that not only did Saeed's supposed endorsement come from a parody Twitter account, but the original video of students shouting anti-India slogans had also been doctored. Some participants in the event had indeed shouted slogan in favor of Afzal Guru and asked for "Bharat ki Barbaadi" (destruction of India). But only an impartial inquiry can establish whether it was Kumar and others or the agents of BJP's student wing who raised such slogans with a view to discrediting the left-leaning students. Two things are worth mentioning in this connection. First, Zee News' owner had openly campaigned for Modi's election in 2014. Secondly, Vishwa Deepak, a journalist working with Zee News, has resigned, suggesting that the channel deliberately misinterpreted a video clip to brand some students as anti-nationals. What has been proved beyond any doubt is that for the first time after the 2014 elections, Prime Minister Modi is showing signs of nervousness and vulnerability. There is a concerted conspiracy, he said on Feb. 21, to destabilize his government. He also tried to play the victim card, saying some people in India could not digest the fact that a "tea vendor" had become prime minister. This is very unusual of a man who takes great pains to project himself as a superhero. But then Modi does have reasons to feel insecure. All the big promises he made at the time of the 2014 poll remain just that — promises! The Pathankot attack has exposed the many chinks in his security armor. Worse still, he has allowed India's social fabric to be frayed. There is communal polarization not only between Hindus and Muslims, but also between different castes in Hindu society. And Kumar and Rohith Vemula, the Hyderabad University research scholar who committed suicide last month, happen to belong to Dalits, members of the lowest rank of Hindu society. Vemula ended his life saying, "My birth is my fatal accident." So this and the rising prices of everything including tea are some of the real issues facing India. Modi should realize that dubbing all his critics anti-national and painting an alarmist scenario will not make these problems vanish.
