Ultra-nationalist India may have scarred Kanhaiya for good
On March 2, it was extremely difficult for the Delhi Police to sneak Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar inside the court premises, with the fear of another mob attack on him looming large. Though he made it safely inside, he was hardly recognisable.
Kanhaiya was dressed in battle fatigues, complete with a bullet-proof jacket and a helmet (not because he was the part of anti-riot cell, but to allow a smart camouflage for him, so that he can walk inside the premises of the court without getting recognised).
The Delhi High Court granted six-month interim bail to Kanhaiya with the condition that he gave an undertaking that he would not “actively or passively” participate in any incident which is against the nation's interest. The bench of Justice Pratibha Rani, in its order, held that “the thoughts reflected in the slogans raised by some of the students of the JNU who organised and participated in that programme cannot be claimed to be protected as fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression” and termed such incidents as "infection" which needs to controlled before it turns into an epidemic.
Meanwhile at the JNU, students are happy that Kanhaiya has finally been granted bail but they are still concerned about his safety. "Imagine, to go inside the court, Delhi Police had to dress him up like a member of the anti-riot cell. How can he go outside the university and walk like a normal person? We fear that he might be lynched on the grounds of raising anti-India slogans, which he clearly didn't do on February 9," Sambhavi Sharma, a MA student of the JNU said.
Last year, on September 28, a Hindu mob attacked a Muslim family in Dadri, killing 52-year-old Mohammad Akhlaq and seriously injuring his son, 22-year-old Daanish on the suspicion that the family stored beef in their house. Dadri is about 50km from the nation's capital Delhi. This incident caused a political uproar in the country with many academicians and writers returning their awards to express their outrage against the government's incapability of stopping such killings. The JNU students fear that the same could happen to Kanhaiya and people won't do anything about it.
"Kanhaiya will suffer post-traumatic stress disorder for a long time now. Though it doesn't reflect in his eyes, but he knows he won't be able to walk freely anymore. His freedom has been snatched away owing to the spreading of hoax videos of him raising anti-India slogans," a JNU student said.
Before the Delhi high court granted bail to Kanhaiya, it also invoked the role of soldiers. “While dealing with the bail application of the petitioner, it has to be kept in mind by all concerned that they are enjoying this freedom only because our borders are guarded by our armed and paramilitary forces,” said the court.
“It is suffice to note that such persons enjoy the freedom to raise such slogans in the comfort of a university campus but without realising that they are in this safe environment because our forces are there at the battlefield situated at the highest altitude of the world (sic), where even the oxygen is so scarce that those who are shouting anti-national slogans (and) holding posters of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat close to their chest, honouring their martyrdom, may not be even able to withstand those conditions for an hour even.”