India's Left politics has miserably failed
In the last one month, two deeply disappointing incidents have taken place, which have cast a huge question mark on the credibility of India's student politics per se.
Last month, Rohith Vemula, a Dailt scholar (whose Dalit credentials are not above doubt) committed suicide alleging discrimination against him by college authorities. Yes, caste discrimination is a sad reality even in the age of Start-up India.
While a reasonably large section of Dalits and backward castes have benefitted from the government's reservation policy and joined the mainstream, certain sections which have been repulsive and spiteful, have discovered and continue to discover newer avenues of confrontation with the system. In Rohith's case, his protest against the hanging of Afzal Guru, aggravated this confrontation.
While every student or student group has a right to have its opinion, in an already surcharged atmosphere, such an act of provocation is expected to evoke retaliatory behaviour, which it did. One doesn't deny that in the succeeding events, Rohith and his friends may have been treated unfairly. But did that still justify a cowardly act like suicide?
Rohith's suicide was an insult to the cause of Dalits. It was an insult to the sacrifices and struggle of BR Ambedkar. Sadly, politicians like the depraved Kejriwal and the intellectually bankrupt Rahul Gandhi did everything they could to turn this hasty, cowardly act of Rohith Vemula into an all out war against the government. Rahul Gandhi even equated Vemula with Mahatma Gandhi making us wonder once again if he knows about the Mahatma at all.
What Rohith did was an individual act of haste and cowardice, setting a wrong example for a whole new generation of Dalits. But sadly it is in the obnoxious opportunism with which most political parties reacted, that India's student politics clearly has alarm bells ringing all over it. These parties, with the support of a large section of the media, have made a martyr out of a quitter. And for a generation, already struggling to find the right role models, they unabashedly glorified an act that deserved condemnation.
Last Tuesday, something absolutely unprecedented and shameful took place at the JNU campus in Delhi.
A section of the students organised a meet to glorify Afzal Guru. This meet echoed with incendiary slogans like - "Kashmir ki azadi tak jung chalegi, Bharat ki barbadi tak jung chalegi."
Now only a soft and weak state can look the other way and not find this behaviour anti-national. Sadly, Kejriwal and Rahul Gandhi have not uttered a single word on the incident so far. And this in turn, raises serious questions on how India's opposition parties are conveniently and dangerously exploiting student politics to further their short term interests, even at the cost of endangering our national interests.
Unlike the world's other most robust democracy, the USA, India has a long history of caste and religious conflict. They have existed for several hundred years now. And that is the reason why the Indian establishment gets compelled to deal with certain delicate situations with greater sensitivity, often allowing intellectual rogues a long rope. The convenient silence of India's otherwise hyper-active opposition parties on the JNU fiasco, is a despicable and irresponsible act.
What happened at the JNU campus on 9 February is there on public domain. There are explicit videos that would put any well meaning Indian to shame. And yet barring the ruling party, no other political party has felt the need to take a hard stand against the terror-sympathiser students.
It is high time India's opposition parties stop exploiting student politics for their gain. Long ago, this exploitation had led to the birth of the Naxalite movement. What we saw in JNU is an extension of the Naxal mindset. It is sad that nationalist voices today are drubbed as "sanghis" and "bhakts".
Clearly there are certain political interests that want to stoke a civil war in the country, using student politics as a shield. The time has come to call the bluff of these political parties and the student politics they patronize.
The arrest of JNU Students' Union president seems a rather symbolic act. The real culprits who unabashedly rabble-roused against the nation are visible on camera. And unless they are all booked, this menace will spring up in more campuses across the country, resulting in the second edition of the farcical Naxal movement.
While the government can't afford to not take a hard stand on this, it is time to make each political party spell out its stand on the JNU anarchy.