The events following the arraignment of the President of the Students’ Union of the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi seemed about academic freedom, but there are also issues of patriotism involved, as well as of youthful rebelliousness.
Behind the entire debate, which has convulsed India, particularly its campuses, is the concept of patriotism. In particular, is it acceptable to be anything other than someone devoted to the most outward signs of the nation? In this context, has the BJP successfully wrapped itself in the Indian tricolour, and thus monopolized the definition of Indian patriotism, and thus of what constitutes an Indian patriot?
It is worth noting that the whole imbroglio was started over a students’ meeting that held that Afzal Guru was wrongfully hanged. From one point of view, that should have been an academic question par excellence, because there was no attempt to save Guru: he had long been hanged. One purpose would have been preventive, to make sure that there were no repetitions of unjustified hangings. However, there was a complication: Guru was hanged for an act of terror allegedly committed because he proposed that the people of a state of India be allowed to exercise the right of self-determination, and to join Pakistan if that was the popular will. The BJP’s student wing, the ABVP (Akil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad) put itself in the position of treating Guru’s demand as unpatriotic.
Even if that demand is treated as unpatriotic, it does not follow that Guru’s hanging is above criticism. That the death sentence was passed correctly can be conceded, but that the jail manual was not followed in its being carried out does not have to be conceded. However, the matter was a little more complex, because Guru was supposed to have stood for the rights of a place which India claims is an atoot ang: Kashmir. Because Kashmir, despite Indian denials, is still a disputed territory and a bilateral dispute, Pakistan finds itself in the position of being involved in the JNU troubles.
It is worth noting that Pakistan does not provide this particular outlet to youthful energies, this training in the democratic process. Student unions have been banned since 1984, and while the PPP has undertaken to restore them in Sindh, thus forcing a restoration in other provinces, it has not done so. That might reflect how low student unions are on the priorities of the Sindh government, or else the fear that elections might once again lead to victories for the Islami Jamiat Tulaba (IJT), the Jamaat Islami’s student wing. It should be noted that the IJT was more successful than the Jamaat at elections. It should also be noted that during the ban, IJT men successively became Amirs of the Jamaat itself: Qazi Hussain Ahmad, Munawar Hassan and incumbent Sirajul Haq all were in the IJT before joining the Jamaat.
However, the student union ban in Pakistan did not lessen the control of the IJT over the universities where it had been in power. At the same time, the ban coincided with an increase of educational institutions, mainly schools, but including some colleges, in the private sector. One result has been that while the IJT may have maintained a stranglehold in institutions where it had been in office, it could not penetrate those new institutions which came up after the ban. Apart from the IJT, another important organization was the All-Pakistan Muhajir Students Organisation, the APMSO, which morphed into the MQM when its founders grew beyond the limits of student politics. It should be noted that that the IJT was not made to leave university campuses, but its control was diluted by reforming vice-chancellors. In Karachi especially, the Jamaat’s alliance with the PTI would mean that the IJT would have to ally itself with the Insaf Students Federation.
The Left has exerted the kind of dominance in JNU as the IJT has done in some Pakistani universities. Actually, they have respectively provided a means by which students make the transition from the home to the university. It should be remembered that the student often experiences his first contact with the modern at university or college. Even if not a hostelite, it is also his or her first departure from the home. This is the time at which the young person needs to rebel. This might be by means of excessively loud music, long hair or espousing a dangerous political cause.
Valentine’s Day illustrated another part of the problem. Both the IJT and the ABVP were against it, and though religiously poles apart, both also act as a sort of morals police on campuses, thus addressing an important element of both growing up and the culture clash that are both aspects of the university experience. Another aspect of the ABVP is that it allows the Indian student to re-erect the caste barriers that the university is trying to tear down. Caste divisions are very basic to the Hindu lifestyle, and it is no coincidence that the JNU controversy has been sandwiched by the killing of Dalits and Jats rioting in nearby Haryana. While upper-caste Hindus may have organized successfully in the BJP, even with a Prime Minister from an officially designated backward caste, the BJP has run into trouble with the lower castes.
The JNU’s left-ism should be seen as a symbol of the youthful rebellion in which the purpose is to shock one’s elders. This was shown in the 20th century by the British banker’s and the US stockbroker’s sons who became communists, and now by all the European migrants’ children going off to join Daesh in Syria. It should also be noted that the Left’s message of personal freedom accords with the desire for personal space of this stage in life, than the essentially conservative message of the IJT or ABVP. This is a stage in life when there is maximum opposition to the USA, which is expressed both by the IJT and the Left. Does the USA represent, at a subliminal level, some sort of father figure? That is a question best left to psychologists, but it should be remembered that at least some of the same anti-US protesters are also seeking admission in US universities.
It should not be forgotten that the Indian Diaspora in the USA includes a high level of BJP supporters, who also experience the left-ism of US universities. Both the prosecution and the protests show that not all was well even before, and this was merely an excuse. At stake is Academia’s right of definition. Academia is not so much students, as professors. The BJP, even though not part of Academia, is trying to impose its own definition of patriotism, not by winning a debate in the war of ideas, but by force. The protesters are not so much fighting for freedom of expression, as for the right of academics to define concepts like patriotism. In India, that does not mean just the Kashmir issue, but the numerous other insurgencies that plague its body politic. It is probably merely adding fuel to fire that most of those insurgencies are leftist in ideology, which makes it so important to take over JNU.

n The writer is a veteran journalist and founding member as well as executive editor of The Nation.