Sitaram Yechury
By targeting the Jawaharlal Nehru University, the RSS/BJP-led government at the Centre has announced the mounting of an insurrection against the Indian Constitution.
The RSS and BJP have been opposed to the basic constitutional values of liberty, equity and fraternity which underpin the secular and plural framework of the Indian State.
The RSS has now unleashed the instruments of the Indian State, especially the police and related agencies, to falsely implicate the students on fabricated charges, unsupported by any evidence.
This attempt is not limited to merely attacking a premier University. It’s a signal to bully, threaten, silence and punish those who question this government, and practice politics opposed to the ideology of the Sangh parivar. Thus the youth of this country, particularly from the poor and the vulnerable sections of the society, is the foremost target of the RSS and Modi government.
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The dots are easy to join.
The Delhi police beat up unarmed student protestors outside Jhandewalan (RSS Headquarters) a couple of weeks back, then it hunted down a legitimately elected head of JNU Students’ Union and is going after other students on doctored evidence.
Meanwhile, the HRD ministry has systematically worked to destroy the very ethos of our institutions of higher learning, and ensure that the underprivileged continue to suffer. It led to the suicide of Rohith Vemula at Hyderabad but the ministry has taken no cognizance of the tragedy, so much so that she refused to discuss it in the meeting of Vice Chancellors of all central universities yesterday.
Modi government pretends that it is helpless in stopping its own party goons from attacking Kanhaiya, journalists and activists in court premises barely a km from the seat of power in the national capital.
The Home Minister – as clueless on Pathankot or the sacking of his own Home Secretary – goes by fabricated twitter updates of a parody account.
The wires are being pulled directly by the Prime Minister and his office, and he has shown his tacit approval to the behavior of BJP goons and Delhi Police by choosing to remain silent about it. This is in fact the much vaunted ‘Gujarat Model’, where mobs run amok, police looks helplessly away and the head of government is not to be heard or seen.
As this misuse of state machinery, agencies and mobs to repress the activists, students and citizens with violence continues unabated in the national capital, some of us — members of parliament and representatives of the Left, JD(U), NCP and RJD — are going to meet the honourable President today. This is the battle for the soul of India and the President is the custodian of our Constitution. It is thus our bounden duty to appraise him about the danger the recent events pose to the country and seek his counsel.
Sitaram Yechury is the general secretary of Communist Party of India-Marxist.