Campus under siege

After Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in the Capital and Hyderabad’s HCU, Delhi University’s Ramjas College has become the new battleground between stone-pelting nationalists and chest-thumping liberals.

On February 22, Ramjas College was gearing up for ‘Cultures of Protest’, an event at which JNU student Umar Khalid was invited to share his research on the thwarting of people’s freedoms in Chhattisgarh. The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student body affiliated to the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), opposed Khalid’s presence and the university authorities called off the event at the last moment.

Khalid was among the three JNU students charged with sedition last year after clashes broke out on campus over an event that allegedly glorified Afzal Guru, the Kashmiri separatist convicted and hanged in the Parliament attack case.

“We would never let anti-nationals like Umar Khalid within the campus,” ABVP member Satender Awana tells BLink, over the phone, a week later. “Only an anti-national would organise a cultural evening on the death anniversary of Afzal Guru and shout slogans on Kashmir’s and Bastar’s Azaadi,” fumes Awana, who was recently seen intimidating a law school dean in a widely circulated video.

There was widespread horror on social media after various student groups clashed following the cancellation of the talk at Ramjas. Verbal abuses, violent physical assault and stone pelting led to severe injuries not just among students but also several teaching staff

Alongside the outrage against the violence, there is anger against a failing law-and-order machinery. “The Delhi police gives the ABVP students a lot of impunity to act this way. They are mute spectators. That causes lawlessness,” says assistant professor Anamitra Roychowdhury, who teaches economics at JNU.

Social media reaction ranged from outright condemnation to dark humour, Twitter threats and online abuse.

A ‘virtual’ war

Gurmehar Kaur, the 20-year-old daughter of an army officer who had died during the Kargil war, took on the ABVP by posing on Facebook and Twitter with a placard that read “I am a student from Delhi University. I am not afraid of ABVP. I am not alone. Every student of India is with me. #StudentsagainstABVP”.

This, in turn, led to a tweet-war in which politicians, film personalities, and sportspersons waded in. On one end were minister of state for home affairs Kiren Rijiju, actor Randeep Hooda, cricketer Virender Sehwag, consultant Suhel Seth, and the wrestling champions Phogat sisters decrying the perceived anti-nationalism; and on the other end were politicians Shashi Tharoor and Maneka Gandhi, lyricist Javed Akhtar, journalist Barkha Dutt and scores of other intellectuals, feminists and activists applauding Kaur’s fearless message of peace and non-violence.

Kaur faced a barrage of online abuse and threats of violent assault and rape.

Meanwhile, the DU song “Arre ABVP kaahe so creepy?” has gone viral.

Search for answers

Ramjas is one of the few remaining Left strongholds among DU colleges. The ABVP clearly now wants to challenge that.

Not too far away at JNU, seated on the rocks that populate the campus, four ABVP supporters tell me that the student body has undergone one definitive change since the 2014 elections: it is now determined to bring nationalism centre stage.

“Narendra Modi came to power despite a lot of people who believed they could stop his rise,” says Akhilesh Pathak, a final-year MPhil student at the School of Social Sciences. “We are sick of living in fear and being made to feel ashamed of our Hindu identities. Today we no longer have to.”

Liberal values appear inverted through the eyes of the ABVP. In December 2015, when Baba Ramdev was invited to speak at JNU on Karma Yoga, a section of students protested and the event was cancelled.

Another student alleged that when he wore a Modi t-shirt to college, AISA members threatened to foist a false case of sexual assault on him.

“What we’re doing with Umar Khalid is no different. Why should freedom of expression only belong to a select few? When ours has been banned on several occasions?” asks Saurav Verma, former joint secretary of the ABVP students’ union at JNU.

“We condemn violence. Our RSS shakhas (training centres) teach us never to attack. But to defend ourselves, anything is permissible. Even murder,” Pathak dead-pans.

The ABVP suspended two members on Wednesday after they were found indulging in abuse at Khalsa College.

“This is a message to our party members that violence won’t be tolerated,” says Awana on phone. “But anti-nationalism won’t be tolerated,” he ends, as a caveat.

Does that include the “anti-nationals” of twitterati? That, according to the ABVP, is a moot question.

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