THREE months before Parliamentary elections, Delhi Police has filed a chargesheet in a three year-old “sedition” case against JNU students. The reason is transparently obvious. The JNU student activists charged with sedition, and student and youth movements all over India, have emerged as one of the most vibrant and vigorous voices of Opposition to the Modi Raj that is devastating India’s economy and social fabric. The Delhi Police’s chargesheet in what is a patently bogus “sedition” case is a desperate attempt to discredit, intimidate, and silence these young voices which are pointing out to India that Modi the Emperor has no clothes.
It must be pointed out that the Delhi High Court in July 2018 set aside the JNU Administration’s move to penalise former JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar and other students for the very same “seditious” activities for which they have now been chargesheeted, saying the order suffered “from the vice of illegality, irrationality and procedural impropriety.” A Magisterial Enquiry ordered by the Delhi Government into the 9 February 2016 incident had found that videos of the incident aired on news channels had been doctored, “with possible intention to misguide the public.”
The fact is that the Modi Government is in the dock for its failed promises to generate 2 crore jobs a year, double farmers’ incomes, ensure women’s safety and fight corruption. Instead his own office and Government have emerged as the seat of the worst cronyism and corruption ever witnessed in India. His regime has imposed the deadly and draconian demonetisation and GST, devastated the Indian economy, destroyed one crore jobs in the last year, attacked India’s Universities and promoted non-existent teaching shops like Jio University, pushed obscurantist nonsense in the name of Science, and betrayed and assaulted farmers fighting for their rights. The “sedition” law and other draconian laws like NSA and UAPA are the regime’s only weapons now - deployed against students in Punjab and JNU and activists defending the secular Constitution in Assam, against human rights activists branded as ‘Urban Naxals’, and against the victims of Sanghi lynch mobs in Uttar Pradesh. From JNU and Banaras Hindu University, women students demanding justice against sexual harassment have been victimised, abused and punished.
The Modi regime was taught a lesson by the students three years ago, but is still desperate enough to try the same tired old tactic of branding critics and defenders of democracy “seditious”. Three years ago, the “sedition” charges backfired spectacularly, making the voices of JNU student activists resound beyond the JNU campus all over the country, and inspiring people with hope and courage. JNU teachers and students have been fighting a courageous battle against a regime intent on destroying higher education to pave the way for obscurantist bigotry as well as cronyism in the shape of Ambani’s ‘Jio’ University.
It is the Kashmiri students who are named in the chargesheet along with Kanhaiya, Umar and Anirban, who are likely to pay the highest costs of the bogus ‘sedition’ chargesheet. For these students, the ‘sedition’ charges will inevitably compound the profiling, discrimination, and potential violence that they and other Kashmiri students and youth already face.
The propagandist channels that ran doctored videos and fake news to malign the JNU students as ‘seditious’ and ‘anti-national,’ are once again branding JNU students as ‘Tukde Tukde Gang’ (gang out to break India to pieces) based on slogans the students are alleged to have raised. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held in Kedar Nath Singh v State of Bihar and Balwant Singh v State of Punjab that mere slogans that do not incite violence cannot amount to “sedition.” The sedition law nevertheless continues to be deployed as a political tool to discredit dissenting voices.
It is undeniable that the real “Tukde Tukde Gang” in India today is the Modi regime that is out to break India to pieces - by breaking the back of India’s economy, by breaking India into Hindu vs Muslim, by breaking India’s Constitution with the Citizenship Amendment Bill and the law for 10% quota for ‘general category poor’, by subverting institutions from RBI to CBI to Courts to break Indian democracy, and by seeking to break the freedom of the press and freedom of speech and expression. But this Tukde Tukde Gang cannot break the will and spirit of India’s people. In the coming Parliamentary elections, India will certainly put paid to this regime which is out to destroy our country and democracy.
