JNU : Negating Indian nationalism

Several unresolved issues of India's nationhood have coalesced in the recent incident of the beating up of two senior army officers in the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus, and the episode will no doubt have a decisive influence on all future discourse on nationalism. For one, it has exposed the naked face of Nehruvian secularism as a phony appeasement of minorities through unprovoked abuse of the Hindu community. For another, it has thrown into sharp relief the otherwise ignored question of whether India can be a nation-state without a sense of nationhood based on its ancient living ethos.

In a fundamental sense, the era of secularism as national negationism is over.  What is interesting about this development is its timing. Barely a decade ago, the Bharatiya Janata Party consciously fashioned itself as the political instrument for the recovery of Hindu self-esteem and the reassertion of India's ancient soul as the nation's foundational ethos. But despite notching up impressive electoral gains, the party won the enduring epithet "communal" from the vociferous anti-Hindu intellectual elite, battened on a diet of state-sponsored patronage from Jawaharlal Nehru and his political heirs.

Today, as ruling party, the BJP has put the hindutva agenda on hold. But l' affaire JNU, wherein the institution of the Army was denigrated through the assault on the two officers who were dubbed 'Indian agents' and 'Advani's agents,' has again brought these issues into the public arena. The JNU episode highlights the poisonous legacy of secular negationism of our nationhood; it is now up to each one of us to determine the nature and substance of the national ethos in our hearts.

Given its pronounced Leftist bias, opposition to the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, and hysteria over the loss of the commanding heights in education (particularly history writing), it is no surprise that the university refuses to view the matter as an act of treason. A highly distasteful official circular belittles the magnitude of the occurrence by equating it with other reprehensible law and order problems on the campus. To add insult to injury, it links the murderous attack on the hapless officers and their civilian brother with the loss of a student counselor's purse!

It would be dangerous to view the shameful affair at JNU as an isolated event. Reports in several newspapers suggest that the officers were not intruders at the function, but had entered the premises with due permission from the security guard after duly entering their names in the official register. The trouble at the open air theatre broke out when one of the Major's objected to a poem by a Pakistani artist that allegedly equated India with the Islamic Republic, and predicted that it would fall prey to a similar hell.

While the intrinsic merits of the poem do not really concern us, several aspects of this sordid tale deserve attention. First and foremost, a guest artist from a hostile nation should not have abused Indian hospitality by singing such a poem. After all, she was in the country at the invitation of the Foreign Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh. Secondly, once the poem provoked a section of the audience, the organizers should have taken immediate steps to contain the situation by halting its recital. The fact that they did not feel the need to do so, and allowed two Army officers and their civilian brother to be dragged to the podium and beaten to pulp, is a telling comment on the university's enlightened sense of nationalism.

That the entire episode took place in the presence of responsible officials of the university and several teachers, none of whom felt the necessity to intervene on behalf of the unfortunate victims, is unforgivable. These officials, even more than the offending students, must be identified and held accountable for this heinous crime. Another scandalous aspect of the affair is the fact that the mushaira reportedly continued for at least two hours after the injured trio was removed from the scene. This fact alone suggests a grisly collusion between the hyper-active ISI and anti-national elements on the JNU campus, and the varsity authorities cannot evade their responsibility in the matter.

There is, for instance, a persistent mystery regarding the function itself. The posters announcing the soirée contained the names of two innocuous students who hardly had the connections to reach out to the visiting artists, or the resources to organize such an elaborate event. The Vice Chancellor hosted dinner for the artists, but did not attend the recital though designated as chief guest, which is certainly unusual, especially as he had no other known pressing engagement that evening.

However, when hell broke loose after it became known that the Army officers were no small fry but held the exalted rank of Major, the university authorities were quick to announce that the function was hosted by JNUSU. As far as can be ascertained, however, JNUSU also lacks the funds for such a gala party, and certainly, no official meetings were held to plan and organize the event. From the national perspective, therefore, JNU authorities, even more than the rowdy students, have much explaining to do regarding the arrival of the Pakistani artists on the campus, the grim assault on the Army men who refused to open fire on civilians even in the face of a near-fatal encounter, the continuation of the mushaira after the assault, and the subsequent shameless attempts to blame the Army for the sordid episode.

Finally, once the matter became public and the vexatious role of the Pakistani guest was brought to light, both the Pakistani Ambassador and the leader of the delegation owed this country an apology. That they failed to deliver even a diplomatically worded regret must be recorded as a singular act of gracelessness.

Coming back to the poem itself, even non-chauvinistic Indians would find the equation of an upbeat, democratic, civilized and economically resurgent India with a non-democratic, economically bust, drug-money controlled and jihad-inspired Pakistan a bit hard to swallow. Certainly the sentiments of an officer who had braved bullets at Kargil only last summer deserved some respect. But perhaps this was difficult for the votaries of secularism as a non-Hindu, indeed anti-Hindu, state of being.

To my mind, this can be the only explanation for Indians in blood and colour turning with irrational fury upon their own nation's heroes (for that is the only way we can possibly perceive the men of Kargil), and beating them within an inch of their lives. Allegations of a strong ISI presence on the campus cannot be easily dismissed as the ravings of Cassandras in view of press reports indicating that the officers were derided as 'Indian agents' as they were being surrounded and roughed up.

If this is true, it exposes an ugly hatred of the present government and the affirmation of the Hindu ethos associated with it, and India today cannot indulge any sections of its citizenry to be so pathologically anti-Hindu. But even more dangerously, it implies a horrendous legitimation of Pakistan' s jihad against India; and the only reason for such endorsement is the fact that India is a Hindu-majority country. In this context, an especially disturbing aspect of the controversy is the community representation of those who most aggressively defended the indefensible. The Centre cannot take a light view of the episode as it impinges both on Army honour and the integrity of the nation itself.
 

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