Author: Ashok Malik
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: October 4, 2008
Running an energetic and high-visibility media
campaign, the faculty and administration of Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia are
striving to present terror suspects as victims. There is every possibility,
it is being asserted, that the two Jamia students arrested for probable links
with Indian Mujahideen -- and being investigated for their role, if any, in
the September 13 terrorist bombings in Delhi -- are actually innocent.
Such logic, devoid of any supportive evidence, mixes well with street emotionalism.
It panders and offers legitimacy to a cult of denial -- whether in the bylanes
of a Muslim quarter in Delhi or in a village in Azamgarh. It rejects any notion
of local support for acts of terror and prefers to see both the original crime
and the police measures following it as some sort of a conspiracy.
In the long run, this New Left-Islamic alliance
is not serving ordinary Muslims. It is pushing them, as it did in Gujarat
in the years following 2002, into a trap. An entire community, with its good
and its bad, its attributes and its angularities, is being boxed in to suit
the smug postulates of 'Left-secular' academics and drawing-room activists.
There is, of course, a difference between
Jamia Millia, the university and Jamia Nagar, the residential area that neighbours
it. However, by their actions and arguments, the faculty and Academic Council
of the educational institution are doing their utmost to efface that divide.
In the popular perception, there is no substantial difference between the
sloganeering of Jamia Nagar and the rhetoric and op-ed articles from Jamia
Millia. They are both feeding off each other.
It is nobody's argument that every Muslim
in Jamia Nagar or every student in Jamia Millia is a terrorist or even a potential
sympathiser of Indian Mujahideen. They may have their prejudices -- and, indeed,
which human being, irrespective of religion or nationality, doesn't? -- but
that is very different from seeing them as terrorists or facilitators of bombings
or anything but horrified by the murder of ordinary people.
Yet, it is equally true that somewhere in
the confines of Jamia Nagar and Jamia Millia some people who are affiliated
to the terror cause have found sanctuary. The community in the neighbourhood
refuses to believe this. The university, rather than nuance and modulate that
mood, is reinforcing it.
Consider an analogy. The historian David Irving
and Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad both deny the Holocaust and insist
Jews fabricated stories and so-called evidence to unfairly discredit the Nazis
and Adolf Hitler. Both are, of course, talking rubbish. Yet, should we discriminate
between their essential theses only because one is an otherwise well-known
writer and the other a back-alley polemicist? Is the David Irving Centre for
Negationism the new academic school at Jamia?
In its open letter -- published in this newspaper
on October 3 -- the Academic Council of Jamia Millia Islamia proudly and somewhat
hyperbolically states: "We embody the idea of India." Fair enough,
but do all those who disagree with Jamia's Millia's recent conduct, who are
disappointed by the manner in which it has made provocative gestures, represent
an idea hostile to India?
Any defence of Jamia makes three essential
points. First, its past history is that of a nationalist institution, founded
by enlightened Muslims who followed Gandhi and rejected Pakistan. This is
an unimpeachable legacy but it is, broadly speaking, irrelevant to the current
debate.
Second, if a student gets into trouble with
the law, the university authorities cannot abandon him. He probably lives
far away from his family, it is important for the university, its Vice-Chancellor
and the student's professor or hostel warden to look after him, to function,
in the words of Mukul Kesavan -- the Jamia faculty member who wrote in the
Telegraph on October 2 -- "in loco parentis".
The Academic Council's open letter complemented
this belief when it said, "A student of London School of Economics was
found guilty of being a terrorist. Does that turn such a prestigious institution
into a terrorist camp? Then why Jamia?"
These questions are persuasive. However, there
is one crucial inconsistency: Jamia is refusing to look inward. If a college
student gets into a brawl or runs over a pedestrian thanks to drunken driving,
he is guilty of a crime. Both examples would suggest a wayward individual
who needs counselling along with legal action. There is no widespread sentiment
anywhere -- at no university certainly -- that actively promotes brawling
or drunken driving as an ideology and a way of life.
However, terrorism or sympathy for terrorism
flowing from a certain perverted interpretation of faith and a jihad-fixated
mind implies not one person's recklessness but a larger social problem of
indoctrination. It is now clear that there are individuals in Jamia -- and
without doubt they make up only a small number -- who are misusing it to spread
their negative gospel and win adherents.
Is it not incumbent upon the university authorities
to take action to stop this, or to at least investigate this phenomenon? Don't
they owe an explanation of why they are not even addressing the issue to the
rest of the city of Delhi, to the other stakeholders of the "idea of
India"?
Third, Jamia justified its initial decision
to pay for the legal defence of the student-terror suspects on grounds of
principle. It said every accused person was entitled to a fair trial and a
legal counsel. If no lawyer represented an accused, it was obligatory for
the state to hire one.
In the case of the September 13 suspects,
the Jamia Vice-Chancellor made several leaps of judgement. He presumed no
lawyer would defend 'the boys' because of a prejudiced atmosphere. He presumed
the Government would then have to appoint lawyers and pay them. He decided
that he would take a short cut, appoint the lawyers himself and that, since
Jamia was a public-funded institution, he could act in lieu of the Government.
Today that plan has been aborted. A semi-official
committee of Jamia staff and students will pay for the defence. Contributions
are being solicited, and fairly openly, by Jamia students at mosques and namaaz
congregations for the 'Students' Legal Aid Fund'.
Is this not a denominational, religion-specific
appeal? How do the Jamia authorities explain it? Perhaps, like in the case
of the consortium of newspapers and civil society groups that collected a
purse for Brig-Gen RE Dyer after Jallianwalla Bagh, they have simply lost
all sense of proportion.
