Kanhaiya Kumar made his first public speech in Mumbai. Almost a full hour. Gripping and Sensitive

Amidst a Galaxy of Other Student Leaders and Speakers: Justice Kolse Patil, Teesta Setalvad, Anand Patwardhan, .Irfan Engineer
Kanhaiya Kumar, Richa Singh, Shehla Rashid, Ajayan Adat, Zuhail K P

Threats and Rumours from the Hindutva brigade attempted a disruption of the programme as no colleges wanted to "allow" Kanhaiya their space for his speech. Finally after last minute dramas, the Adarsh Vidyalaya at Tilaknagar east, Chembur were hosts for this historic occasion

While talking about the various issues facing the nation, he also said, "I have great respect for our PM….but….
Video Recording By Satyen K. Bordoloi

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Text of the Pamphlet
Friends,
Institutional murder of Rohith Vemula and cold-blooded killings of Dr. Narendra Dabholkar,  Comrade Govind Pansare, Professor M.M.Kalburgi,  Mohsin Sheikh of Pune, Mohammad Akhlaq of Dadri, Mohammad Majloom of Jharkhand along with a twelve year old boy Inayatullah Khan – all these crimes are perpetrated by forces who  keep calling themselves as ‘nationalists’!  Murderers masquerading as ‘nationalists’ seem to believe their time has come. But Students and youth of India shall not let them pass!
 
We are the custodians of India’s true nationalism which is derived from the people’s struggle for independence from imperialist Britain and the great rebellions against caste system. The national movement was the quest to create India as a modern republic of equal citizens carrying the legacy of  all those struggles for justice and equality spanning many centuries of our past but also freeing ourselves from cultures of cruelty which had also been very much part of India’s history.  
 
It is a fact that economic development of our nation has been left to the mercy of ‘market forces’. But the very same ‘market forces’ have impoverished our people, denied affordable education and employment opportunities to millions of young Indians but also reinforced the shameful hierarchies and systems of discrimination received from pre-modern times. Progressive student-youth movements are offering stiff resistance to policy of commoditization and jobless growth. But, in the endeavor to build an egalitarian India free from pre-modern regimes of inequality and discrimination, we find the combination of ‘market forces’ and ‘Hindurashtra’ politics as the immediate obstacle.
Obviously, Hindurashtra is an ideology of disenfranchising religious minorities. On a daily basis, some or the other leader of Sangh Parivar , BJP – Shivsena ministers and Saamna paper abuse and threaten citizens of India belonging to minority communities under some or other flimsy pretext. The latest one is about ‘Bharat Mata’. How can a Chief Minister threaten anyone to worship the nation as a goddess or else leave India? Bharat Mata Ki Jai is just one of the many slogans that came up during our freedom struggle. For that matter 'Nara-e-Takbeer Allahu Akbar' was also a slogan which inspired anti-British uprising in India like the Khilafat movement and the historic Malabar rebellion. Bhagat Singh and his comrades gave to India the slogan ‘Inquilab Zinabad’. Will Fadnavis be ready to expel from India all those who refuse to shout ‘Inquilab Zindabad’!
Cultivating prejudices against minorities, trapping ordinary citizens in perennial suspicion and hatred along religious lines – all these are part of SanghParivar political project which is to ensure that the rule of capital and corruption continue unchallenged.
Hindutwa is inimical to reason and scientific temper; it stands for subjugating the downtrodden; it is a vision of perpetuating caste system and institutionalizing discrimination. This ideology seeks to trap women in male-dominant traditions and make them objects of everyday violence and exploitation in multiple forms.
Islamic fundamentalism and communal forces operating amongst other religious minorities are also serious obstacles in the path of building a modern secular India. The work of Hindutwa forces help minority communalists to unleash their divisive propaganda. The reverse is equally true: all the rhetoric and politics of Islamic fundamentalism helps Hindutwa forces to mobilize more support. Both the forms of communalism – majority as well as minority – must be rejected emphatically.
But we must not lose sight of the fact that Hindutwa forces have the backing of big business and also government patronage. That is why they feel emboldened to unleash violence at will, crush the voices of reason, destroy premier educational institutions, disallow open-minded debate in universities, criminalize dissent and physically assault courageous student leaders like Richa Singh and Kanhaiya who dare to speak out against the ruling establishment.
But the forces of darkness are not going to be left unchallenged. The wave of protests created by writers and intellectuals has not yet subsided. The institutional murder of Rohith Vemula galvanized the student community. Every institution that the RSS chose to attack – FTII, AU, HCU, JNU, Jadavpur University, Fergusson College – became sites of heroic resistance.

It is a matter of great pride that students and youth are coming out in a big way to challenge the regimes of discrimination not only in campuses but in the society at large.  Sangh Parivar and its government are using all tricks and terror-tactics against the resistance movement. But they are not going to succeed. They cannot suppress the voices of reason, they cannot kill the fight against discrimination, they cannot take away from us the dream of building a nation of equal citizens.
The gathering on 23rd April is going to be an important milestone in this struggle to defend the dream of a true Republic against a lunatic force that has big capital and state power at its disposal.  We solicit your whole-hearted support in making it a huge success. 
 
Organisers:
SFI   AISF   AISA   PSF  Chhatrabharati  AIRSO   RYA   AIYF   DYFI

 Photo Credit: Not only was the second floor hall of the Adarsh Vidyalay, where Kanhaiya Kumar spoke, packed to capacity, but special arrangements were made to accommodate supporters on the ground floor where a screen was arranged at the last moment. Photograph: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com

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Indian political culture sits atop a fine edged blade. Pushing down on it is the Extreme Right, whose political wing – the BJP – is currently in power. Intolerance is the order of the day. India’s celebrated Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen recently said, “India is being turned intolerant. We have been too tolerant with the intolerance. This has to end.”

In the marrow of the Extreme Right is a demand for discipline enforced by violence. Anyone who strays from the authority of its world-view – Hindutva – is either anti-national or a terrorist. Political murders of well-regarded intellectuals and activists, such as Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, and MM Kalburgi, put the nation on alert.

The death of a young student – Rohit Vemula – of the University of Hyderabad sent all kinds of people onto the streets. Rohit had been hit hard by social discrimination, which manifests itself as a political assault on socially oppressed communities. “From shadows to the stars,” wrote this young man who was fascinated by astronomy. It was an indictment of the social disorder.

“Mother India lost a son,” said Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “I felt the pain.” He had waited five days to react, and reacted only after mass demonstrations of great feeling across the country. Rohit Vemula’s family rejected the Prime Minister’s remorse. They want to know why their son died. The answers lie firmly in the tentacles of the Extreme Right. It is where blame will eventually rest.

When Richa Singh, the new student leader at Allahabad University, invited senior journalist Siddharth Varadarajan to campus to talk about free speech, the Extreme Rights’s students’ group (the ABVP) blocked him. They called Varadarajan, who had been the editor of The Hindu, a “Naxalite” (Maoist) and “anti-national.” This is the chosen vocabulary. Singh later said, “There is a surge in intolerance in this country. The ABVP leaders are not willing to listen to anyone who contradicts their ideology.”

For generations, the Extreme Right in India has sought to erase the Left. But the Left in India is not near as strong as it should be to pose a threat to the Right. So what is it about the Left that the Extreme Right fears? It fears that the Left has an alternative narrative of India’s history and of its possible future – it is one that is rooted not in social exclusion and economic inequality, but in the very opposite of that. Whereas the Congress Party is hated by the BJP for its history and for its hold on institutions of power, the BJP does not believe that the Congress has an alternative powerful enough to challenge its own vision. Talking to Extreme Right leaders about the Left is always an experience in paranoia and hatred – venom holds the words together in their sentences.

For generations, the Extreme Right in India has sought to erase the Left. It fears that the Left has an alternative narrative of India’s history and of its possible future – it is one that is rooted not in social exclusion and economic inequality, but in the very opposite of that

One of the great citadels of the Left in New Delhi, the nation’s capital, is Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) – founded in 1969. From then till now one or another part of the Left has won student elections, and the struggles of the broad Left have allowed the campus to be democratic and decent. In the first half of the 1970s, the Students Federation of India (SFI), the student front of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPIM, fought alongside the workers on the campus to improve their wages and rights. It fought to ensure a powerful students’ union and to create structures where the students did not toil at the mercy of their professors. It fought for decent living conditions for the students. This struggle set the template for the JNU that has existed since then. As SFI leader Prakash Karat wrote at that time, the students “have used every opportunity to challenge the government’s educational policies, and to defend democratic rights.”

Over the years, the same issues have re-emerged – treatment of staff and rights of students. The Left – now much more fractious – has continued to dominate the elections, keeping out the forces of the Extreme Right. Punctually, the Extreme Right – and the national media, which is based in Delhi – attack the students for being pampered and for being political. It has been said – over the decades – that the tax-payer should not have to underwrite the political lives of the students. They are there to study. This argument intensified after India “liberalised” its economy in 1991. Since then, private universities have been formed in and around Delhi, putting pressure on this flagship to reform its curriculum and change its standards. But the JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU) is strong and unyielding – resisting any attempt by the management to change the character of the culture.

Last week, a group of students held a forum on Afzal Guru, who had been executed by the Indian state in 2013. At the forum, some people yelled anti-Indian slogans. It is not clear who raised these slogans. This provided the Extreme Right with an opening. Strangeness was in the air. This government seems to rely on protocols of evidence that mean nothing. A fake twitter account of Hafeez Saeed, a terrorist leader based in Pakistan, was cited by home minister Rajnath Singh as evidence of collusion from across the border.

Plain-clothes security forces entered the campus and arrested the JNUSU president, Kanhaiya Kumar – who is a leader of the Communist Party of India’s student wing, All India Students Federation (AISF). They took him under the colonial era Sedition Law (Section 124-A). During a parliamentary debate in 1951, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru – after whom the university is named – said, “Take Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code. Now as far as I am concerned that particular Section is highly objectionable and obnoxious and it should have no place in any body of laws that we might pass. The sooner we get rid of it the better.” It remained. Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested on that basis and held for three days [On February 17, a Delhi court has ordered 14-day judicial custody for Kumar].

Students knew intuitively that this was not about the forum,  it was an attack on their democratic culture. Large sections of the press merely repeated what the government said, drawing a stark connection between the tragic death of an Indian soldier – Lance Naik Hanamanthappa Koppad – on February 11 and the forum on Afzal Guru, who had been convicted on terrorism charges. It was enough to put these side by side to pillory the students. No one challenged the government, and previous governments, for failure to demilitarise the Siachen Glacier, where Lance Naik Koppad was serving. Since 2003, over two thousand Indian and Pakistani soldiers have died from frostbite and avalanches. It is anti-national and indeed anti-human to have soldiers at that altitude.

A close ally of a leading BJP politician, Jawahar Yadav said, “For the girls who are protesting in JNU, I have only one thing to say that prostitutes who sell their body are better than them because they at least don’t sell the country.” 

The JNU Teachers’ Association released a statement asking the administration “to maintain normalcy on our campus by immediately withdrawing the police and releasing all those detained.” It was not to be. A massive rally on campus brought leaders of the various Left parties and the Congress Party to campus. Students came to show solidarity for their president. Nearby, a small wake of Extreme Right students chanted slogans of disunity and anger. Defiance, by the rest of the students, was the mood against those chants These students would then form a human chain as a wall around their campus. Amartya Sen’s slogan – This has to end – seemed to inform their commitment.

Vandals of the Right targeted the office of the CPI-M, painting the words “Pakistan” across the signboard. Threatening phone calls came to the CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury. A cartoon appeared in the world of social media that linked the communists to the terrorists, with a tag line that said “Jihadi Naxal University” (Naxal is a reference to the Maoists). The picture showed stereotypical images of “jihadis” and an image of a boy and a girl kissing, with a liquor bottle flying out the car – it condensed all the frustrations of the Extreme Right: against Islam, against Communism, against social freedoms enjoyed by young people.

The images of kissing are telling. Events such as this bring out the worst in the Extreme Right. Its toxic constipation ends. A close ally of a leading BJP politician, Jawahar Yadav said, “For the girls who are protesting in JNU, I have only one thing to say that prostitutes who sell their body are better than them because they at least don’t sell the country.” The Extreme Right likes to call journalists “presstitutes”. One person, on Twitter, sends out a tweet, “All anti-national pigs should be slapped with seduction charge by our PM.” It was a Freudian slip, seduction for sedition. But this is appropriate for the Right. Politics for them is suffused with the language of sex and with the fear of sexual freedom.

On Monday, Kanhaiya was to appear in court for the first time. A WhatsApp message went out amongst a network of lawyers. “Peacefully, we will teach these anti-nationals a lesson as per the law. We will show what it takes to be a patriot.” All the window dressing was there – peacefully, as per the law. But the venom tied these pieties together – teach these anti-nationals a lesson, show what it takes to be a patriot. They arrived for violence. As students and teachers went into the courts, these men – some in lawyers’ garb – beat them and went after the journalists. Some were beaten very badly. One of those who did the beating is a BJP Member of the Legislative Assembly – O. P. Sharma.

“There is no cause for despondency,” wrote Ayesha Kidwai, a professor of Linguistics at JNU. “I know that the orchestrated media campaign against JNU is very distressing. Let me assure you that the world knows this already, and knows why all this is happening.”
 

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Com. Shehla, JNUSU Vice President, addresses students and teachers gathered in protest against BJP Govt.s unprecedented assault on Campus Democracy.

"The assault on JNU is a well drafted script by the RSS-BJP which uses the charade of Anti-National to silence the most vocal intellectual opposition against BJP govts anti-India policies"

The post JNU Crackdown: Com. Shehla Against BJP Govt. assault on JNU and Democracy appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Courtesy: http://newsclick.in/india/attack-jnusu-and-left-built-lies

In an unprecedented move, today morning (February 12, 2016) Kanhaiya Kumar, the president of the JNU students' union and an activist of AISF, was arrested by police in plain clothes, charged with sedition and conspiracy, and sent to custody for three days. The case was filed over holding of an event against hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. The move came as a shock for many as the JNU students union had come out with a statement criticizing the slogans raised in the event. It had explicitly mentioned that their protest was against the cancelling of the event by administration under the pressure created by the ABVP. The arrest has drawn criticism from various progressive groups and individuals. The left organisations and parties have criticised the slogans raised by a group of students but have also condemned the arrest in strong words. They pointed out that the entire propaganda by the right wing is to malign the left forces in the country and is built on lies. While this report was being written, more than thousand students were marching inside the JNU seeking immediate release of the JNUSU President. A source in the administration says that the newly appointed VC, and the Registrar have given a written authorisation to the Delhi Police to enter and take any action they want in the campus.

The CPI (M) in a statement issued on behalf of the Polit Bureau condemned the arrest and demanded his immediate release. The statement said that, “an isolated incident, which does not reflect the opinion of the vast majority of the students, is now being blatantly used as an excuse to clamp down on the progressive and democratic student movement. This has been a long harboured design of the RSS and its camp followers.  This anti-democratic authoritarian attack on JNU campus, seen in the light of State sponsored efforts by the BJP central government to silence dissent in premier educational institutions, has serious implications.” The General Secretary of the CPI (M) Sitaram Yechury also compared the times to that of emergency and said in a tweet that, “Police on campus, arrests and picking up students from hostels. This had last happened during Emergency.”

The deans of various departments of the university and the JNUTA have also come out in defense of the student’s community. The deans in a statement issued have said that, “As he belongs to the All India Students’ Federation, his views and political associations are well-known, and to accuse him of sedition is beyond the bounds of credibility. The only previous occasion when the President of the JNUSU had been arrested was during the Emergency of 1975-77, and the present situation on the campus brings back memories of the Emergency days.” The JNUTA extended support to the JNUSU and said that , “ The teachers of JNU have always stood for upholding the Constitution of India and values enshrined therein and are opposed to any unconstitutional activity in the campus or outside. This very sentiment makes us express our strong opposition to attempts to use the law and the police to suppress democratic dissent and conduct a witch-hunt on our campus. The fact that the JNU Students Union (JNUSU) President is the first to be arrested establishes it. The JNUTA, following its Emergency Meeting, expresses its deep concern on the recent developments on our campus. The teachers of the University condemn the massive police presence and the attempt to escalate tensions.”

The former JNU students who had been arrested during emergency have issued a statement condemning the act of arrest.  The statement read, “Coming in the wake of the dastardly conspiracy of connivance and blatant discrimination that forced Rohit Vemula to take his own life, the storming of the hostels and the arrest of the president of JNUSU are signs of the imposition of an undeclared emergency that need to be opposed, confronted and defeated.”

The events preceding the arrest could be closely compared to that of Hyderabad Central University. After a complaint lodged by BJP law maker Mahesh Giri and ABVP, the case was registered yesterday under Section of 124 A (sedition) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC against unknown persons at Vasant Kunj (North) Police station.  Early morning the Home Minister took matters in his hand and said that, “If anyone raises anti-India slogans, tries to raise questions on country's unity and integrity, they will not be spared. Stringent action will be taken against them. “He was closely followed by MHRD minister Smriti Irani who is known for writing 5 letters to UoH asking them to take action of research scholar Rohith Vemula. Such interventions by the ministers are politically motivated and are attack on the autonomy of the insitutions.

Kumar, a third year student of PhD had won elections after an electrifying speech by securing 1029 votes.  He is known for his oratory skills and staunch logical critique of the right wing forces. In a event yesterday, he was vocal about the negligible involvement of the RSS in the freedom struggle. He pointed out that the JNU students community  does not need the certificate of being nationalist by organizations like RSS and ABVP which have not participated in the freedom movement and do not believe in the constitution.

References:
1. No, the slogans of the JNU students don't count as sedition under the law http://scroll.in/article/803522/no-what-the-jnu-students-did-doesnt-count-as-sedition-under-the-law
2. Freedom of speech at JNU: Is there really any difference between sedition and blasphemy? http://scroll.in/article/803511/freedom-of-speech-at-jnu-is-there-really-any-difference-between-sedition-and-blasphemy
3. Anti-national? Not my son, says mother  http://www.telegraphindia.com/1160213/jsp/frontpage/story_69039.jsp#.Vr7pyEDk8cA
4. Do not disagree: JNU arrests over Afzal Guru event are ill-judged, threatens basic rights http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/editorials/afzal-guru-film-jnu-student-protest-do-not-disagree/
5. JNU storm intensifies, students accuse Centre of political vendettahttps://sabrangindia.in/node/4296/edit http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/students-accuse-govt-of-vendetta-as-jnu-storm-intensifies/story-R1HHVXgCsg8ClxJgtB1etK.html
6. The problem with JNU: Too left for liberals, too liberal for leftists  http://scroll.in/article/803517/the-problem-with-jnu-too-left-for-liberals-too-liberal-for-leftists

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