There is something ominously new in the manner in which the attack against freedom of thought and expression has been launched this time, says the noted political scientist

Full text of the statement titled by the noted professor of political science to his colleagues and students at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata

This is not the first time that freedom of thought and expression has been attacked in the Indian university. But there is something ominously new in the manner in which the attack has been launched this time.

We know that the sedition charge was applied across the board by British colonial rulers against anyone who expressed anti-colonial or nationalist views. Writers, artists, poets, and thousands of students and teachers were arrested for sedition alongside political leaders and agitators. But the British colonial officers, who were themselves among the best students of British universities who sat in a fiercely competitive examination to enter the highest paid civil service in the world, respected the British principle of the self-governing university. The unwritten rule that the police must not enter a university campus was observed in the early decades of independent India when I went to college. Student agitators engaged in a street fight with the police would often run for safety into the college campus, and the police would unfailingly stop at the college gates. The rule began to be violated from the 1970s. In regions of the country rocked by political agitation, the university campus was drawn into partisan conflicts between the government and the opposition. Students and teachers were arrested on charges of participating in violent agitations. Needless to say, in the North-eastern states or Kashmir, where state repression is long-standing and indiscriminate, the university campus was not spared.

Not since the Emergency

But I cannot remember, except for the period of the Emergency in 1975-77, a national campaign that asserts that certain political questions cannot even be talked about in the university. Are we to accept that national loyalty must be so unquestioned that the origins and present status of the nation and its boundaries, the nature of the constitution and the laws, the mutual relations between different regions and cultures, the demands of oppressed peoples and minority groups, cannot even be discussed and debated among students and teachers? One would have thought that such debates were the very essence of a democratic public life. And of all public places, the university campus is the most precious arena where freedom of thought and expression is the foundation of the vibrant intellectual life of a nation. Even in the United States, that paradise of market-controlled capitalism, university professors are protected by tenured appointments on the specific ground that they must not be exposed to victimisation for the content of what they teach or publish. This demand was recognised after the experience of the notorious McCarthy witch hunt against alleged communists in the 1950s.

What is happening in India today is similar to the McCarthy era. Whether the alleged “anti-national” slogans were raised on the campuses of Hyderabad University or JNU by those who have been charged is, of course, important for the future careers of those students – for Rohith Vemula the matter is, tragically, beyond rectification. But as far as the broader issues are concerned, that is beside the point.

What school of jurisprudence is it that claims that a sentence of capital punishment pronounced by the courts and the subsequent political decision to carry out the execution cannot be debated in a democratic public forum, especially in a university?

What is the constitutional theory that says that the existing boundaries of the nation-state or the structure of relations between the constituent units of the Indian Union are not open to question when only the other day the Indian government transferred dozens of hitherto Indian villages to neighbouring Bangladesh through a treaty and the number of constituent states of the Union and their federal relations are regularly changed by constitutional amendments?

Or is it the claim that while grave matters like these might be left to the mature decisions of politicians, impressionable students must not be exposed to such dangerous scepticism? Is the plan then to turn the university into some sort of patriotic seminary designed to produce brainwashed nationalist morons?

A blanket licence

While we may be forgiven for laughing about the farcical quality of the latest campaign, with such gems as the decision to fly national flags from 207-foot high steel poles on every Central university campus, it is actually spine-chilling in its implications. What has now been sanctioned by the highest political authorities of the country is a blanket licence to every Hindu right-wing vigilante group to target individuals belonging to the Left-Dalit-minority fraternity on university campuses. They can be identified as “anti-national” simply on the basis of their political convictions. Charges of sedition brought by the police would help, but it does not matter in the least if they do not hold up in court. The object is to smear and intimidate. The extreme example was set by the murder last year of MM Kalburgi. What we are seeing today in the attack on Kanhaiya Kumar and his friends in the Patiala House court or on Professor Vivek Kumar of JNU in Gwalior may only be the beginning of a long and bloody series.

A great deal is at stake. We must be strong, resilient and united.

Courtesy: Scroll.in

The post ‘What is happening in India today is similar to the McCarthy era’: Partha Chatterjee appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The notion that we are a different, informed society that would not let a Dreyfus affair in our watch should not deceive us

In 1894, a case of espionage broke out in France. Alfred Dreyfus, a young officer was arrested in connection with a letter suggesting a transfer of sensitive documents to the German attaché in Paris. Dreyfus was arrested for the crime, his family was intimidated and he was swiftly convicted despite weak evidence. After being publicly shamed as a traitor in a court-martial, he was sent to ‘Devil’s Island’ in French Guinea, a notorious penal colony. Within a couple of years of his conviction, a movement emerged to re-examine the facts of the case. Dreyfus would be eventually re-tried and re-convicted despite overwhelming evidence in his favour.

Dreyfus was Alsatian, Jewish, and a graduate of the elite École Polytechnique, one of the most competitive institutes in the country. Alsace had been lost by France following the Franco-Prussian war, the French were bitter about this, and Alsatians were often seen as a suspicious regional minority. The case that came to be known as the “Dreyfus Affair” in time became a landmark in modern French history because of the multilayered schisms in French society that it threw open.

Two more trials took place in interim between the two of Dreyfus himself – a judicial inquest of the officer, Ferdinand Esterhazy, suspected of doctoring evidence and framing Dreyfus, and a defamation case against Émile Zola, a writer who publicly supported Dreyfus in a landmark open letter to the president published in the socialist newspaper L’Aurore titled “j’accuse” (I accuse). In both cases, mobs of people followed the proceedings or waited outside courthouses. Esterhazy was found innocent to cheering supporters,[1] Zola on the other hand was publicly maligned for his seditious letter by invoking his foreign origins (his father was Italian). His trial ended with him receiving the maximum possible sentence for defamation.

There were multiple layers of victimhood and perpetration in the Dreyfus case. Clearly, the man himself was the prime victim, but those that stood with him were as well. The communities by extension – Jews, Alsatians, were targeted. Public figures, even people in the military, who believed in his innocence were attacked. The press at the time in France started as rabidly anti-Dreyfus, with few outlets willing to publish arguments counter to a mainstream discourse of Dreyfus’ guilt.[2]

The Dreyfus Affair has become a textbook study on organized prejudice in the name of nationalism. Its roots or outcomes are too broad (and disagreed upon) for a serious discussion here. But what matters here is the way it contributed to the mobilization of the French intelligentsia on one hand, and a construction of the “anti-national” in the imagination of the public.

The Dreyfus Affair has become a textbook study on organized prejudice in the name of nationalism. Its roots or outcomes are too broad (and disagreed upon) for a serious discussion here. But what matters here is the way it contributed to the mobilization of the French intelligentsia on one hand, and a construction of the “anti-national” in the imagination of the public. L’Aurore published a note called the “Manifesto of the Intellectuals”,[3] something of a modern day “Sign this Petition” which called for a revision of the verdict. The note, an early modern case of mobilizing the intelligentsia, spurred a radical reaction from opponents.

It split French society into Dreyfusards and anti-Drefusards, depending on one’s position on the guilt of Dreyfus. Mobs of people agitated against the any change in the original verdict, not just in the capital but in small towns all over France, despite the specifics of the case never being entirely clear. The media frenzy was led by ideologically driven news sources, including one of the key players – La Libre Parole, which was published by an organization known as the anti-Semitic League. For Dreyfusards, speaking up in his favour meant accusing the state. They could be tried under criminal jurisdiction (since it was technically hurtful to the taxpayer), whereas the verbal and media attacks on them by public figures and the media alike were administered by the weaker civil adversarial system.

While many students and thinkers did stand with Dreyfus, the overall Dreyfusard identity[4] was by no means restricted to just a small educated elite – many citizens from across various walks of life stood against the conviction and treatment of Dreyfus. Nonetheless, dubbing it intellectual helped to other it as an elite movement. Besides physical attacks and intimidation, the very term ‘intellectual’ was condemned and equated with excessive cerebrality, vanity, and effeminacy. [5] The notion of intellectuals interfering in matters of the law and nation were attacked as being out of place.[6]

Although Dreyfus was re-convicted, he was offered a full pardon if he accepted he was guilty. He took the deal.

There aren’t necessarily perfect parallels between the Dreyfus case – but correspondences are probably running through your mind right now.

If you are on the JNU campus, you have already been labeled one way or another. If you had anything to do with the campus and your credentials are known, you could find that the scar of deviance can follow you home. If you had the momentary lapse of reason to give yourself the POTA court equivalent complimentary defence by showing up on TV shows like NewsHour, the chances are your kin are now finding guilt by association of something you didn’t exactly know you were on trial for. If you are a stand-up comic who has said anything, ever that someone found repulsive enough to make the news, you learnt your lesson well before. Kanhaiya Kumar learnt the hard way.

In these past days you have almost certainly seen an othering category used as a callout to a suspicious minority – Kashmiri, Communist, Muslim. You have seen this happen on mainstream media that you trust or trusted. You have seen doctored evidence, you have seen citizens and mainstream media invoke doctored evidence even after they know it has been doctored. You have seen citizens turn researchers with technical investigations into the national cost of subsidizing college for dissenters. You have perhaps witnessed gentle forms of street justice carried out by citizen-judges.

You have probably also seen this played out on social media. You have found your acquaintances divided by what they choose to share and comment on. You have probably seen threads of conversations with two, or perhaps more sides talking back and forth with no changes in position. You have probably unfriended or unfollowed people, or had those done to you. You been enthralled by or dismayed with a video, article, or social media rant that an acquaintance has forwarded you, and in turn been surprised by where they stand on a certain issue, positively or otherwise.

If you’ve got into the comments section of any conversation, the chances are you’ve either called someone an anti-national, been called one, or at least seen someone else be called one. You may even have wondered if you are one. You may reminisce back to the days when being called a traitor meant something. You had to work to earn it, like Madan Puri wearing a Mao outfit in a den with beeping lights.

There is something refreshing about a vilification from the ‘apolitical’ – those that claim they do not get involved in politics, except when the nation is insulted. Then they cannot bear it. It claims legitimacy in presenting itself as Shiva’s third eye, powerful by the rarity of its invocation. If you thought you were an intellectual or knew one, you may have enjoyed the pleasure of being called a communist pinko. If you wrote a blog post, maybe you got nailed for being a presstitute. If you liked or retweeted the wrong link, perhaps someone even labeled you an intellectual, in their minds or to your face.

The attacks on the JNU students have hit home in personal ways that they did not in the past. ‘Intellectuals’ who have made their positions on the JNU issue public have been told to stay out of judicial matters,[7] and self-appointed speakers for the nation (film star Anupam Kher, for instance) have tweeted that to the opponents of the current movement as cockroaches who should be exterminated. Not only is the language disconcertingly reminiscent of Rwandan public media in the run up to the events of 1994, but that the message was among the most widely retweeted and favorited messages on Indian social media in 2016 should be sufficiently chilling.[8]

The mobilization of the apolitical has meant that outrage is no longer just the job of those who will willingly stand up to lathis, deal with FIRs, subject their dear ones to infamy, or sneak in a stone in the middle of an active mob. We may not get named as traitors on nationwide dailies, but perhaps a neighbor will desecrate our doorbells for signing the wrong petition. The spectacle of a new form of public execution, full with the delight of jeering on, is now ours at the click of a mouse.

It is exactly this that should remind us that our history is not far behind us. The notion that we are a different, informed society that would not let a Dreyfus affair in our watch should not deceive us. We have, if anything, far better weapons of both propaganda and self-deception at our behest. More importantly, we have the means to validate our ideas through our apolitical networks. The “La Libre Paroles” may be alive and well in today’s shouting media environment, but social media offers the ways to repeat stories, to track reputations, and to turn the number of ‘likes’ or ‘retweets’ into a metric of verity. Unlike the television that offers music videos or soaps as possibilities to switch channels to, the political in social media is braided into your very presence online. How many feeds can you block?

Our memory for spite remains the same a hundred years on. Dreyfus went back into the army. He fought again for the country where he was once the most hated man. He won medals for valour. But being confirmed a traitor comes with some permanence. The teeth you lose in dark solitary confinement don’t come back.

[1] Another officer, Hubert-Joseph Henry was found to be the one who doctored the evidence against Dreyfus. After his arrest, Henry committed suicide in jail. Supporters gathered together to pool together resources for his family, the cash donations frequently accompanied anti-Semitic letters from citizens

[2] While members of the Catholic clergy were openly complicit with the anti-Dreyfus movement, even the socialists, in this period, were considerably anti-Semitic, with the image of the Jewish capitalist frequently invoked as an opponent to worker rights.

[3] Georges Clemenceau, a politician and future wrote the ‘Manifesto of Intellectuals’ at the time, which came to be

[4] Indeed there are several types of Dreyfusards depending on what stage one started supporting Dreyfus’ cause, and whether the support was for Dreyfus per se or the broader anti-Semitism.

[5] This builds on Guy de Maupassant’s characterization of the intellectual, as referenced in Charle, C. (1998). Naissance des” intellectuels”: 1880-1900. Éds. de Minuit.

[6] Drake, D. (2005). The Dreyfus Affair and the Birth of the ‘Intellectuals’. In French intellectuals and politics from the Dreyfus affair to the occupation (pp. 8-34). Palgrave Macmillan UK.

[7] A note from the Overseas Friends of BJP to specific academics who voiced support for JNU students was posted on Facebook stating “You would be attempting to intervene in the judicial proceeding in India by putting political pressure on the Indian government. It would be seen as a misuse of the clout and respect bestowed to you by your profession and Institute to destabilize democratic and constitutional processes of a foreign government”

[8] Exact text from the tweet by @AnupamPKher on February 20, 2016: घरों में पेस्ट कंट्रोल होता है तो कॉक्रोच, कीड़े मकोड़े इत्यादि बाहर निकलते है। घर साफ़ होता है।वैसे ही आजकल देश का पेस्ट कंट्रोल चल रहा है।

Courtesy: Kafila

The post Vilification from the apolitical: The Dreyfus Affair and the case against JNU: Joyojeet Pal appeared first on SabrangIndia.