English
In February 2016, Kanhaiya Kumar then president of Jawaharlal Nehru University Student’s Union (JNUSU) was arrested on the charge of sedition. It was alleged that he was part of a group that raised “anti-India” slogans during a protest meeting in memory of terrorist Afzal Guru, who was sentenced to death in 2013, after his conviction by the Supreme Court of India in the Parliament attack case that took place in 2001.
Following the arrest of Kumar, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) was pulsating with dharna and pradarshan, when its teacher’s association decided to start ‘Teach-In’ lectures on nationalism that went on for a month.
Meanwhile, Kanhaiya Kumar was released on the bail on March 2 and returned to the JNU campus with a heroic welcome. India’s top new channel editors lined up to interview the “revolutionary”, JNU revibrated with revolutionary slogans. Kumar delivered a speech that was telecasted by all news channels in the same fashion as the address of a head of a nation would be done.
It was the first televised incarnation of a hero.
However, a day later the hero met a challenger. On March 3, during the ‘Teach-In’ lecture Professor Makarand Paranjape of the Centre of English Studies (CES) took on Kumar for his much-celebrated but factually incorrect speech delivered post his release. Professor Paranjape asked Kumar whether he checked his facts before delivering his speech while highlighting the fact that Kumar was wrong in stating that RSS leader MS Golwalkar met Fascist leader Benito Mussolini as it was BS Moonje who had met Mussolini and not Golwalkar.
Professor Paranjape went on to expose the hypocrisy of the Left which calls the execution of a terrorist sentenced by the apex court after following due process of law “judicial murder” when Left regimes across the world are known for unleashing atrocities of unimaginable levels over its innocent people.
Professor Paranjape reasoned arguments could not be countered by logical rebuttals but he was heckled by the pro-Kanhaiya and left brigade, exposing the entire sham of tolerance and freedom of speech that the Left claims to espouse.
Following this episode, Professor Paranjape emerged as an alternative voice on the JNU row that gave a new prism and perspective through which the entire episode could have been rationally analyzed.
Six years later Professor Paranjape has authored a book that can help make a sense of all that happened in February 2016 and the larger story of Left politics on the JNU campus and beyond.
The Book titled “JNU: Nationalism and India’s Uncivil War” is by all means, “An informed insider’s account of the cataclysmic changes” JNU witnessed post-February 2016.
Beyond visible fissures, Professor Paranjape’s book lay bare the fault lines that continue to create upheavals on the JNU campus.
The book is an important document on how the country’s one of the premier institutions was held hostage by a particular ideology for decades. And, in the process, he goes on to expose the ideology in its entirety.
And, in doing so Professor Paranjape doesn’t show any euphemistic restrains. He calls a spade a spade.
He writes, “JNU was dominated by a futile and deluded, not to mention negative and destructive, Leftist student politics, shielded and protected by powerful lobbies. The world may have changed, but JNU was caught in a time warp. Students stayed on for decades, teachers took on more PhD students than they could handle. Some of them had over 20 enrolled under them. The joke was that one of these unfortunates was unable to meet his supervisor for two years, so he began stalking the professor, waiting outside the door of his corridors”.
Commenting upon the culture of protest in favour of “enemies of India” Professor Paranjape writes that “year after years, protests and commemorations of ‘such enemies of India’ were not uncommon in JNU” which included “annual marches and morchas against the hanging of terrorists” like Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhatt. However, he adds, what propelled action against such elements in 2016 was the fact that in 2016 the Union government was led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and JNU had a new vice-chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar who refused to tolerate the anti-India activities in name of free speech.
Professor Paranjape was targeted on campus, trolled on social media, and tried by the court of apologists of the JNU brand of politics for exposing the Left brigade that tried to paint the entire February 9 incident and later the arrest of Kumar as an attack on an in the institution. Several open letters were written against him and all attempts were made to paint Professor Paranjape as an apologist for the establishment.
Professor Paranjape refused to buckle down under the pressure of this witch-hunt. He wrote a series of articles and gave interviews that further exposed the sinister scheme of Left politics in JNU.
Professor Paranjape has been writing earlier too for newspapers and web portals but the nature of his writing “was essentially literary rather than political”.
“Yes, I would be the first to admit that my stance arose primarily from a moral conviction. Not, indeed, entirely from my anger over being cornered or curtailed. In fact, the urge to hit back was also largely absent. If I entered the lists, it was partly because of the nature of the duel. It was mostly an intellectual and ideological battle, with words being the main weapon”, writes Professor Paranjape.
The book contains responses to five open letters which Professor Paranjape calls “Five Contrarian Epistles”. One of the open letters written by Professor Rajat Datta accused Professor Paranjape among several other things of “maligning” the JNU Teachers’ Association (JNUTA) and “depoliticization” of students.
However, Professor Paranjape demolishes brick by brick all the allegations made in the open letter. What is worth noting and quoting here is his response to the allegation of the “depoliticization” of students.
He writes, “In my talk, I said that politics at the expense of studies would harm the long-term interests of most students, excepting the ‘cadres’, who would be taken care of and patronized. He adds, We are so full of self-praise about JNU as the ‘best university in India’ but wouldn’t you agree that we have been unable to nurture an ecosystem of academic excellence” Reorienting our students towards academics is also, thus, a form of de-reverse politicization”.
The book starts with mapping the contours of the nationalism debate and throws ample light on what ails JNU. In the second chapter Professor Paranjape narrates the story of his entry into the JNU campus but in the process lay bare the world of “time-warped Leftist politics’ that he considered a “combination of “delusion and opportunism”. Thereafter the book focuses and provides a “hindsight’ and “from a distance’ perspective on what happened in February 2016 and how it shaped the trajectory of JNU politics thereafter.
The book concludes with an important issue of a larger context which is the “crisis of higher education in India’. Professor Paranjape deliberates upon the important question of what needs to be done to improve the quality of higher education which goes beyond JNU.
The book is on JNU, written in the context of the infamous February 9 incident, by an author who was an outlier in the then prevalent narrative. So, there are chances of easy writing off of the book as an attempt to discredit JNU and its Left politics.
However, reading it without a biased lens can help the reader understand that what Professor Paranjape attempts is to save JNU from its apologists by exposing their intent and politics.
It is an honest attempt to show how too much politicization of an academic institution, no matter with a shade of whatsoever ideology, creates irredeemable harm to the institution. And, for this reason, those who believe that an academic institution should be known for its academic excellence and not for its politics need to read this book.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are of the author alone.
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