On Monday, journalists, professors and students were beaten up by a mob of lawyers led by a Bharatiya Janata Party legislator before a hearing on the sedition charges against Jawaharlal Nehru University Student Union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who was arrested on the basis of a video showing other students raising anti-national slogans at an event on the campus.
Using mob violence to crush unpopular sentiment is not a new phenomenon. Over the last three decades, different regimes have resorted to the tactic of mobilising mobs to attack those opposed to the State's views.
I felt an uneasy sense of déjà vu on seeing the visuals of violence at the Patiala House court complex in the capital. What brought it all back was the image of a truck, carrying men waving flags and shouting slogans, that was probably approaching the court.
The scenes at the Patiala House court reminded me of what I had seen decades ago.
In 1980, I was part of fact-finding team that visited Tirupattur, a town in the Vellore district of Tamil Nadu. At the time, the state was controlled by film star and All India Anna Dravida Munethra Kazhagam founder MG Ramachandran. Ten alleged Naxalites – young men organising peasants over basic rights – had been killed between August and October that year in fake encounters.
The fact-finding team was led by environmental activist Claude Alvares from Goa and Mohan Ram, a senior journalist from Delhi. The iconic political satirist Cho Ramaswamy had put his weight behind the team. Even so, we were booted out on the first day itself, just hours after meeting the local police.
A drunken mob stoned the lodge where we were spending the night. The same policemen we had met at the police station had swapped their khakis for plainclothes and were among the mob. After we were sufficiently intimidated, uniformed policemen came to “rescue” us from their own colleagues.
They claimed that the mob were “victims of Naxalites” and were angry with us for supporting the "extremists". While escorting us to the police van, they allowed the mob to thrash Alvares, Ram and other male members of the fact-finding team.
Strategy of suppression
A similar story played out in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. Between 1985 and 2001, “victims of Naxalites” killed six office bearers of the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee, a human rights organisation.
It became routine for Committee members to be thrashed by mobs while the police looked on. No wonder then that the police establishment has always advertised Andhra Pradesh as a success story in dealing with Naxalites.
Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh has tried to replicate this success during his 12-year reign, albeit in a more organised fashion. Instead of leaving the task to “victims of Naxalites”, his government set up an armed Adivasi force, the Salwa Judum. The group drove away anyone who tried to investigate how Adivasis, labeled “Maoist sympathisers”, were being tortured and killed for defending their land against corporate takeovers.
The state-sponsored effort fizzled out by 2011. Now, it appears that a vigilante organisation recently formed by political leaders and local business leaders is continuing the intimidation campaign. Members of the Samajik Ekta Manch last week stoned the house of Malini Subramaniam, a Scroll.in contributor who has been exposing police excesses against Adivasis in Chhattisgarh.
Striking similarities
The violence at Delhi's Patiala House courts this week is not too different from these incidents in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
The Naxalites in this case are the left-wing JNU students who held protests on February 9, the death anniversary of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. Just like the Naxalites, these students need to be suppressed, lest they spread their poison among those who come to JNU to study on “taxpayers’ money” and “consume the nation’s foodgrains”, as Union minister of state VK Singh so eloquently said. And as defenders of the students, their professors also need to be silenced like the civil rights activists.
Sedition is another common link. MG Ramachandran used the draconian law against lawyers defending Naxalites, while Raman Singh used Section 124A against Dr Binayak Sen, who brought out the first detailed report on the realities of the Salwa Judum.
In the present situation, the “victims of Naxalites” are the angry “patriots” who just can’t help themselves. “It was not in my hands” said advocate and Delhi BJP vice-president Abhay Verma, who was present during the Patiala House court violence. “When I heard (anti-national slogans), rashtrabhakti ubhar aayi (patriotism swelled within me). I lost my temper.”
All for the cause
There are additional factors at play here. In the villages of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, only the state was waiting to take over from the Naxalites. In Delhi, an alternative student body is waiting to take over the JNU campus from the Leftist students, and it is run by the ruling party at the Centre.
Therefore, the thuggish responses in this case go all the way to the top. While Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh lied about Laskhar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed’s support to JNU students, his minister of state Kiren Rijiju defended the police inaction at the Patiala House courts by asking whether there had been a murder.
There is one more difference. In Delhi, the police aren't just following the rulers’ orders – it's a cause they believe in. Leftists have always been troublemakers in their eyes; but this time, the alternative is dear to their hearts. For them, Hindutva has always been synonymous with patriotism. It’s no surprise then that Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi defended the violence in court as an expression of angry emotions.
But here’s the crucial difference: Delhi is not a remote village or jungle. The violence in the Patiala House courts was seen on televisions in millions of homes. Add to this the fact that members of the media were assaulted. Even journalists who prefer to ignore or be ambivalent about the State’s attacks on Naxalites take attacks on their own fraternity very seriously.
But once the media’s grievances are addressed, will they forget about those in real danger – JNU’s students and faculty – and leave them to the wolves as they have the Adivasis?