Reclaiming Dissent
By Concerned Citizens
23 February, 2016
Countercurrents.org
Letter of Solidarity with JNU students and faculty from professionals, academics, artists in West Bengal
The recent forceful and spectacular big-media injunction on debating and ‘intellectualizing’ issues of nationhood and its summary recommendation of the strict enforcement of executive police rule as substitute of such debate has probably been etched deep in the minds of many a primetime news-viewer in our country. We, the undersigned, are writing this note to strongly disagree with this unsolicited injunction that seeks to exorcise all oppositional opinion and thus fundamentally imperils the practice of democracy in this country. This attempt at curbing strains of opposition lies also at the heart of the recent chain of reactions of the ruling coalition and the central government to a purportedly “cultural programme” which was to be held at JNU on the 9th of February to publicly discuss the question of Kashmiri self-determination. What follows in this note hopes to vindicate our right but also our duty to hold such oppositional views and presents our claims and demands concerning the recent series of events surrounding JNU.
As stated time and again, the intention of the students organising the event of 9th February was to continue the discussions and debates on Kashmir’s political character and on the morality of capital punishment in a civilized nation. We find the alarmism surrounding this event both after and before it was going to be held to be motivated by a sinister design. The sustenance of such debates in the public discourse of the nation-state is of course only to be expected as they were initiated by none other than the founding figures of the nation and the republic - Ambedkar, Gandhi, Tagore and Nehru. The central government’s decades-long policy of governing the region through a draconian law like the AFSPA is at odds with the basic principles of democracy and federalism. But the imposition of AFSPA also by itself draws attention to Kashmir’s specific status within the Indian union. The consequent circumstances of instability and mass discontent in the region provoke us constantly to interrogate the ‘mainstream’ nationalist resolution of the ‘Kashmir question’, especially because ‘Kashmir’ erupts and raises its ‘problematic’ head not so infrequently through news of militancy and militarism in our everyday life. Moreover, when school textbooks of history and political science in India still present Kashmir as a ‘problem’, it should not come as a surprise that the students of a premier university of the nation would also want to engage with this ‘problem’ in their own capacities.
In more recent times, no matter what its scale, the tumult in the public sphere after Afzal Guru’s hanging in 2013 re-invoked this already-existing public discourse. More recently, the ultra-nationalist organizations of our country such as the RSS/BJP have made their wish clear many a time to revoke the special status of Kashmir accorded by the article 370 of the Indian Constitution. Historically speaking, this is a view that does not enjoy the unanimous support of even the country’s political elite, let alone the masses, as for instance, Nehru himself repeatedly agreeing to the demand for a referendum on Kashmir. One must in such a situation ask under what circumstances the Indian nation-state acceded to the demand for a referendum on the question of self-determination of Kashmir at different conjunctures. Also, what made it backtrack from such a fundamental enunciation of popular sovereignty as a referendum that has been in wide practice the world over and most recently in United Kingdom and Scotland. Such more immediate circumstances clearly compel us to argue for keeping the debate concerning Kashmir alive in our public life. One may or may not support the Kashmiri demand for self-determination, but we do no doubt that the nation-state must at least acknowledge and accommodate the debates on this issue and has been doing so in certain ways for a long time now. How is it possible then to incriminate as ‘seditious’ the efforts by the concerned students at JNU to retrieve some such apparently forgotten questions of our democracy and rearticulate them in the current context of majoritarian assertions all over the nation?
We thus opine that the concerned JNU students were trying nothing exceptional but to continue to practice critical thinking about these problems inherent in the foundational structures of the nation-state in the form of a public programme. We affirm strongly both their rights as well as their intentions in doing so.
What seems to have become inextricably entangled with this latest version of public engagement with the ‘Kashmir debate’ is the problem of branding the ‘anti-national’. Not the greatest retrospection is required to perceive that this impromptu classificatory schema is of course not limited to debating the Kashmir issue. It goes well beyond that and has been shown in reports and opinions circulating about JNU to include beef-eating, ‘queer’ sexualities, dalit forms of worship, secular atheist thinking, advocacy of tribal rights and myriad other things. Such practices and opinions are being termed ‘anti-national’ even as the government seeks to allot and sell substantial national resources to big multi-national corporations and while the ruling party’s allies celebrate the spirit of Nathuram Godse, the murderer of the ‘Father of the Nation’.
The only ‘national’ or the ‘nationalist’ permitted and promoted by the ruling ideology of the BJP/RSS is the patriarchal-Brahmanical-upper class and all other forms which do not subscribe to this ideology are to be labelled, hunted, surveilled and ‘put down’ as ‘anti-nationals’ or even ‘terrorists’. The BJP leader who has been seen on camera thrashing and abusing the JNU professors and journalists at the Patiala Court, has justified his actions as ‘teaching a strict lesson to the anti-nationals’ and argued that the ‘anti-nationals’ should not only be beaten up, but there is no harm in killing them too! We condemn such heinous statements and provocations to mob-violence against the critics of the BJP/RSS and the current central government. To us, these statements seem more than empty threats at a time when M. M. Kalburgi, Gobind Pansare, Narendra Dabholkar, Rohith Vemula and Soni Sori - all faces of dissent - have indeed been murdered or harmed by ‘nationalist’ saffron terrorists.
It then seems quite apparent to us that the use of the term ‘anti-national’ is the highest point of a frantic drive for Brahmanical cultural homogenization of the nation by the BJP/RSS/ABVP. All difference and even the minimal articulation of dissent are now gradually being brought into the ambit of the ‘anti-national’ category. Added to this is the categorical denial of evidence and information rights by the highest offices of the country that is making ‘anti-national’ a surprisingly self-evident category beyond any interpretation. Thus the Home Ministry, in direct collusion often with certain big media channels has been of late firing a battery of baseless charges against university students most irresponsibly. This is lending further legitimacy and incitement to the quite well-organised mobocracy of the extended Sangh Parivar. The latter is quite easily finding further inspiration to disrupt essential legal procedures in courts and deal with ‘anti-nationals’ as they deem ‘fit’. This tactic of intimidation is duplicated by none other than the law enforcing agency i.e. the police. It is little wonder then that the National Human Rights Commission has already found out that a written statement made by Kumar in court was produced under pressure from the police. This brings back memories of Afzal Guru’s own confession that is claimed by some to have been extracted under duress by law enforcement.
In such circumstances, we would like to register our strong criticism of the most conceited ideological use of the term ‘anti-national’ in media and by the state to imbue images, videos and information with an immediacy of a judgment, thoroughly unfounded in most cases and leading up to direct forms of intimidation of dissenters with exemplary impunity. Within this kind of conceited use of the term ‘anti-national’ is embedded once again, an urgency to dismantle precisely those very pillars of public debate that lend strength to our democratic system and culture.
Recent events at JNU have also compelled us to contemplate on a much bigger question. For the Delhi police, a section of media, BJP/RSS – both the government executives and party leaders – and ABVP the act of organizing a debate on Afzal Guru’s hanging in itself is an ‘anti-national’ act because it ‘questioned’ the decision finalized by the Supreme Court, the highest judicial body of the nation-state. In this context, we ask the following: Is having a difference of opinion with the apex court necessarily a ‘contempt of court’ even in strictly legal terms? Can such differing opinion be branded as ‘anti-national’ simply by way of its divergence from the court’s views? In a democracy, shouldn’t there be a space for debate on court verdicts too? Is it ‘anti-national’ or ‘anti-judiciary’ to extend the discourse on ‘justice’ beyond the immediate surroundings and formal networks of the judiciary? Does contemplating ‘justice’ in other forms and outside the arena of state-institutions always present a threat to ‘national sovereignty’ and are therefore to be declared ‘treason’?
In the context of increasing acts of ‘media trials’ orchestrated and ‘popular justice’ delivered, we want to strongly affirm that discussions and dialogues on the notion of ‘justice’, especially in respect to the question of ‘minority aspirations’, is utmost crucial for the future life of our democracy. All acts of ‘vengeance’ in the name of ‘justice’ must be condemned. Many eminent lawyers, scholars, Human Rights and civil society activists and Muslim clerics have questioned the gaping holes in the trial and appeal process of Afzal Guru as well as the gross violation of his constitutional rights and due legal processes in carrying out the punishment. One must not also forget here the absurdities of the present-day coalition politics of our nation: the so-called ‘nationalist’ BJP, which in Delhi is gunning for strong actions against the JNU students who organized the event in commemoration of the death of Afzal Guru and branding them ‘anti-nationals’, is in fact in an alliance with PDP in the Kashmir state assembly, the party which too eulogizes Afzal Guru as a Kashmiri martyr! One must also take note of BJP’s silence on the issue of Balwant Singh Rajoana’s capital punishment – the Khalistani separatist who is accused for the 1995 assassination of the Punjab CM Beant Singh – against which another ally of them, the Akali Dal has already appealed!
We would like to further claim that the Judicial Process in India does not necessarily invite any kind of obvious foreclosure in its institutional functioning. Instead it fosters the potential for a certain degree of latitude in terms of appeals and amendments that are themselves co-dependent on the state of public debate in the country. We may debate on the most acceptable form of these debates or the style of their utterances, but we must never support the acts of forceful and even militarized suppressions or any kind of policing of them by the super-active executive with its totalitarian aspirations. These debates, we believe, aid in the process of strengthening institutions, procedures and meanings of justice. And it is in re-invoking this spirit of debate that we would want to register our own belief, however ‘fringe’ or ‘marginal’ that might sound: We are against the capital punishment – we do not think that a modern, civilized nation-state should have any legal right to kill its citizen, even if s/he is found to be engaged in ‘anti-national’ activities.
We want to also pose here one last important question thrown up by the events of the last few days - How can a nation-state ‘progress’ if it doesn’t keep amending its constitution according to changing circumstances and the demands of time and people? And how is that even possible without questioning the tenets of the existing constitution? Does that amount to being ‘anti-constitutional’? Then how is any change possible without being ‘anti-constitutional’ or ‘anti-national’? If so, aren’t many of the leaders of the ruling party also anti-nationals in as far as they want to revoke the special autonomous status of Kashmir granted by the Article 370 or argue in the parliament against the validity of the word ‘secular’ in Indian constitution as a descriptive character of the Indian nation-state. Leaving this question open here, let us clearly state our demands made in solidarity with the protesting teachers and students of JNU:
· Revoke all cases of sedition or otherwise against all students of JNU
· Revoke all disciplinary procedure and action against all students of JNU
· Restore normalcy for students living in JNU and outside
· Stop the witch-hunt of innocent students of Kashmiri and minority descent in Delhi and outside
Sabyasachi Deb, Writer
Ratna Deb, Retired school-teacher
Asokendu Sengupta
Ranabir Samaddar, Calcutta Research Group
Paula Banerjee, University of Calcutta and Calcutta Research Group
Moushumi Bhowmik, Singer and writer
Neogi Sengupta, Barasat Government College
Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Priyankar Dey, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Ritam Sengupta, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Swati Chatterjee, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Vikas Kumar Moola, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Uday Bhanu Saini, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Arunima Chakraborty, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Richa Gupta, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Chesta Arora, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Rukmini Chakraborty, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Anurupa Bhowmick, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Tony Kurian, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Santosh Sakhinala, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Rajashree Bhattacharya, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Debajyoti Mondal, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Koyel Lahiri, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Rohan Basu, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Praskanva Sinharay, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Ankur Tamuli Phukan, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Sayantan Saha Roy, University of Chicago
Arup Kumar Sen, Serampore College
Subhadeep Sarker, Serampore College
Jishnu Dasgupta, Serampore College
Debajyoti Banerjee, Serampore College
Sankha Das, Serampore College
Moumie Banerjee, Serampore College
Monideepa Bhattacharjee, Serampore College
Samik Ray, Serampore College
Arindam Dutta, Taki Government College
Shubhankur Ghosh, Photographer
Shan Bhattacharya, Researcher
Antara Ray, Graphic designer
Mimasa Pandit, St. Paul’s Cathedral Mission College
Iman Mitra, Calcutta Research Group
Anwesha Sengupta. Calcutta Research Group and Jawaharlal Nehru University
Kaustubh Mani Sengupta, Bankura University
Upal Chakrabarti, Presidency University
Shrimoy Roy Chowdhury, Shiv Nadar University
Anandaroop Sen, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Twisha Deb, Photographer
Ronny Sen, Photographer
Arka Chattopadhyay, University of West Sydney
Abhimanyu Kar, IIT Kharagpur
Manjira Sinha, IIT Kharagpur
Samata Biswas, Haldia Government College
Shinjini Basu, Sir Gurudas Mahavidyalaya
Debaditya Bhattacharya, Nibedita College
Bhaskar Chaudhuri, Serampore College
Nilanjan Chatterjee, Serampore College
Saubhik Dasgupta, Serampore College
Patrali Sinha, Serampore College
Sharmita Dhar, Serampore College
Suman Dutta, Serampore College
Bidyut Banerjee, Serampore College
Madhurilata Basu, Presidency University
Rupsa Ray, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta and journalist