Godse’s Children versus Midnight’s Children
By Vaidyanath Nishant
23 February, 2016
Countercurrents.org
January 30, 1948, as Bapu walked for his evening prayer, three bullets pierced him. Nathuram Vinayak Godse surrendered himself to the police. Ten months later, during the famous Red Fort Trial made a detailed statement before the Court regarding the prosecution case against him which lasted about a year. The text of his statement was banned till the year 1968. In his statement there are two things that really have significance in the political state the nation is in now. He had said, “If devotion to one’s own country amounts to a sin, I admit I have committed a sin. If it is meritorious, I humbly claim the merit thereof.” There is a very interesting similarity that I find between what Godse had said years ago and what the current goons which includes, lawyers, police, politicians and activists, are giving as an explanation for their violence against students, teachers and anyone else who doesn’t favour the BJP. Any of us need not shout slogans against the nation, but the very fact that we criticize the activities of this goon gifts me a label of being anti-national. I also salute the nationalists who are protecting India by methods like mob lynching and other forms of violence. Umar Khalid was right when he said that Universities are a place for dissent and the current national politics are trying to curb any forms of dissent and turn educational institutions into “prison houses”.
Louis Althusser introduced ISAs (Ideological State Apparatuses) and RSA (Repressive State Apparatus). In the present scenario the BJP government is trying hard in achieving ISAs through a repressive method. It is also noticed that neither ISAs nor RSA exists independently and both juxtapose with each other and the present government is proving it. We have evidence of goons beating up students, teachers and the media and yet they are walking around as national heroes who saved Mother India from being insulted. The police didn’t take any time in arresting Kanhaiya Kumar even though there was lack of evidence. But here is a case of clear politics as everyone knows that the Delhi Police fall under the Central government, which is now Modi’s monarchy. An advocate proudly proclaims that he bashed up Kanhaiya Kumar badly and that he is waiting for Umar Khalid with a petrol bomb. Isn’t that terrorism?
Kanhaiya Kumar has been charged with sedition. When the very word sedition comes, the first faces that comes to our minds is that of Lokmanya Tilak, Mahatma Gandhiji, a living legend of Binayak Sen and Arundathi Roy. Where does it say that sedition means speaking against the ones in power? Binayak Sen carried on his duty as a responsible doctor and he was jailed. And so is Kanhaiya Kumar now, for protecting the freedom this nation has been offering us; for upholding democracy.
A group of students of JNU have condemned the judicial killing of Afzal Guru for years now. It is not something that has come up all of a sudden just to shake India’s jingoistic patriotism. Many people across the nation did condemn Afzal Guru’s death. To have a better understanding of this storming against JNU, I would like to take all of you to a statement given by Subramaniam Swamy. He said that JNU was the place which seeded terrorism in this nation. He spoke about cleansing the campus by throwing out all Maoist connections and Left leaning ideologies. There has been a constant attempt by the right wing fundamentalists to tarnish the image of this historical campus which from the beginning has been a temple of consent and dissent; freedom and space; democracy and secularism. This institution that stood for what an actual government and the nation should stand for has now become the so called anti-national hub.
It is high time we come together against this. I as a student of a Central University and above that a human being who respects the Constitution and am proud to be an Indian call you all to put an end to the intervention of the Government into educational institutions. It began in IIT, Madras when the Ambedkar-Periyar Society was derecognized and shut down. And then we saw one of most prestigious institutions in India being handed over to Gajendra Chauhan (Thank god Salman Khan hasn’t played the role of Rama in any serials or commercials). Rohit Vemula considered his birth as his most fatal accident. The reason he felt like this, because the walls of a campus became porous allowing government to flow in. And now, JNU! Godse had said, “I have no doubt that honest writers of history will weigh my act and find the true value thereof someday in future.” Unfortunately, that day is coming soon. The first discipline that the present government wanted to attack was History. This culture of BAN that the present ruling facists have imposed upon us has reached such a mark that now there is a ban on our thought processes too. I am an Indian, but I would enjoy a Kabaddi match between India and Pakistan and cheer the Pakistani raider if he makes a good raid. I am an Indian and I will continue to listen to songs of Atif Aslam. I am an Indian and know that my uncle’s best friend in a labour camp in the middle-east is a Pakistani. I am an Indian, and am proud to be one because of the freedom this nation has gifted me.
Vaidyanath Nishant,pursuing my M. Phil. in English Literature in Sikkim University, Gangtok.