If the screaming zealotry over beef was the flavour of the season last year, today’s battle cry seems to be pivoted around nationalism. The government has announced that starting from today, it will launch a three-day campaign called Jan Swabhimaan Yatra (March for people’s self-pride) to build public opinion against the alleged anti-national activities at Jawaharlal Nehru University and galvanise support for its action against the so-called traitors of the realm.
In other words, not content with arresting the university’s student union president Kanhaiya Kumar on charges of sedition – because he had allegedly raised anti-India slogans at a meet to commemorate executed terrorist Afzal Guru – the BJP now wants to go around the country declaring that our nationhood is under attack, and none but this party is fighting to protect it.
In the Name of ‘National Interest’
Meanwhile, the sickening aftermath of the crackdown at JNU continues. While Kumar was being produced at Patiala House court on Wednesday, he was beaten up by thuggish lawyers as cops stood by and watched. Journalists were pelted with stones and a scribe from Firstpost assaulted. The shameful lawlessness in a court of law was a repeat of Monday’s incidents when rogue lawyers and BJP worthies attacked JNU students, academics and journalists. And the thuggery was apparently committed in national interest.
OP Sharma, a BJP MLA caught on camera thrashing a student, said, “Main goli bhi maar deta agar bandook hoti. Koi hamari Ma ko gaali dega to kya usey maaroge nahin” (I would have opened fire if I had a gun. If someone abuses our mother, won’t I beat him up?)
Sharma’s vocabulary is eerily reminiscent of the Sangh Parivar’s collective fury last year over allegations of beef-eating — the abuse of and insult to that other ‘Ma’, the venerable gau mata. And as it was with beef, so it is with the newly-found ferocity over nationalism: it’s raising the spectre of a mindless ‘mobocracy’ and it’s polarising the nation — neither of which serves the interests of a nation state.
What Constitutes Threat to the Unity of India?
So how did the BJP suddenly decide that our national integrity was under siege? Yes, a few misguided students raised some extremely objectionable anti-national slogans at JNU. Does that translate into a threat to our nationhood? Reprehensible as the attempt to venerate Afzal Guru was, can it seriously be considered a danger to the unity of India?
The university could have been left to discipline these unruly, disaffected elements. Why arrest Kumar (who, it now appears, may not have shouted those slogans at all) and whip up this shrill, anti-nationals-are-at-the-door rhetoric? Why paint yourself as an authoritarian, paranoid government that sees the bogey of anti-nationalism in student dissidence?
But
wait. There is a certain method in this madness. The cult of nationalism – Hindu
nationalism to be precise – is the defining credo of the RSS, the ideological
fountainhead of the BJP. A fiery appeal to nationalism, a call to crush enemies
of the state, promises to re-energise the rank and file of the Sangh Parivar
that’s been somewhat downbeat after the lacklustre performance of the Narendra
Modi government.
Politics Over Patriotism
- Like the rhetoric over beef, the newly-found ferocity over nationalism is raising the spectre
of a mindless ‘mobocracy’.
- A fiery appeal to
nationalism promises to re-energise the rank and file of the RSS after
the lacklustre performance of the Modi govt.
- BJP is leveraging the
issue by portraying itself as the standard bearer of nationalism and
questioning the nationalist credentials of its opponents.
- Banging on about nationalism
can backfire if the government fails to deliver on development.
Development Plank Missing
What’s more, the attention of the voter too is adroitly deflected — from the larger, infinitely more important issues of economic recovery and development (or the lack thereof), to the deafening roar of us versus them, patriots versus anti-nationals.
The BJP is also leveraging the issue in the political arena, portraying itself as the standard bearer of nationalism while questioning the nationalist credentials of its opponents. This week party president Amit Shah wrote a blog where he slammed Sonia and Rahul Gandhi “on behalf of 1.2 billion Indians” for “supporting forces inimical to India’s interests” — because Rahul had visited JNU and criticised Kumar’s arrest as an attempt to choke “dissent”.
Nationalism is a useful sentiment when a nation is at war or is yet to cohere as a nation. It was the growing tide of nationalism that enabled us to throw off our colonial yoke. But nationalism as a pretext for skewering the opposition and stamping out dissent is another name for fascism. On Sunday, RSS joint general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale referred to the student disaffection in Hyderabad Central University and JNU, both fuelled by radical left wing groups, and said, “All universities must be purged of anti-national elements.”
Politics of Purge
The politics of purge has no place in a liberal, democratic India. True, the government has not spoken in quite these terms, but the fact that it is labelling its political and ideological opponents as “anti-national” speaks volumes about its intent. Predictably, the gambit is driving the wedge deeper in our body polity.
It’s not just Hyderabad University that is simmering after the suicide of Dalit student Rohith Vemula — the result of one more crackdown on so-called anti-national elements in the academia. This week students of Jadavpur University in Kolkata too marched to the ring of similar slogans that had been raised at JNU.
British
philosopher Bertrand Russell had once said, “A world full of patriots may be a
world full of strife.” The truth is, the politics of divisiveness and strife
launched by the BJP in the name of nationalism will be counterproductive in the
end — just as the structured hysteria over beef turned out to be. Banging on
about nationalism can only be a temporary opiate for the masses. Ultimately, if
the government fails to deliver on development, it won’t save the day.
(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist)
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