NEW DELHI: Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula committed suicide after he was suspended from
Hyderabad Central University
in 2016. A complaint was filed by ABVP and a Union minister from BJP that he had indulged in "anti-national" activities.
Fast forward to the complaint by ABVP that "anti-India" sloganeering took place in JNU during an event in 2016, which turned out to be the breakout moment for young leader
Kanhaiyya Kumar
.
Protest against JNU campus violence live updates. A similar story followed at a seminar in Delhi University. And now, on Sunday evening, masked armed men barging into JNU campus right under the nose of police and running riot, targeting students and faculty members in hostels and residences.
Over last four years, University campuses have become the front-line of ideological battles - the line-up being the "Hindutva" proponents versus Left-liberal outfits and the saffron trope being that campuses shelter "anti-national" acts. The face-off is a post-2014 phenomenon, with the BJP-RSS, riding on hard nationalism, appearing to have decided to extend their triumph in Parliament and assemblies to the islands of liberal thought like JNU.
In India, the campus faceoffs are not new, a reason why every political party has ensured it has a youth outfit to carry its flag among students. But what is novel is the overwhelming surge of BJP-backed outfit, on a formulaic pattern of targeting the Left and Congress-affiliated students for "anti-nationalism". It forced Congress and Left to come out in support of students, like Rahul's visit to JNU.
As the saffron offensive, clubbing liberals and Muslims to paint them as a nexus, appeared successful over four years, Congress erupted in rethink that the party should be circumspect in lending its support to the varsity youth.
The saffron camp appeared to be on a rampage. Till Parliament on December 11, 2019, passed the
Citizenship Amendment Bill, overcoming the vociferous dissent from the Congress-led opposition.
Before BJP could celebrate, university students across states erupted in protests, calling the citizenship law the anti-thesis of the Constitution.
This was a bolt from the blue - mainstream youth, largely from majority community, said to be the catchment demographic of BJP, waving tricolour, swearing by the Constitution and appearing implacable. Jamia Millia Islamia and AMU too broke free, but the ruling camp appeared unsettled as it seemed impossible to caricature young students.
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