A few days after the attack on the life of Umar Khalid, another JNU alumni Dr Sanjay Kumar Yadav, assistant professor of sociology at the CentralUniversity in Bihar's Motihari, was brutally beaten up by local men for writing a critical post on the demise of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. These are not the only two instances when the affiliation to JNU has invited attack from marauding men. There have many cases in the past where the 'public' had decided to teach the 'anti-national' students a lesson.
A war between the nationalists and university students, especially of JNU, was declared by some 'leading' new channels on February 2016 around an event organised against the hanging of a Kashmiri militant, Afzal Guru. The event led to the arrest of Khalid along Anirban Bhattacharya and the erstwhile JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar on sedition charges. Although, they were later released on bail by the sessions court but for a section of the population, they are still traitors who are wasting taxpayers' money. It has been two years since the February incident but the fresh spate of attack by men, who are openly owning up the act, suggests that JNU students are in a very dangerous a battle of perception against a conglomerate that has a formidable control over thought process of the people. The attack on Yadav and Khalid is the harvest of the seed sowed in February 2016 these same conglomerates.
A Story of sedition told
February, the month of love, witnessed a lethal infatuation of a section of media with JNU students and Khalid singled out as a leader of the Afzal premi (Afzal lover) gang. The courtship started when Khalid along with his JNU friends went to put forth their view point on 'India's most watched news channel'. The fragile, feeble and friable nation was once again in danger, this time from university students. The anchor had to play multiple roles to make his viewers understand the gravity of the case. To hammer his point, he sometimes was an embodiment of the nation itself while other time he was the judge of the court room. After almost an hour of hearing, Khalid had been pronounced him guilty of the most heinous charge of these time, the charge of being anti-national.
The anchor was successful in convincing his viewers about the seriousness of the matter. The nation was indeed in search of the traitor. While Khalid was in hiding because of the fear of lynch mobs, the news anchors were assiduously inquiring about his Khalid's whereabouts, hideouts and friends. The police and state officials also pitched in, after it was a threat to the national security. The home minister, worried about the safety of the nation, claimed that the JNU protest had the backing of the Lashkar chief Hafiz Saeed. It was 'found' out later there was some confusion as he had inputs from different agencies. The home minister was not alone, even Delhi police chief BS Bassi, apparently 'fell' into the trap of such tweets, decided to forewarn the student about the involvement of Saeed.
Since then it has become became difficult to distinguish between trolls, news anchors and even the state officials. Truth and facts were often casualties of such tweets and statements.
And retold
After Khalid and his friends were released, the media was looking for other avenues to save the nation. However, they were aware of the threat to the nation from the university students was still looming large on the horizon. Their patience paid off. The again got the noble chance to rescue the nation when Khalid's was invited to speak in public programmes. When the nation had exhausted its questions, it decided to turn into Republic to once again alert the nation of the perils of public discussion.
In 2017, Khalid was invited by the college’s Literary Society to speak on The War in Adivasi Areas, his PhD topic. The invitation to Khalid had to be withdrawn due to ABVP's hooliganism but the news channels got an opportunity to remind the audience once again of the February 9 event. Similar arguments were pitched by the same channels when Khalid went to Pune in January 2018 to extend solidarity to Dalits who were commemorating defeat of the Peshwa rule by the British East India Company with the help of Mahars fighting for the British, they found that moment.
The resistance movement was portrayed as a #MahaCasteClashes and Khalid along with Jignesh Mewani were accused of inciting the masses. Organisers were interrogated as to why the anti-national Umar Khalid was called for the programme. Even then the 'guilt' was not established but he was already pounced guilty and his involvement in people's movement was criminalised.
Method in madness
The madness had a method to it. While the larger attack was on JNU and the universities that were apparently turning into JNU. In other words, all the spaces and sections who spoke against the ruling dispensation had to be branded as seditions and anti-nationals. Scores of students from TISS, HCU, BHU and JNU were slapped with fines and FIRS. Khalid was made the anti-hero of the dissenting section. The witch hunt and the smear campaign had to go on for more than a year to set him as an example, a warning to- the catch all phrase to the 'liberals' that they could be next.
Khalid's politics and identity is actually a threat to this government. He is not the kind of citizen, Muslim and a student that this current dispensation will be comfortable with. He is although unapologetic about his Muslim identity, has been a self confessed left activist. He started engaging with political issues during the time of Batla house encounter in 2008.
When he joined JNU as a post-graduate student at the Centre for Historical Studies he started associating himself with the left politics of the campus. Since then he has been a part of various protest gatherings and meetings that took place within and outside campus.
He has been vocal against the atrocities of the state against on adivasis through Operation Green Hunt, shrinking democratic space within the campus through Lyngdoh Committee Recommendation that restricts activism on campus, strengthening the Gender and Sexual Harassment Committee (GSCASH), unionization of workers, democratisation of University spaces and range of other issues which works towards a promise for a better tomorrow.
This is the kind of Muslim that scares the BJP government because it breaks the narrative of a fundamentalists and a fanatical Muslim; a category they are most comfortable with. BJP can only tolerate three kinds of Muslims. The first is likes of their own party member like Mukhtar Abbas Naqwi and Shanawaz Hussain or the Muslim wing of RSS, Muslims who are comfortable with the tag of second class citizenship, who believes that Ram Mandir should constructed, in a nut shell Muslims who buys the narrative of the BJP that they should give up their rights of citizenship because of their identity. The second category is most crucial, the category of a backward Muslim where their religiosity is the reason behind their backwardness. The image of a skull clad and beard sporting Muslim is the favourite some TV new channels; the kinds who screams and howls and even violent on question of religion, especially one women's question and the third is an indifferent and a docile Muslim, who will remain quiet as long as he or she is not attacked.
Khalid does not belong to either of these, he has refused to be cowed down by the propaganda around his identity and rather chooses raise voice against atrocities against Muslims but not restrict himself to it.
As a left activists has believed in raising voice against atrocities on Dalits, adivais, women, workers and transgender. These kind of solidarities that threatens any regime who thrives on pitting one against the other, especially Hindu against the Muslim by blurring their class and caste identities.
A day before Sanjay Kumar was attacked, he had written against the assassination attempt on Khalid and Khalid also extended unflinching solidarity to Sanjay Kumar. The attack is not on Khalid and Yadav per se, but it is an attack on their politics as a students and teachers who believes in democratising university spaces, as people who do not believe in not limiting themselves to their name, as a citizen who believes in reclaiming his or her Rights that does not stop with voting, as activists who believe in fighting against all kinds of inequality. These are small voices of history, it will take more than threats and bullets to silence them.
(The writer is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU, Delhi. The views expressed are the author's own.)