JNU has been targetted once again. While ABVP students are in the gaze again for violence, the Left has been voted back in. Mea­n­while, the 50th anniversary of JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) will be celebrated with conferences and cultural programmes. The JNUTA, a year ago, made its list of faculty organisers who will plan the events. It is interesting that Nirmala Sitharaman, al­u­m­ni of JNU and a former me­mber of the Free Think­ers, an obsolete party from the mid 1970s, has gone all out to betray constitutional values upholding the statu­tes of the university. Clearly, her alma mater is reduced to a battle site for confrontations between right and left wing parties. This is most tragic.

Vice-president M Venkaiah Naidu has gone into an attack mode against Engli­sh, calling it a disease. Wit­h­in the hate politics of Hindutva, the call is to return to the time of the Mahabhar­a­t­ha. Such proponents argue, “All is fair in love and war.” As a result, murder, lynchi­ng, stoning, rape all become modalities of war. The ene­my is sighted by the predatory political ideology, which is thought to represent eve­r­y­­one. Assimilation is sou­g­ht. People are told they mu­st conform and women are told they must stay home and let men monopolise the workspace. Since the RSS valorises Hitler, they too pr­omote church, kitchen and kindergarten. Church here is the term for an “association of believers”.

Freedom of speech is fir­st of all taken away. Then, ve­­ry quickly so is the right to life. Intellectuals are arrested and rule by truncheon is enforced. The police represent the ruling class and leg­i­t­imise violence as the leg­al arm of the State. Needless to say, the foot soldiers of unauthorised violence are the declassed. They are told to kill because it’s an ideological imperative, wh­e­t­her in Hinduism or Islam or Christianity. They may be offered alcohol or money.

Who can forget the gleef­ul crowds which torched ov­er 5,000 Sikhs in the city of Delhi, in November 1984, and in spite of witness acc­o­u­nts were never brought to trial because of the turpitu­de of politicians who conti­nue to lie. Whether it is the RSS saying that they were not responsible for Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, or Rahul Gandhi denying Co­ngress role in the Sikh ge­­nocide we are left with the conundrum, “who can we trust?”

Hannah Arendt argued wi­th regard to the trial of Ei­c­hmann, that lies libera­te...they free the person fr­om the guilt of his actions and from remembering. By lying they enter a space, which is irreconcilable with everyday reality. Life bec­omes segmentalised. There is violence, but there is the curious and compelling mirage of the goal. Nothing can stop the achievement of that goal. Murder becomes domesticated as the virtue of being ideologically imb­ued by values, which are associated with the traditions of valour.

It is in this conte­xt, we ask, as Mrinal Pande has do­ne for so long in the Hi­ndi press: What happens to women and children when men are drinking, gambling and warring? What indeed? Virginia Woolf in her anti-war manifestos wrote wo­m­en should refuse to bear ch­ildren because they would be sacrificed in war. Today, we see young people fighting for the freedom to cho­ose. The costs they are paying are immense. JNU for 48 years remained a site of collegial and literary and sc­i­entific endeavour. The res­ults were there to be seen in NAAC evaluations till last year – 4.96 on a 5 grid. These were not easy to achieve.

Now with the repugna­n­ce that RSS administration feels for liberty, community and equality, for pure scien­ce and humanities it treads the well-known path to for­c­ed industrialisation and an engineering college on the JNU commons. Surveilla­n­ce, abdication of responsibility to human life and the surrendering to discrimination and bullying is what intellectuals are faced with on a daily bases. The blockades have just begun with several EU countries objecting to the arrest of intellectuals under the general label of Maoist activity.

(The writer is an Indian sociologist, social anthropologist and a fiction writer)