The overreaction of the Government to a few chanting "anti-India" slogans inside the JNU campus recently is quite incredible, though not entirely surprising. What follows are a few remarks on the incident which are so trivial that I should probably apologize in advance to any reasonable person reading this.
The reaction of the Government and its other right-wing friends to the whole thing has been so outrageous that it leaves little scope for any rational discussion. So instead, as the title of the article suggests, I explore the reaction of the (so called) Left. From discussions in the mainstream media, the position of the Left, as far as I understand, is that the slogans chanted were reprehensible and those who did so should be identified, found and punished, as long as the Government does not target the institution as a whole or harass its students (as it clearly has done).
I criticize the position above as it says nothing about two important things. First, what about the civil rights of those who actually shouted the slogans? Since the 18th century (say, Voltaire), it has been a truism outside fascist circles that the right to free expression is not restricted to ideas one approves of and must be most vigorously defended precisely in the case of ideas one finds most offensive. It has also been understood that any restriction on this right comes with a burden of proof that has to be met by those who impose such a restriction. Instead of challenging the Government to meet this burden of proof, the position described above takes for granted that the Government has the right to punish those who actually shouted the "reprehensible" slogans.
The second is that it has nothing to say about the slogans except dismissing them as reprehensible. I think we should pay a little more attention to what an anti-India slogan may mean, since the term India, when used without context, is pretty abstract. So when someone or something is labelled anti-India, we must first ask ourselves whether it implies being against some abstract notion of a nation state based on the principles enshrined in our Constitution or if it implies opposition to the Indian state in its present form, with its extreme commitment to wealth, power and privilege and the very real atrocities it commits against its own citizens. If the answer is the latter, which in my opinion is quite obvious, the way to respond is by addressing these underlying issues, which are quite real, not with a sledgehammer as the Government has done. It is the responsibility of the Left to draw attention to these issues, rather than getting hijacked into an abstract "national" vs "anti-national" debate.
The reaction of the Government and its other right-wing friends to the whole thing has been so outrageous that it leaves little scope for any rational discussion. So instead, as the title of the article suggests, I explore the reaction of the (so called) Left. From discussions in the mainstream media, the position of the Left, as far as I understand, is that the slogans chanted were reprehensible and those who did so should be identified, found and punished, as long as the Government does not target the institution as a whole or harass its students (as it clearly has done).
I criticize the position above as it says nothing about two important things. First, what about the civil rights of those who actually shouted the slogans? Since the 18th century (say, Voltaire), it has been a truism outside fascist circles that the right to free expression is not restricted to ideas one approves of and must be most vigorously defended precisely in the case of ideas one finds most offensive. It has also been understood that any restriction on this right comes with a burden of proof that has to be met by those who impose such a restriction. Instead of challenging the Government to meet this burden of proof, the position described above takes for granted that the Government has the right to punish those who actually shouted the "reprehensible" slogans.
The second is that it has nothing to say about the slogans except dismissing them as reprehensible. I think we should pay a little more attention to what an anti-India slogan may mean, since the term India, when used without context, is pretty abstract. So when someone or something is labelled anti-India, we must first ask ourselves whether it implies being against some abstract notion of a nation state based on the principles enshrined in our Constitution or if it implies opposition to the Indian state in its present form, with its extreme commitment to wealth, power and privilege and the very real atrocities it commits against its own citizens. If the answer is the latter, which in my opinion is quite obvious, the way to respond is by addressing these underlying issues, which are quite real, not with a sledgehammer as the Government has done. It is the responsibility of the Left to draw attention to these issues, rather than getting hijacked into an abstract "national" vs "anti-national" debate.
