DC Debate: Penalty corner

BJP wants to divide on caste lines

Rajesh Dixit

Ever since the Narendra Modi government came to power, there’s been a plethora of issues where the ruling National Democratic Alliance government has scored self-goals. It allowed the issue of beef ban to simmer and gain traction, with the auxiliary forces of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh having a free run because Mr Modi chose to maintain silence. They whipped up passion in the name of “love jihad” and the country witnessed manufactured incidents thrust on the society to engage people with trivial ideas.

The dalit student Rohith Vemula of the University of Hyderabad was pushed to the wall to commit suicide. The Modi government was busy proving that Rohith did not belong to the dalit community. Mr Modi, while maintaining a deafening silence, allowed the stupidity of his collective government to play out for months.

The NDA seemingly has become the flag-bearer of the ideological battle of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad against the Left students’ unions.

When the sorry tales of affairs reached the doorstep of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Kanhaiya Kumar, the JNUSU president, was slapped with sedition charges and jailed. The Delhi high court released him, while the government was left red-faced.

We have witnessed much talks on the issue of intolerance. India is a land of Buddha and Gandhi and its people are culturally tolerant. Tolerance is the fountainhead of India’s cultural heritage. Who is trying to create clear-cut demarcation in society and why?

Now that elections are approaching in five Assemblies and the most significant Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls less than a year away, there appears a clear pattern on the part of the saffronites to whip up communal passions to polarise people. Their agenda is clearly to disturb the law and order situation.

It must be noted that all big events of the groups attached with the RSS are being held in western Uttar Pradesh. They are also holding meetings to revive the issue of Ayodhya.

The Samajwadi Party is well aware of the hidden agenda of the people in whipping up communal passions and is taking effective steps to defeat their designs.

The SP believes in the unity of the people, and has full faith in the Ganga-Jamuni cultural heritage of the people of the state.

It must also be noted that while the statement of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat that the reservation policy has been used for political ends proved to be the BJP’s Waterloo in the Bihar Assembly elections, they are hellbent on disturbing the constitutional arrangements for the empowerment of the socially downtrodden sections of society.

We have seen the most unfortunate caste violence in Haryana recently, where a section of society was up in arms against the other. This is suggestive of the agenda of the BJP to divide the people on caste lines.

But the public is wise enough to see through the designs of the BJP and its auxiliary groups. They are setting up an agenda to win the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections by dividing people.

The BJP will face another Waterloo in Lucknow in February next year. And that will be a verdict to seal the fate of the BJP in coming years.

Rajesh Dixit is national secretary, Samajwadi Party

It is an ideological victory

R. Balashankar

The Jawaharlal Nehru University episode is a penalty corner handed over by the Opposition, which the Bharatiya Janata Party flawlessly converted into a goal. Ever since the JNU episode of February 9 hit headlines, a section of the media and political class — living in their self-imposed echo chamber — has been assiduously trying all sorts of subterfuge to help and cover-up the gang of Maoist-jihadi-Left nexus in the name of freedom of speech and force the government to retreat from the course of action it took to book the anti-India elements ensconced in the campus.

If it were any other government, the culprits of JNU would have gone scot-free, similar to all other previous occasions when the campus witnessed such anti-national activities.

That JNU had, for long, become a safe haven for subversive activities was well known. It’s not only events like the protest against the hanging of Afzal Guru and Mahishasur Martyrdom Day, celebration of the Maoist killings of Central Reserve Police Force soldiers or hailing the killers of Indira Gandhi which show that JNU — under the wilful neglect if not patronage of the successive Congress governments at the Centre — has become a laboratory for experimenting with the faultlines in India’s sovereign existence. The academicians and their pupils, who fell victim to an old Communist theorem that Indian Independence was a sham and real independence will come only when dozens of nationalities in India will forcefully wrest their freedom from the Union of India, have been working to legitimise and justify all fissiparous and secessionist activities in any part of the country. Enjoying Central patronage and huge subsidies from taxpayers’ contribution, this shameless gang worked and prospered as parasites to the system which conferred them sustenance and respectability.

Thus, the 1,200-acre perch in the heart of the national capital, enjoying an annual Central grant of Rs 650 crore, with over Rs 3 lakh of taxpayers’ money spent on each student per year, became a law unto itself.

Its admission process, appointments of teachers, even allotment of accommodation in its 22 sprawling hostels, all became subject to the whims of a modern-day Marxian Gestapo which practised unbelievable terror and intolerance to any other ideological hue.

Only the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad stood out, valiantly resisting the anti-India activities. Now the silent majority is speaking out.

It was expected of the Modi government to expose and punish the guilty who mocked at Indian unity, sovereignty and democracy. The call for total destruction of India, or raising slogans hailing Pakistan on Indian soil, or war till the country is finished cannot be part of freedom of speech.

The Delhi high court, in its interim bail order, has clearly enunciated this. To call for ousting a democratically-elected government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which the JNU Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar, after release, defined as his new expression of the meaning of “azadi”, cannot wash.

That for the first time these elements were forced to parrot adherence to the Constitution and wave the national flag proves that the action taken by the government has succeeded. And the entire nation is behind the BJP in its fight to protect India from this siege within.

R. Balashankar is former editor of Organiser and member, BJP Central Committee on Maha Prashikshan Abhiyan and Publications