It is not a given that JNU should be allowed to follow a certain ideology, however toxic, in perpetuity at a great cost to our taxpayers

“Jeevan vyartha gayawon madho agar JNU me na padh payo”, said a friend in late 1980s while taking long swigs of fresh air and a little bit of something else near Ganga Dhaba. He was right.

Where on earth do you get a 1000-acre campus located amid hills, forests, bushes, rugged yet lush green terrain, beautiful buildings, great faculty and bragging rights of studying in one of India’s premier institutions? And all for practically nothing by way of tuition fees?

What did really happen in JNU a few days back under garb of a ‘cultural show’?

A group of students celebrated the martyrdom of Afzal Guru (convicted and hanged for his role in armed attack on Parliament) and Maqbool Bhatt (founder of JKLF, who masterminded the first hijacking of Indian Airlines plane in 1971).

Slogans such as “Bharat ki Barbadi tak Kashmir ki Aadi tak jung karenge jung karenge; Bharat ke solah tukrade honge Insa Allah Insa Allah; Kitne Afzal maroge har ghar se Afzal niklega; Afzal hi hatya nahi sahenge nahi sahenge, halla bol halla bol, ladkar lenge Azadi, cheen kar lenge Azadi, Azadi Azadi, Pakistan Zindabad, Pakistan Zindabad…”

Move over from south Delhi to central Delhi.

A Type VII bungalow has been allotted to Press Club of India. All top government of India establishments – Rashtrapati Bhawan, Parliament, PMO, North Block, South Block, Rail Bhawan, Sena Bhawan, Krishi Bhawan, Shastri Bhawan, Udyog Bhawan, RBI, Niti Ayog, etc are all within its vicinity to make life easier for journalists to do their duty.

A day after the ‘cultural show’ in JNU, similar scenes were witnessed at the Press Club office. The poster in the backdrop for the seminar read: “Celebrating martyrdom of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhatt”. During the event at PCI, some JNU students raised the same slogans ‘Bharat ki barbadi tak jung karenge… Pakistan Zindabad!’

If this not an anti-national act then perhaps the term ‘anti-national’ should be deleted from the dictionary.

Even if a terrorist is caught and sentenced to death after the due process of law, some so called progressives and liberals would proclaim the likes of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhatt as “innocents” and turn them into martyrs of judicial killing.

Those who are caught supporting them would be endearingly called “unintelligent fools” as if they are not aware of the criminality of their act and were motivated by ‘well-meaning’ anger. The state which brings them to book would be termed as Hindu Taliban (as this article by a JNU student argued), because it is currently ruled by a BJP government with Narendra Modi as Prime Minister.

No one, however, cares to define since when this 20-plus or 30-plus JNU students have become “unintelligent fools” (as this article by a senior Firstpost colleague argues).

Yesterday a purported tweet (withdrawn later by Twitter) by Jamat ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed alarmed intelligence and security agencies.

The 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind allegedly announced to the world that he stood in support of miscreants in JNU and created a hashtag #PakStandsWithJNU, asking his "brothers" to trend it.

The handle used was @HafeezSaeedJUD, but it couldn't be verified if the tweet came from an official handle as it was soon deactivated.

Relax. No one is shutting down JNU.

But the argument that all this was happening at the University for a long time because it has always been a Left bastion and we should not get alarmed by a little seditious behavior because it’s essentially harmless, is specious and should be called out.

This argument takes as axiomatic the belief that this 1000-acre institution should be allowed to follow a certain ideology, however toxic, in perpetuity at a great cost to our taxpayers and that the students shall never be questioned and the laws of the land shall never apply to them.

How cute!

“We are Left, we are students, we have a right to subsidy and thus different laws should be applied to us. The state which questions us is bad, the nation where we live deserves to be dismembered and the government which rules is Hindu Taliban”. If this is the propaganda, it needs to be countered.

One of the prominent protestors gave a sound bite that curtailment of free speech and expression of dissenting views will breed more terrorists.

In videos, he along with others is seen lustily raising anti-India slogans.

The so-called liberals have targeted home minister Rajnath Singh for publicly calling the incident in JNU as an anti-national act and for saying that he had asked Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi to take strong action against those behind this incident.

It is the same group of people who cry hoarse and rap the government for any delay in statement by senior ministers or Prime Minister on issues which they on their own decide are of national importance.

Singh was right in speaking out his mind, more so because these pro-Pakistan, anti-India propagandist events have been happening in the national capital. The State’s silence would have come as a huge sign of weakness and, worse, as a manifestation of a soft government.

In the last two days, Singh spoke to Delhi Police chief thrice – Thursday night, Friday morning and Friday evening. Other intelligence agencies have also been roped in to investigate whether this was a standalone event or it had its wires spread over elsewhere and how far.

Finding this as an opportunity to train guns against Modi government, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has come out in support of these students.

He tweeted “No one supports anti-national forces. But targeting innocent students using that as an excuse will prove v costly to Modi govt”.

He has also retweeted some tweets suggesting students’ innocence and critical of Modi government’s police action.