BLUNT BUTCHER
JAMMU: It must be happening only in India. The new signature tone of freedom of expression remind the prophetic words of Winston Churchill, who had aptly said before India woke to the dawn of independence in 1947, “Power will go to the hands of rascals, rogues, freebooters; all Indian leaders will be of low caliber and men of straw. They will have sweet tongues and silly hearts. They will fight amongst themselves for power and India will be lost in political squabbles.”
Power is not all about ruling the Delhi throne. It is when people become powerful by adopting extra-constitutional means. Kanhaya Kumar is a case in point. The poor lad of an Anganwari worker, pursuing subsidized studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University with a paltry part of meager Rs 3,000 a month, walks free from a jail after abusing the nation and trampling its symbols thanks to legal assistance of lawyers, who otherwise charge whopping Rs 75 lakh per hearing. Any boy in the neighbourhood, like his modest background, can’t afford even a cycle but Kanhaiya Kumar travels back to the university in a luxury sedan car. A seditious leaves the jail as a leader and a youth icon.
Winston Churchil says India will go to the hands of rascals.
Kanhaiya Kumar became heart-throb of all the Pappus of Indian politics, who made beeline in the JNU campus, to express solidarity and to be seen by his side for having been slapped the seditious charges after a group ranted “Bharat Ki Barbadi Tak”, “Afzal Hum Sharminda Haih, Tere Katil Zinda Haih”, and “Hum Kya Chahte Azadi, Afzal Wali Azadi, Maqbool Wali Azadi”.
Imagine such a scenario taking place in the US or the UK, or for that matter, Canada or Australia, what would have been the consequence. Obviously, worst than what Virat Kohli fan met in Pakistan for liking the Indian cricketer. The poor guy got ten years imprisonment. Ironically, Parvez Musharraf or Imran Khan did not visit him and managed battery of lawyers to see his acquittal, no matter what costs.
The JNU lad on conditional bail has least remorse for being witness to high voltage anti-India rants. Glorified to such an extent by Rahul Gandhi, Sitaram Yechury, Nitesh Kumar and some media moguls, he now takes sadistic pleasure in maligning Indian armed forces for committing rapes in Kashmir. The urchin, who offended a lady by openly urinating in the university campus, is a role model for communists who are all set to plunge him electioneering to retain back power in West Bengal. For the pseudo secular brigade, he has come as a new avatar to open up a front against Narendra Modi for his crime of defeating the first Indian family. No wonder they will ‘sacrifice’ the name after which the JNU is reputed if it serves their purpose of belittling Modi.
The moral of the Kanhaiya Kumar story is that anti-nationals have a fair chance of gaining national stature in India, which is a great democracy with track record of freedom of speech. This is the strength of democracy that despite challenging Indian sovereignty, day in and day out, anti-national hawk like Syed Ali Shah Geelani gets nation-wide attention for breathlessness complaint. For his refusal to shun the belief of violence as means to achieve political objectives, the US had denied him visa for getting medical assistance in that country in the middle of last decade.
The ‘high-point’ of Indian democracy is reflected in almost red-carpet treatment to Yasin Malik when he met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, not as an ultra of JKLF but a reformist or self styled Gandhi. The glow of pride could be seen in the eyes of the former Prime Minister when he shook hands with a personwhose hands are soaked with the blood of three innocent Indian Air Force officers who were gunned down in Srinagar outskirts in early 1990.
The democracy is so ingrained in Indian system that those gunning down soldiers, pelting stones on their convoys or creating obstacles in their operations against Pakistan backed marauders in Kashmir are most sought after and those swearing by India and Indian symbols are languishing in camps outside their homes and hearths. Freedom of expression is for such of Indian activists, politicians and media barons, who rake up allegations against the security forces on human rights front but keep silent over the carnages and rapes being committed by Maoists or Kashmiri terrorists.
The vote bank politics has taken toll of Indian politics. And, in such a grim scenario, a violent thought keeps haunting the foolish patriots as to whether “we deserved independence or were better as bartenders, caddies, servants etc of the Sahibs and Mem Sahibs”.
