JNU Protests: Repeat of Tiananmen Square Crackdown in India

While Narendra Modi is ready to use against students all the powers that people of India bestowed upon him in the 2014 elections, a repeat of the Tiananmen Square in India cannot be ruled out.

By Rakesh Raman

It seems to be a repeat of the China’s Tiananmen Square protests at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in India’s capital New Delhi.

During the past two weeks, the government of India led by its Hindu Prime Minister Narendra Modi has put all the state paraphernalia into action to crush the dissenting student voices at the JNU, which is among India’s premier universities that promote free speech.

In the past few weeks, besides JNU, Modi’s BJP government has unleashed a series of attacks on students in India’s top universities. The severity of Modi’s fury is so high that there are instances when students committed suicide to escape the increasing government atrocities.

With the help of his education minister (who is an illiterate woman), Modi is invading India’s top educational institutions to take complete control of them. As he is hell-bent to make India a Hindu Rashtra (a nation only for people who belong to the Hindu religion), Modi wants to indoctrinate Indian students with his philosophy of Hinduism.

[ Also Read: How India Abuses Children’s Right to Education ]

Modi is cunningly promoting Hinduism under the garb of nationalism. In the Indian universities, he is using the student wing of BJP – Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) – to spread a culture of animosity and hatred. Those who oppose Modi’s divisive tactics of dividing India on religious lines are being branded as anti-nationals or terrorists under sedition charges.

“For the last 21 months, there has been a sustained attack on civil liberties in India. Anybody who disagrees with the agenda of BJP is targeted, attacked and called anti-national,” the opposition party Congress said in a statement.

[ Also Read: Government Attacks on Students Intensify in India ]

Kanhaiya Kumar, a JNU leader, is among the latest victims who are facing sedition charges slapped by the government. Kumar has been arrested by the police under Modi government orders and when he was brought to the court last week, he was attacked by goons – who were believed to be unleashed by the BJP government.

Another JNU student, Umar Khalid, is being labeled as terrorist by a section of the corrupt Indian media that enjoys tacit support from the Modi government.

[ No Democracy in India. It Is Parliamentary Dictatorship. ]

In a speech on Monday at JNU – which has become a veritable police cantonment – Khalid dismissed the charges against him and said that he may be a Muslim but not a terrorist.

Meanwhile, Prakash Karat – a communist politician in India – has extended the support of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to the students’ struggle at JNU. He criticized Modi government’s use of force to suppress students’ dissent in all parts of India.

“What we are witnessing today is the truth of the “Gujarat Model” where the Modi Raj destroys all voices of dissent till there is none left to criticise his policies. Rather than “Minimum Government, Maximum Governance,” Prime Minister Modi has given the nation “Minimum Governance, Maximum Gundagardi (hooliganism),” according to the Congress party.

However, Modi said on Sunday that various forces are conspiring to topple his government because of his resolve for corruption-free governance.

As Modi and BJP government are trying to defend their oppressive actions against students, the students across India are slowly uniting to oppose the government attacks on them.

While Modi is ready to use against students all the powers that people of India bestowed upon him in the 2014 elections when he became the Prime Minister of India, a repeat of the Tiananmen Square in India cannot be ruled out.

By Rakesh Raman, the managing editor of RMN Company

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Photo / Video courtesy: CPI (M)