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In choosing to crack down on political dissent at JNU, arresting the president of the student union and charging him with sedition for allegedly organizing a meeting in support of Afzal Guru and shouting anti-India slogans, and the subsequent statements in support of these actions by its leaders, has the government scored a self-goal? Surely, many argue, at a time when the prime minister is busy promoting the ‘Make in India’ campaign, seeking greater participation of the investing community, domestic and foreign, and the need to secure greater cooperation of opposition political parties to ensure key legislation in Parliament, ratcheting up political and societal confrontation makes little sense.

Is this seemingly inexplicable political behaviour and strategy only a reflection of the relative inexperience and ineptitude of this government? Are the actions better understood as part of a political strategy to both divert attention of the electorate from still unaddressed issues like unemployment and price rise, and polarize support on emotive issues of culture, identity and national security? It does appear that despite the drubbing it received in the Bihar assembly elections, the BJP leadership continues to believe that issues like beef, love jihad, and the danger of ‘Islamic’ terrorism, particularly after Pathankot, will yield significant dividends.

To, however, reduce our reading of the recent actions of the ruling dispensation to merely ineptitude or short-run political calculus would be an error. Rather, what we are also witnessing is an escalating conflict over core and defining ideas, in the current conjuncture related to our understanding of the dharma of a public university and of nationalism/national security. The mendacious actions of the establishment, most recently in JNU and earlier the Central University of Hyderabad or the Film and Television Institute, Pune, reflect a concerted effort to redefine our understanding of a public university as a welcoming space for people of diverse background to learn and evolve through a process of open-ended enquiry and vigorous debate both the skills and orientation needed to nurture a liberal and democratic republic.

Alongside is an equally disturbing effort to mould our understanding of the collective self by vilifying an expansive and inclusive reading of nationalism and seeking to replace it by a narrow and hard version which gives little legitimate space for any dissenting imagination. More starkly stated, there is an attempt to construct a new normal, one which favours ‘adherence to duty’ over ‘assertion of rights’ and ‘conformity’ over ‘dissent and debate’. Many fear that the demand for ‘falling in line’ is but the first step towards tyranny.

In the BJP/Sangh Parivar view, the JNU exemplifies all that is wrong/undesirable about our higher education space. In addition to the fact that the university is named after its most prominent ‘hate’ figure, JNU has ‘distinguished’ itself as a site of vigorous student activism, exercised over not only issues related to the campus but the larger polity, almost always with a left-liberal orientation. Its extensive affirmative action policy in admissions, going well beyond the constitutionally mandated reservations for SCs and STs by giving weightages to income, region and schooling, has given it a singularly diverse and national reach. None of this is designed to endear it to people who extol a gurukul model foregrounding unquestioning obedience.

But, one suspects, what most annoys, if not enrages, the BJP and its supporters is the role of key university personnel in denying legitimacy to the Sangh view on history and culture; worse, denigrating them as communal and divisive. Little surprise, so many of its ideologues paint the university as both a bastion of privilege and anti-national, regularly demanding its closure.

Arguable, the move to ‘discipline’ the university has failed to find support, except among the faithful. If anything, the ham-handed slapping of sedition charges on the student union president, the branding of all those who ‘questioned’ the actions as anti-national, allowing the police on the campus, the violence on the lawyers and media personnel in the court premises – to list a few – has only helped magnify the issue. In the process, it may have helped unify and given greater strength to the opposition. Ironically though, the criticism, particularly by foreign academics, has also strengthened the feeling of being under siege, a conspiracy to destabilize the regime.

What it has also done is lay bare the thinking of this government. To paraphrase Pratap Bhanu Mehta: The recent moves represent an open declaration by the government that it has a monopoly on nationalism and has no patience with alternative formulations. More than just wanting to crush dissent, it wants to crush thinking. To, however, reduce the current conflagration to only an issue concerning JNU or even the universities and not think about the wider ramifications is only to invite peril.

Harsh Sethi