From New York to JNU via Caracas, skipping Dhaka
Despite teaching in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) for nearly a quarter of a century—and voluntarily retiring in early 2024—I must confess that I remained somewhat of an alien in ‘planet JNU’. Three recent events confirmed this sense of puzzlement mingled with pique.
The first was the recent outbreak of ‘anti-national’ slogan-shouting of January 6-7 on campus to mark the ‘anniversary’ of the 2020 attack on JNU. I covered that event in my book titled JNU: Nationalism and India’s Uncivil War. Many national leaders and cabinet ministers, including Union external affairs minister S Jaishankar and finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, both distinguished JNU alumns, deplored that attack.
So did I. Letting loose thugs and vigilantes on campus to settle political scores is not desirable, especially on a thinking campus such as JNU, with a tradition of vibrant debate and dissent. One of my own former colleagues, who had stepped out of his house to see what was going on, was also injured, albeit not seriously. How can beating up a teacher, that too a bystander, be condoned?
That the JNU Students’ Union, still Leftist, would commemorate the 2020 campus invasion, combined with the US surgical strike in Caracas, is hardly surprising. But should the protesters also raise obnoxious slogans against our prime minister and home minister, as reported in the national media? No. Who raised such slogans and why? Were they JNU-ites or outsiders, infiltrating the campus to foment trouble? Only an impartial inquiry will answer such questions. The pro-government JNU administration is sure to take action if any students are found guilty. If no action is taken, we might assume that the perpetrators cannot be identified, whether deliberately or inexplicably. Politics is murky; JNU politics especially so.
Speaking of which, let me come to the second of the three grounds of this column. Newly minted New York mayor Zohran Mamdani’s meeting with Umar Khalid’s parents and message of support to his partner, Banojyotsna Lahiri. What is Mamdani’s locus standi in the matter is a legitimate question that ruling party spokespersons have repeatedly asked in TV debates.
That there is an Islamist-Leftist alliance is a plausible, even obvious, explanation. These alliances are not merely local but worldwide, and stand the test of further scrutiny. These groups are also well-funded and lubricated by global media networks. But does this mean ‘jail, not bail’, the reverse of what the Supreme Court advised? Why should some ‘draconian’ Acts hold an undertrial guilty until proven innocent? Why not a speedy sentencing or bail instead? These, to my mind, are equally legitimate questions.
But speaking of Mamdani’s intervention in the matter, if his heart bleeds for the Khalids and Imams of India, why not also for the many innocent lynched Hindus in Bangladesh? From Ananda Gopal Ganguly, the 70-year-old Hindu priest brutally murdered and decapitated in 2016, to Khokon Chandra Das, stabbed and hacked multiple times, then set on fire just a few days ago. What about the Hindu priest, Chinmoy Krishna Das, a conscientious objector against Islamist violence, arrested on sedition charges in November 2024 and released on bail only in April of the following year, after an international outrage? Mamdani has been consistently silent on such atrocities against Hindus, even though his mother, Mira Nair, is Hindu. What does that say about his credibility?
Finally, former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s kidnapping and arrest, along with his wife, by the US special forces on President Donald J Trump’s orders. I remember Hugo Chávez’s calling on JNU in March 2005, during his four-day official visit to India. What a hero’s welcome he received! Outside his own country and barring, perhaps, Cuba, his reception in JNU must have been unprecedented in its enthusiasm. Chávez seized foreign assets, nationalised Venezuela’s oil business, and, as with many other Communist dictatorships, arguably set his country’s course to rack and ruin.
Maduro, a ‘Chavista’ who stole the Venezuelan presidential election in 2018, as declared by that country’s national assembly, destroyed what was left of a once-prosperous democracy. Over 50 countries, including of course the US, refused to recognise him as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state. What is more, from the Indian standpoint, he was a strange kind of Marxist. He and his wife, Cilia Adela Flores, are ardent devotees of Sathya Sai Baba. I don’t know any Indian Communist who belongs to such a fraternity. Although during the Indian ‘godman’s’ recent 100th birth anniversary celebrations, the who’s who of Indian politics, from the president and prime minister of India to many somewhat lower down the ladder of power, were in attendance.
While one cannot easily justify the US’s snatching of Maduro, let us compare the Indian response to another act of blatant international aggression, which went against the rule-based world order, not to mention the lame-duck United Nations. Of course, I am referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, at the behest of its strongman president, Vladimir Putin. The four-year, still ongoing war, has claimed over a million lives. In the US raid on Venezuela, there were fewer than 50 casualties. The very same people who are shouting themselves hoarse in India over US ‘imperialism’, far from condemning Russia, supported Putin’s invasion.
Why the double standards, one wonders, whether it comes to Mamdani’s concern for Umar Khalid or the crescendo of condemnation of the US action in Latin America. Or closer home, in the JNU student protests, which, never in my experience, denounced Chinese atrocities in Inner Mongolia or Tibet. For that matter, I have rarely heard discussions or critiques anywhere in India of Mao’s devastating, some would say genocidal, misadventures such as the ‘Great Leap Forward’ or ‘Cultural Revolution’.
Anti-imperialism, by default, is anti-Western, especially anti-American. It is rarely anti-Communist or anti-Islamist, for reasons both historical and ideological. But changing this stereotype may well be the first step in meaningful engagement with our world in 2026.
Makarand R Paranjape | RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE | Author and commentator
(Views are personal)
(Tweets @MakrandParanspe)