New Delhi: The political contest over the controversies related to the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Rohith Vemula suicide shifted to the Rajya Sabha with the CPM leader Sitaram Yechury, himself a former JNU student, demanding that there should be a house committee to go into all these developments and find the answers.
Initiating the debate, Yechury charged that in all these instances the government is patronising the project of metamorphosing India’s Secular, Democratic Republic into what they call the Hindu Rashtra. ‘‘To replace history with mythology, to replace the rich Indian philosophy with Hindu theology, is the larger project at work and this project is an assault on the Constitution of India,” he observed.
The CPM leader said that there have been earlier instances of Dalit students committing suicide, but that doesn’t absolve what has happened now with the tragic suicide of Rohith Vemula. ‘‘These students were socially ostracized. Their scholarships were stopped. And, stopping their scholarships, actually, means virtually murdering them,” he said.
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Countering the union HRD minister Smriti Irani’s argument in the Lok Sabha that she was simply doing her duty when she responded to another minister Bandaru Dattatreya’s letter about Vemula, Yechury said that we all write letters to the Minister.
“There is nothing wrong. But, in this case, it is not ordinary letters that are being written and answers given. You have five senior officers of the Ministry intervening, telling the University to take action. That is a partisan intervention which is not according to any Constitutional foundations in our country, and the government has exceeded the brief of answering only letters. The matter here is, through this intervention, a situation has been created that led to this tragic death,” he observed.
With reference to the JNU controversy, he said he was born in a Hindu family. “I learnt all Vedas. I ended up in Communism because I studied all of them: The slogans against ‘Manuvaad’ will remain. If you want to arrest me then arrest me,” he said.
He also charged that the government’s intervention in JNU was partisan, as in the name of that (nationalism), the university as a whole is being penalized. That I think is unfortunate. You don’t have to teach us patriotism,” he added.
Leader of opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad in his intervention said: “On the issue of secularism and nationalism, you (BJP) stay in a glass palace. We stay in a safe stone house… if we throw even one stone, the whole glass edifice will fall.”
From the government side, union finance minister Arun Jaitley questioned the opposition for supporting JNU students charged with sedition over an event on February 9 in support of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, during which anti-India slogans were raised. “Hate speech is not freedom of expression. You must realise that this is not the case of some course being tinkered with. Slogans against integrity and sovereignty of India were being raised,” he said.
Pointing out that there are many who call her an “unpad mantri” Smriti Irani read from a Facebook post of Rohith Vemula to question the CPM. ”When was the last time CPI(M) talked about something and achieved it at national level? “ she demanded.
She also informed the house that she had spoken to Rohith’s mother.
