JNU row: Barkha Dutt writes open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi

[deckingraj]

and you miss the plot. Delhi Police, under the shitty Bassi ain't gonna do any FIRs or do fair investigation.

So delhi police is shitty then whom where should the FIR be booked at? JNU??

 

[Guynextdoor2]

So delhi police is shitty then whom where should the FIR be booked at? JNU??

Delhi police is shitty no matter where the FIR is registered.

 

[Abingdonboy]

Guess Bhakti are now overusing their inkjet printers to give nationalism certificates and it's becoming obvious

Dear Mr. Prime Minister:

I write to you today because like so many of my fellow citizens, I am both angry and anguished. I am aware that a missive from someone like me - "presstitute", "bazaaru", "sickular" and worst of all, "anti-national"- will be most likely junked by your office as not worthy of your time.

In any case, ever since I reported on the 2002 riots in Gujarat, I am among the journalists you have clearly shunned and disliked - that is, of course, entirely your prerogative. But this week, I read that you told opposition parties that you are the PM of "all of India, not just of the BJP", and I thought I would hold you to that promise and ask for your attention as a citizen's entitlement.

Modiji, I take you back to the years before you became Chief Minister and began the "othering" of large sections of the English media whom you were convinced were out to get you: when you were the approachable and friendly General Secretary of the BJP, and I was a young reporter still learning the ropes. If you remember those years - and I am told you never forget (or forgive) - you would recall that I first cut my teeth as a journalist reporting a war from the frontline in Kargil in 1999. I was still in my 20s, and the intimacy and immediacy of that overwhelming exposure would make me a life-long admirer of our military. My emphasis, even back then, was to humanize and personalize the stories of soldiers in the trenches and ensure they would not remain faceless, nameless statistics. Over the years, the bonds I forged with the Fauj only grew deeper - my reporting has often taken me back to the border, to the Line of Control and a variety of conflict zones to where they've been deployed. Over the past two decades, I have done hundreds of news programs devoted to the Soldier - the discrepancies in hardship allowances between jawans and bureaucrats, the shameful mountain of government litigation against disabled soldiers who are dragged to court for pensions, the pending promise of One Rank One Pension, the bottlenecks in defense procurement, and the many sacrifices of our men and women in uniform.

So I write this as a sentimental and proud Indian who has often been teased by my more left-leaning friends and colleagues for my rather maudlin and unintellectual patriotism. I would submit that the binaries that spokespersons of your government have created (aided by the hyper-nationalist drum-beating of channels like Times Now and News X) are absolutely false. It is entirely possible to deeply respect the military and feel ashamed of the multiple manipulations, doctored videos, police excesses, government heavy-handedness, brazen hooliganism and ominous environment of intimidation that the crackdown on JNU has revealed. In fact, for your party to use the death of ten Siachen bravehearts to validate the gross over-reach we have seen in JNU is to, in my view, cynically exploit the honour of the uniform. I wish there was half as much outrage when your good friend Jayalalithaa's photograph was placed on the coffin of one of the Siachen soldiers by her minister, who was then proudly photographed with it.

Modi ji, I would also like to take you back to a man whose name you love invoking - Atal Bihari Vajpayee. I remember the tingling excitement of hope and optimism that ran through my veins as I stood among the crowds in Srinagar in 2003 and heard him discard the rigidities of legalism and offer "Insaniyat" as the framework for reconciliation in the Kashmir Valley. Sadly, in its handling of the JNU controversy, the government has subverted the Vajpayee legacy in one fell swoop - I assume with your approval.

Where Vajpayee promised that Humanism would override the literal application of the law as he stretched out a hand even to pro-Azaadi separatists, this week we have seen a singular absence of generosity or empathy from the team you lead. The Home Minister went so far as to link students to the dreaded Lashkar terrorist Hafiz Saeed, based on a police endorsement of a fake Twitter account. Not just have we not seen any evidence of terror links, but it now appears that the video used to slap a sedition charge on Kanhaiya Kumar, the JNU student leader, has been doctored, with the audio spliced onto images from a different day.

In a country that took pride in giving even Ajmal Kasab, a 26/11 perpetrator, a fair trial, a young man whose worst crime (and that's if you stretch it) is that he could not stop a handful of other students from raising some admittedly disturbing slogans - has been slapped and pushed around in court in the presence of a police that failed or perhaps refused to protect him. The HRD Minister Smriti Irani speaks of how the anti-India slogans were an insult to "Mother India". But aren't Mothers benign, forgiving, broad-minded and all embracing? Stern, yes, when a child needs it, but surely never heartless.

Yet, heartlessness and hypocrisy combined with sneering aggression is what's been on display this entire week. As goons in black robes rampaged through the Delhi court house where Kanhaiya Kumar is being tried, they assaulted journalists not just on day one, but then once again, a little over 24 hours later, emboldened by the knowledge that no cop was going to come after them and in open contempt of a Supreme Court directive. Euphoric from the taste of blood, they congratulated each other on social media for being the "shers" who did "what the government and military could not do". The Chief Goon, Vikram Chauhan, photographed with a slew of BJP leaders - everyone from Rajnath Singh to LK Advani - has been garlanded on the court premises; candles have been lit in "solidarity" for him. The alacrity with which the police arrested Kanhaiya Kumar is in cruel contrast to the inaction against these lumpen lawyers who enjoy political patronage.

There are police raids across the country to find the sloganeering students who have gone underground; friends who knew them are being identified from Facebook and summoned by the police from towns outside the capital; there are reports of hostels being searched, and landlords ousting JNU students to avoid "trouble". But the rowdies in robes are free, though surely the brazen violence and anti-constitutionalism by men meant to represent the law is a graver danger to democracy than mere words - no matter how awful and offensive - could ever be.

Yet, after all this, it was students of JNU who marched peacefully in their thousands carrying the tricolor and roses, using the gentleness of Gandhigiri to respond to the Goondagardi of the thugs in court.

Through all this, they may have wondered - as we do - what our Prime Minister thinks. Do you approve of the decision to send police onto a student campus? Might it not have been wiser and more mature to let the university administration tackle the issue, as the Jadavpur Vice-Chancellor has done? Now that it's clear that the "Azaadi" Kanhaiya Kumar spoke of was not from India, but from Hunger, Inequality, Communalism and Caste Bias, will the government apologize to him? And in any case, do you really think the Indian State is so fragile that it would come undone by a clutch of "Hum Kya Chahate - Azaadi" cries? Because if that's the new thinking, we may have to arrest an entire generation of Kashmiri youth instead of politically engaging with them.

Do you not, Mr. Prime Minister, agree that if you can visit Lahore to greet Nawaz Sharif on his birthday despite the specter of terrorism (and I thought it was spectacularly bold of you), if you can negotiate with Naga secessionists and proudly announce a peace accord (the details of which are still awaited), if you can ally with the PDP whose leader Mehbooba Mufti believes not just that Afzal Guru should not have been executed, but has, as part of her father's "healing touch", often visited the families of dead militants because she does not think their children should be punished - if you can take these decisions and never have your patriotism questioned, do you not think it's a crazy over-reaction of the government to arrest a young man for slogans that it now turns out weren't even his own? Is battling young students - first at the Pune Film Institute, then in Hyderabad, and now at JNU - really the war you want to lead your troops into?

Do you agree that "cooking beef" and "worshipping demons" should be part of a police report to explain the "anti-nationalism" of young men, doubly ironic because the police reports to a Minister who is from the beef-eating state of Arunachal Pradesh? Did your heart not break, just a little bit, when you saw Kanhaiya Kumar being dragged and pulled, his eyes worn by physical fear? And what was your thought when you opened the morning newspapers to see a legislator of your party pounce on an opposition activist who lay flat on the road with hands folded in fright, an image that made national and international headlines for both the asymmetry and abuse of power it conveyed?

We do not know the answer to any of these questions because you have just not spoken. You have become curiously Manmohan-esque in your silences after mocking your predecessor for them. With one crucial difference - he hardly ever spoke on anything, whereas you are voluble on a host of issues, except the festering crises that are often self-creations of the government. With respect, Mr. Prime Minister, given that you are a masterful orator and won the 2014 election at least partly on the back of effective communication, these silences are bewildering.

When you do break them, it's almost always far too late to contain the damage. Think Dadri. More recently, think how a young man called Rohith Vemula was driven to suicide in Hyderabad. By the time you did express your grief, party spokespersons had defiled the debate with conspiracy theories about whether he was a Dalit or not. Then, like now, they had forced their construct of nationalism onto the debate with whispers about how slogans were raised by Vemula against the execution of Yakub Memon.

Modiji, naturally, none of us like a slogan that calls for India's ruin.

But thought cannot be policed, and nationalism cannot be regimented; it's for every Indian to define it for herself. I still get goose-bumps every single time I hear our anthem, I leap to my feet to stand and sing it out loud in my foghorn voice. But I would never support punishing or intimidating those who sit through it in a movie hall, as we saw happen in Maharashtra recently.

We are all getting on in age, but let's for a moment think back to our years in university. Being young and being rebellious is all about non-conformism and anti-establishmentarianism, It's about questioning everything - marriage, love, sexuality, caste, religion - and yes, for some, even the Nation-State. As long as this sloganeering is not accompanied by an incitement to violence, surely we need not use the sledgehammer of sedition against young people.

You wouldn't need me to remind you of the famous case Balwant Singh Vs State of Punjab - the Supreme Court overturned the charge of sedition and acquitted those who had shouted, "Khalistan Zindabad, Raj Karega Khalsa" a few hours after Indira Gandhi's assassination. If the highest court of the land can show that maturity in a much more volatile and sensitive case than the JNU controversy, why can't the government? Do we even need a sedition law that was given to us by the British in the 1860s? (Britain incidentally scrapped it in 2010.)

Whatever the BJP calculations were on converting the JNU crackdown into political advantage have clearly dissipated. Given legal precedence, Kanhaiya Kumar is sooner or later likely to be acquitted by a higher court, and will walk out a hero. Given the writing on the wall, wouldn't you, Mr. Prime Minister, think it's wiser, kinder and yes, politically smarter - apart from it also being the only correct thing to do - to drop the charges against him, order the police and the Home Ministry to concede its mistake and apologize, drop the criminal charges against the other students, and hand back the case to the JNU administration to handle it as a disciplinary issue from here on?

Gurudev Tagore, who gave us our stirring national song, also wrote, "Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live".

Modi ji, India belongs to its young. The tricolor is in their hands. And so is our future.

So many of these "intellectuals" are locked in a war with Modi and I find not many are asking why? And no, I don't think it is ideological differences.

I think it is because these "intellectuals" had gotten so used to being "the establishment" but when Modi came in and put an end to their decades of patronage and quid pro quo status quo, kicked them out of their government bungalows in Delhi and stopped taking them on all expenses paid foriegn trips they are spitting their dummies out.

Compounding this is an oppostion beaten so badly that they are backed into a corner and coming out fighting- a most dangeorus beast indeed that will use any oppurtunity to demean the GoI. What did we see a few weeks ago? Senior Congress members in PAKISTAN sharing a stage with a LEADER who actively planned India's destruction, waged proxy (and actual) war on it and its people. It's funny how that spectacle didn't receive even 1% of the attention of the "tricolour scandel".

What a sick state of affairs.


@Levina @PARIKRAMA @anant_s

+ This is the same "patriotic" Burkha Dutt who is such a " life-long admirer of our military" that she has been getting members of it killed since 1999? In Kargil she conducted live coverage of military operations and revealed the movement of military formations to the whole world and did the exact same thing in 26/11 that got at least 1 NSG operator killed.

Yet another hypocrite who claims to be the moral authority of the world because they get a camara pointed at them for a living or have their thoughts printed.

 

[deckingraj]

Delhi police is shitty no matter where the FIR is registered.

well then what is the way out...book FIR in Haryana/UP?? The FIR has to be booked in Delhi and that's it...The problem is the same argument applies to all kind of videos....irrespective of they favor left or right...

So many of these "intellectuals" are locked in a war with Modi and I find not many are asking why? And no, I don't think it is ideological differences.

I think it is because these "intellectuals" had gotten so used to being "the establishment" but when Modi came in and put an end to their decades of patronage and quid pro quo status quo, kicked them out of their government bungalows in Delhi and stopped taking them on all expenses paid foriegn trips they are spitting their dummies out.

Compounding this is an oppostion beaten so badly that they are backed into a corner and coming out fighting- a most dangeorus beast indeed that will use any oppurtunity to demean the GoI. What did we see a few weeks ago? Senior Congress members in PAKISTAN sharing a stage with a LEADER who actively planned India's destruction, waged proxy (and actual) war on it and its people. It's funny how that spectacle didn't receive even 1% of the attention of the "tricolour scandel".

What a sick state of affairs.


@Levina @PARIKRAMA @anant_s

+ This is the same "patriotic" Burkha Dutt who is such a " life-long admirer of our military" that she has been getting members of it killed since 1999? In Kargil she conducted live coverage of military operations and revealed the movement of military formations to the whole world and did the exact same thing in 26/11 that got at least 1 NSG operator killed.

Yet another hypocrite who claims to be the moral authority of the world because they get a camara pointed at them for a living or have their thoughts printed.

They are called presstitudes for a reason...i will once again ask is there one program which talks about why those slogans were raised and what steps will JNU take or should take...god knows what has happened to intellectual levels of people that they can't see beyond saffron color....i mean these are same a$$ holes who were complaining that Modi was wearing color turban(which was actually tri-color in same tune with national flag) during his first speech from Red Fort with green given the least importance and safron being the dominant color...I mean honestly this is disgusting!!

 

[Star Wars]

"
If that is the caliber of Anti-Nationals I want to be one . I Identify myself as center-rightist but this govt has let me down and I will never vote for it again .

Chutiya kisko bana raha hai ? You were Anti Modi from the very beginning

 

[Cherokee]

Chutiya kisko bana raha hai ? You were Anti Modi from the very beginning

I voted for modi . If you were in my FB friend list you would have seen my updates when BJP won elections and then my disenchantment .

 

[Roybot]

Because of scale- from letting ABVP plants inside JNU shout anti India slogans
Making stooge Bassi arrest JNU students union president (the IB has clearly rubbished the DP allegations)
Take him to patiala instead of try him in Delhi
slap sedition charges (refer to the IB point)

....all that other parties have done is cry crocodile tears like you say.

Please tell me you don't think that Patiala house is in Patiala!

@ranjeet @JanjaWeed

There is a reason why Pappu is their leader.

 

[PARIKRAMA]

Why do you require so many emminent so called NDTV people to always show government is doing wrong and that government is non Congress but whatever congress did everything was a watered down. Version or at best given a spin showing something else completely...

The question of who shouting what will come out surely.. The stupidity of the whole Indian political class to throng onto JNU and expressing solidarity is plain and stupid.. I think people across India does see what such political parties and their student leaders are upto in JNU..

About Police, I think since the so called hero here kanhaiya Kumar has approached supreme Court I will let this matter handled by court only. Supreme Court is beyond political parties so I believe all will get a fair trial there..

About barkha dutt or rajdeep I remember only one thing.. The story of Greek mythology and Kraken.. Some people think Modi is the Kraken.. Some feel Modi has a kraken.. Either way he will end up destroying the "world" that they have build with hard work and efforts.. But then I remember from our desi mythology perhaps someone much closer.. Take Mahabharata and look for yudhistir.. He was reluctant to take on his own brothers but for 'Dharma' he did that.

I am not giving here w religious twist.. My thinking is plain and simple here.. First I am concerned about our country economic prosperity bcz that's connected to our own individual livelihood and people connected are dependent on us.. Unfortunately did so called anti nationals like barkha or rajdeep showcased how the else where government destroyed the country or how even today this government is struggling to clear the Mesa.. How Parliament is brought to knees by the whims and fancies of one political party whose leader is as imported as my fancy Italian leather belt..did they show why everything is given a communal twist to fight with present government.. Did they show how their decisions has today caused massive erosion of bank credibility when people like Vijay mallaya with networth of usd 1.5bn don't want to clear bad debt of 1bn usd..

No they won't show that.. They will use online so called people and pro government are named bhakts blindly.. They will say Arnab just rants.. But then can you do something similar like Arnab Goswami.. Do you have guts and resolve to take on everyone in the country a d tell on their face you are wrong..

Unfortunately I won't say much about Arnab beyond this as my personal biasedness would come in owing to the fact he is my relative.. But with his loud acts he still wins my heart bcz he trys to paint the country with a color different from our so called beloved barkha or rajdeep..

I would say it hurts seeing army wanting to return accolodaes from JNU.. It hurts seeing Gen GD Bakshi cry in a show bcz he felt hurt by everything.. Yet see the result.. Some sections of people and media folks still want to portray a d spin new "truth" where its the government only which is the villain here.. Roughly Modi is riteish deskmukh of ek villain with a screw driver killing all of those belonging to opposition parties.. That's their analogy..

The nation gives you freedom of speech not for making a mockery of the nation rather to express the right a d wrongs in a proper manner so that the Constitution of country remains alive not just become a piece of paper..

It's a long rant I wrote.. I was avoiding this topic for long bcz I fear this and numerous other topics are gonna destroy budget session.. We will end up being the losers in this so called bloody politics.. Damn don't know why we have such useless politicians who don't want to think about economy at all but will do everything to harm it..

 

[T-72M1]

Please tell me you don't think that Patiala house is in Patiala!

@ranjeet @JanjaWeed

There is a reason why Pappu is their leader.

lol good catch

 

[Pumba]

Please tell me you don't think that Patiala house is in Patiala!

@ranjeet @JanjaWeed

There is a reason why Pappu is their leader.

So the beef controversy that happened at Kerala hiuse was actually in kerala ? Or the biryani i had in Hyderabad house was in andhra basically ?

lol good catch

 

[911]

It is entirely possible to deeply respect the military and feel ashamed of the multiple manipulations, doctored videos, police excesses, government heavy-handedness, brazen hooliganism and ominous environment of intimidation that the crackdown on JNU has revealed. In fact, for your party to use the death of ten Siachen bravehearts to validate the gross over-reach we have seen in JNU is to, in my view, cynically exploit the honour of the uniform.

Lets agree that bringing death of soldiers in Siachin which was a very recent news although, was manipulation. Umar Khalid was asked to remain silent for 2 minutes during that, but did he? If notice his body language, he had no respect for that soldier. He tried interruped him during it many times. I guess it was too much to ask for. And that innocent guy should come out openly.

Not just have we not seen any evidence of terror links, but it now appears that the video used to slap a sedition charge on Kanhaiya Kumar, the JNU student leader, has been doctored, with the audio spliced onto images from a different day.

a young man whose worst crime (and that's if you stretch it) is that he could not stop a handful of other students from raising some admittedly disturbing slogans

Here she is contradicting herself.

But aren't Mothers benign, forgiving, broad-minded and all embracing? Stern, yes, when a child needs it, but surely never heartless.

Stern, yes, when a child needs it.

Now that it's clear that the "Azaadi" Kanhaiya Kumar spoke of was not from India, but from Hunger, Inequality, Communalism and Caste Bias

Maybe posters of Afzal Guru, Bharat ki barbadi and others were also tampered? Who knows.

do you really think the Indian State is so fragile that it would come undone by a clutch of "Hum Kya Chahate - Azaadi" cries?

She can't make up her mind. Did students shout those slogans or not?

Modiji, naturally, none of us like a slogan that calls for India's ruin.

Of course no one.

 

[ranjeet]

Barkha Dutt Anti National
Rajdeep Anti National
Arnab Goswami Anti National
Amartya Sen Anti National
Romila Thapar Anti National
Writers who returned award Anti National
Anna Hazare Anti National
Kejriwal Anti National
Advani/ Atal old guard Anti National

Amit Shah....national.

@ranjeet your faaaavooorite presstitute.....

Everyone who is in support of Bharat ki Barbadi is Anti National. You are trying to justify this slogan because your hate for Modi trumps everything else.

 

[mirage]

Because of scale- from letting ABVP plants inside JNU shout anti India slogans
Making stooge Bassi arrest JNU students union president (the IB has clearly rubbished the DP allegations)
Take him to patiala instead of try him in Delhi
slap sedition charges (refer to the IB point)

....all that other parties have done is cry crocodile tears like you say.

my post above. Modi makes his own people say Pakistan Zindabad and creates a controversy . Oh he's churning alright, on his way out of parliament.

bull$hit . i cant see any meaning in this video , this is only to confuse the people , by the way who is this barkha dutt ? there are plenty of them crying out loud because they are anti hindu and work on anti national agenda to stop the growth and peaceful development of the country . i remember chanakya's words " gaddaro ki toli me agar haha kaar ho to samaj lo ke desh ka raja mahaan hai aur charitravan hai aur desh pragti path par agarsar hai . where was this so called journalist when $hit happened in bengal recently . they ignored that incident completely . this khan-so-called-gandhi family has ruined the fabric of Bharat completely and now innocent people of the country get confused easily because they are very clever to play dirty game for power

 

[Skull and Bones]

Again, the number of fcuks I give is in proportional of the number of intellectuals gathered in the streets in support of those displaced in the Malda Riots.

 

[Guynextdoor2]

Everyone who is in support of Bharat ki Barbadi is Anti National. You are trying to justify this slogan because your hate for Modi trumps everything else.

Then BJP is anti national. Bharat ki barbed was said by their plants.