Jail changed traitor Kanhaiya: ABVP leader at ‘Truth of JNU’ meet

“A few days in jail changed the mindset of the traitor. One who was screaming slogans against India changed his statement from ‘Freedom from India’ to ‘Freedom in India’. This is complete misinterpretation,” claimed Sunil Ambedkar, national organising secretary of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) here on Friday, about Kanhaiya Kumar, the JNU Students’ Union president who was released on bail in a sedition case on Thursday.

Addressing a students’ meet on ‘JNU ka Sach’ (The truth of JNU) organized at Panjab University (PU) by the students’ body of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Ambedkar said, “The ABVP is not protesting against the initiative to talk about the government, country’s administration, poor people and political ideas; but since the talk at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) went against the country, we had to protest seeking investigation.”

“Deshdroh ka vishay nahi hai yeh (It is not an issue of sedition). It is about an educated person (Kanhaiya). His actions were observed and noted through his opinions and being a president of students’ association at such an esteemed university, he provoked other students,” he said.

He alleged that “whatever he had spoken earlier was anti-government, anti-constitution and anti-national. Now Kanhaiya’s group is misusing the words like nationalism, human rights, secularism, socialism, rights of the citizens, etc”

Mentioning the names of a couple of JNU teachers, Ambedkar even said, “There are teachers who have been preparing several groups of students to scream slogans against India... Isn’t it the responsibility of the university administration to stop such students from doing anti-national things? I would have liked if Kanhaiya had stopped that programme [on anniversary of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru’s hanging, where alleged anti-national slogans were raised], instead he actively participated and supported the group who were observing the death anniversary of Afzal Guru. His role as a student and a president of the students’ association is not acceptable at all. His behavior towards the Indian constitution is upsetting,” added Ambedkar.

He also said, “I am always asked why the ABVP ‘overreacted’ over the whole issue. My answer is that thoughts can any day be converted into action, which we will never be tolerated. We need to see what these students are studying, what they are writing in their research projects, and how they are being prepared to be anti-nationals.”

He said that he would have also favoured if the issue had been solved at the university level. “But these are not school students; they are mature, and it was a planned conspiracy; thus it needed to be dealt with in a different way.”

On the occasion, additional advocate general of Haryana Preetam Sahni also criticised Kanhaiya for his post-bail speech on the university campus. “People who speak against the country do not even deserve to be students,” he declared.

Meanwhile, Chandigarh mayor Arun Sood, the chief guest, shared how he had worked with the ABVP for 15 years and how the organisation had been “working for the welfare of the country”. He alleged that “it is not the BJP which is encouraging anyone, but Congress that is supporting those students for no reasons at all”. He advised, “The ABVP should take an oath that until JNU students raise slogans of ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’, they [ABVP] should continue to fight for the cause.”