JNU row: Thank you, PM Narendra Modi, for letting the nation polarise so quickly

Thank you Mr OP Sharma. Or simply OP for his friends like Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. Thank you for not letting your status as member of the Capital’s legislative assembly stand in your way of hitting, kicking, pulling the hair of defenceless, unarmed people at the Patiala House Court on Monday afternoon. Thank you for proclaiming this with pride: ‘G_oli bhi maar deta agar banduk hoti"_ (would have shot them dead if I had a gun) and stating unequivocally that “it is not wrong if somebody shouting such (anti-India) slogans is beaten up or even done to death.” Moderation, never his strong point (he was suspended during the Winter Session of the Delhi Assembly in 2015 for using derogatory language against AAP MLA Alka Lamba), is something he will not have to pick up in the service of his party now. Thanks to those men in black coats, trained to uphold the law and the Constitution, for shoving and pushing and beating, mercilessly, completely outnumbered mediapersons and students, irrespective of gender and age, grabbing their phones and cameras. Thank you for chasing them into courtrooms and closing the doors for concentrated attention, merely for waiting to hear the bail petition of Kanhaiya Kumar, JNU’s student union president on charges of sedition or, at worst, for simply being “JNU-waales.” You even embarrassed that great champion of television patriotism, Arnab Goswami. [caption id=“attachment_2628626” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  BJP MLA OP Sharma. PTI[/caption] Not to worry, they have laid down the law, might is better than right, whatever they may have been taught in law schools. Thank you home minister Rajnath Singh. First for sending the flatfoots into the JNU campus and picking up Kanhaiya Kumar for merely being present at a meeting where ‘anti-national’ slogans were raised but one who, by the police’s own admission, did not mouth those slogans himself. Second, for not knowing the difference between fake and real tweets thereby giving true blue terrorist Hafiz Saeed, a handle to accuse India of “misleading its own people and the world.” Whatever else the home minister may be accused of, efficiency is unlikely to be one of them. Thank you Smriti Irani, for paying more attention to the complaints of ABVP members than to the submissions of teachers. Thank you for interfering into the workings of the academic institutes under the charge of your HRD ministry, throwing university after university into turmoil and generally living up to the appellate Manusmriti Irani, bringing a gleeful smile to the face of her bête noire Madhu Kishwar who has been happily tweeting, tongue firmly in cheek, that “CPM leaders very happy with HRD Irani for her cooperative attitude towards their concerns.” Ms Irani knows who are actually beholden to her: East Delhi MP Maheish Girri, Secunderabad MP Bandaru Dattatreya Batra and others of their ilk. Thank you Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi, for making your priorities clear by dismissing the assault on JNU students and journalists at the courthouse on Monday as a “minor incident”, the “fallout of an emotive issue”. Probably unused to seeing commitment to one’s profession, he was certain no one had “suffered any major injuries” since the media was “reporting from the spot even after being attacked.” Meanwhile, the people who may have actually shouted those anti-national slogans at JNU on 9 February are still missing in action. Thank you Mr Amit Shah, for raising the ante by stating this to be wholly an issue of “nationalism and patriotism”, clearly endorsing the strong-arm tactics deployed against the “Left-leaning JNU students,” dubbing JNU a “hotbed of separatism and terrorism” and accusing anyone questioning the actions of the authorities as “joining hands with separatists”. Clearly, the BJP president has found his poll issue, whenever and wherever they are held. Thank you Mr Narendra Modi, for permitting the country to be polarised so quickly. No longer the fig leaf of the great developer, the angry flames that engulfed the Make in India stage appearing like a symbolic funeral pyre for those grandiose drams that the man who wanted to be Prime Minister had successfully sold to the nation. Growth is turning out to be a mirage and can be consigned to those flames, replacing it with nationalism and patriotism, often said to be the last refuge of scoundrels. Birthday wishes in person to the Pakistan Prime Minister notwithstanding, anti-Pakistanism is now the mantra, and will be chanted ad infinitum, on any and every flimsy ground. If that gambit failed in the Bihar elections, that doesn’t mean it has to be given up so easily. Now the choice will be even sharper. There was still some confusion during the Bihar polls with Narendra Modi riding two horses - the development agenda and the anti-Pak plank. Come 2019, or in Assembly elections before that, we will have a much clearer choice. Voters need no longer be confused by promises of a great economic leap forward and will know precisely what they are voting for. Almost like something approaching the current American experience. The Prime Minister and his men may even have started taking notes every time Donald Trump comes on television. If we haven’t got our Bernie Sanders yet, we will. Situation, the times will create him.