When globalised by extension beyond Euro-American contexts, exercises of providing moral justifications for crimes get distorted. At the same time, we already have much of the necessary equipment to justify the criminal actions of terrorists
Media and academic opinion, within India and abroad, apparently supports the demonstrating JNU students and condemns their arrests and suspensions. One prominent petition, by over 400 academics mainly in the US, Canada, the UK and India, with JNU alumni, describes the arrests as illegal and unconstitutional. To derive conclusions about legality, these detractors must have information to which only the JNU administration, the police or Government could be privy. Another petition has been signed by 133 academics, again mainly based in the US, Canada, the UK and India, including Noam Chomsky, Charles Taylor, Judith Butler, Sheldon Pollock and Orhan Pamuk. Condemning the police action and JNU’s Vice Chancellor for not speaking out,it describes JNU as “the most prominent university in the country in the eyes of the academy all over the world”. Signatories seem oblivious to the fact that JNU ranks nowhere in the Times Higher Education world university rankings and is similarly absent from other international rankings. When present, Indian institutions figure well behind their counterparts elsewhere — a hint of the parlous state of higher education in India.
let us now try to view the JNU events in a wider frame. Imagine that a student group in the UK, say at the prominent Oxford University, went around praising the killers of the soldier lee Rigby, who was murdered in london in broad daylight by two jihadis in 2013. The murder was condemned in the international Press and by British Muslim leaders. Imagine that a group of Oxford students shout slogans to the effect that, in place of the imprisoned murderers, many more would rise. Further, the students audibly announce Britain’s destruction into pieces. How would the authorities and the police respondIJ Quite possibly they would feel compelled to stop such a meeting and take the leaders into custody. They could select from among many UK laws, including those covering public order or terrorism, to base arrests. For example, Section 12 of the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000 criminalises a person who “arranges, manages or assists in arranging or managing a meeting which he knows is …to support a proscribed organisation”.
Most likely there would be public outrage and disgust and, surely, large sections of the media would condemn, not the police or the Government of the day but the demonstrators. Many would legitimately question why university students demonstrate in support of terrorism. It is hard to imagine that student demonstrations ripple out across the UK and harder still to imagine they would be supported by academics. One cannot imagine a group of international scholars lending their names to petitionscriticising the police or the university administration. Substitute for lee Rigby’s murderers, those who helped the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks in the US; or those who attacked the Canadian Parliament in 2014; or those responsible for the November 2015 attacks in Paris. While details may vary, the tenor of responses would not differ much.
British universities are already being enlisted for detecting radicalisation among youngsters. A new legal duty under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, 2015, obliges universities to have “due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”. While there is some dissent on grounds of academic freedom, universities have broadlycomplied. There is nothing like the tamasha we witness in India.
Those suggesting that the JNU administration’s and police actions are unlawful and unconstitutional, are not waiting for judicial proceedings to uphold or strike down the charges. They imply that the legal process in India deserves no respect and that law enforcers are culpable for holding justifiers of terrorism to account. This seems the very opposite of what would be expected of any responsible state in the world. Why is India treated differently by its own and external academic communityIJ
It reflects a structure of thinkingsoaked in since colonial times whereby large parts of the intelligentsia learn and teach a view of India as a backward, immoral and degenerate culture. This framework for viewing India is structured by the Christian-Orientalism of yesteryear which continues in secularised form beyond decolonisation. The not insignificant number of Indian origin academics who enjoy higher education in the West perform a vital role in its propagation. Having imbibed the latest distorted versions of India studies, they are prominent among petition-signers and well represented in various other petitions about intolerance in India. Focusing their radical aspirations on India, they tend to remain silent about the depredations, home and abroad, of their adopted countries, which would rapidly restrict their career ambitions. For them, a BJP Government represents all that they have been taught to despise about India and its traditions. Such a Government is presumptively guilty and, as the Prime Minister knows all too well, the mud of guilt continues to be thrown well after exoneration by the courts. The Western framework for studying and teaching about India performs another role too.
As SN Balagangadhara and Jakob de Roover have suggested, terrorism is a crime distinguished by its transubstantiation into a morally exemplary set of supererogatory actions. Thus, although it is a crime, ideology can present it as justifiable to one or other moral community. Ideology is what enables the use of theories (which can be varied — theological or otherwise) for justification. In the case of terrorism, an ideology performs the role of making a crime morally justifiable. From this standpoint, the complained of statements by the JNU students can be seen as an exercise that makes acts of terror justifiable. As Balagangadhara has shown further, justification of crime as moral is rooted in the interplay of American culture, in which organised crime flourishes, and European culture, which legitimates actions through political justifications. The presence of Euro-American intellectual voices among petition signers is therefore extremely worrying. The signatories need not themselves justify terrorism; it may be enough to provide a means by which terrorism and its supporters can be seen as justified.
When globalised by extension beyond Euro-American contexts, exercises of providing moral justifications for crimes get distorted. At the same time, we already have much of the necessary equipment to justify the criminal actions of terrorists. We have the Christian-Orientalist inheritance structuring the study of India and transmitted on Indian campuses. That provides the grounds on which an avowedly ‘Hindu’ ruling party Government can be demonised and demolished. Underpinned by false religion, it once would have answered to the Christian-Orientalist descriptions of despotism or tyranny while, today, the same framework grounds charges of fascism, autocracy and intolerance.
Add to that thejihadist teaching that appeals to Islam’s intolerance of submission to a kafir ruler. Thus the seeds enabling Afzal Gurus to be lionised as shahid are already sown. We also know who will be making a harvest of death out of them.
(The writer is a Reader in Culture and law and Director of GlOCUl: Centre for Culture and law at the Department of law, Queen Mary, University of london)