He was making an academic presentation in a seminar organised by History Centre in memory of Bipan Chandra. He was trying to understand Chandra - the Nationalist Historian - who was an ally of the Left on the issue of communalism but took problematic positions on issue of social justice. Then how do we assess Prof. Chandra now? Can we have a dialogue with Chandra despite having strong differences with him? His contention was that in a diverse country like India we need to learn to work with people we might have strong differences with. And in today's era, when communal fascism is inciting Mob and institutional violence and mounting a veritable "insurrection on the Constitution", we must forge a broad based unity to fight with all those who stand in favour of the Constitution. It was in this context that he said that even the Emergency was Authoritarian but was not akin to Fascism which we are seeing now. Similar observations were made by Prof. Anand Kumar - a leading opponent of Indira regime and emergency - in a private conversation at our first ‪#‎StandWithJNU‬ rally; Emergency was atrocious and authoritarian but this vicious orchestration of social polarisation on the lines of communities was not present at the time. It didn't turn the society against itself. Congress, with all its flaws, is not programatically against any minority, which was borne out by its election of Manmohan Singh, a Sikh as the PM for 10 years; during the course of which he apologised for the riots - which is not enough, of course! But can you imagine the RSS - BJP elevating a Muslim to that position ever; leave aside apologising for violence in Gujarat! That is a crucial ideological difference even in my opinion. Moreover, even after being part of Delhi Government, the BJP never investigated the riots because of its own "allegedly" dubious role at the time. This is not to condone the violence unleashed on the Sikhs - which must be condemned unequivocally - or an advocacy for impunity for the perpetrators. In fact, JNU gave shelter to those resisting violence in 1984 and we are proud of this legacy. The question is: Were the ideological underpinnings of the violence the same? ~via Anshul Trivedi #WeAreJNU

• published: 29 Mar 2016
• views: 781