The India Today ‘sting’ that claimed to reveal ABVP’s involvement in the violence that erupted at JNU on the 5th of January has blown on the face of Rahul Kanwal and the entire team of the news network. In a series of reports, OpIndia has comprehensively busted the narrative of the mainstream media that sought to pin the entire blame for the violence on the ABVP.
They have consistently tried to absolve the Left student unions of all blame despite the fact that it has been obvious from the very beginning that it is the Left that is to be blamed for the escalating tensions in JNU. One tweet by Rajdeep Sardesai perfectly captures the mentality of the mainstream media. They are more offended by the alleged retaliation by ABVP than the violence perpetrated by the Left which initiated the whole vicious cycle.
As more videos/photos identifying Akshat Awasthi with ABVP tumble out, my humble Sunday suggestion to student body:Why not just accept some ABVP members may have been involved in Jan 5 violence and realise ‘revenge’ attacks are unacceptable. End denial, troll attacks! #JNUTapes
— Rajdeep Sardesai (@sardesairajdeep) January 12, 2020
Truth be told, it has become the favoured tactic of the Left and the mainstream media. Their conduct has proved definitively that they are not averse towards violence, they are only opposed to it when their footsoldiers are the ones who have to suffer the consequences for the violence they themselves unleashed.
The most evident example of it is the manner in which the Leftist intelligentsia treats Naxals and ‘Urban Naxals’. The ‘liberal’ establishment, in the past, has gone so far ahead as to claim that Naxals are ‘Gandhians with Guns’. While a million crimes of the Maoists have been ignored, the Indian State and security forces have been regularly targeted and even slandered over flights of fantasy for attempting to put an end to the menace of Leftist terrorism.
The same narrative is at work in Kashmir. The genocide of Hindus was whitewashed, the rampant Islamic terrorism in the valley has been ignored and the Jihadist inclinations deeply ingrained in the psyche of the Kashmiri community has been completely given a free pass. Simultaneously, a carefully crafted narrative of the Indian Army being aggressors has been hyped up and the Left has portrayed India as an occupying force in Kashmir despite the fact that legally, morally and historically, Kashmir is Indian territory.
The same mentality was observed during the anti-CAA protests across the country. The virulent anti-Hindu bigotry was ignored, the Islamic supremacist colours of the protests were not paid any attention and the extensive damage to public property and the rabid mob violence that was unleashed across the streets were whitewashed. Even then, the Liberal Establishment only condemned the Police for taking adequate measures in order to put an end to the escalating spate of violence.
The same worldview is at play when the blame for ‘cow vigilantism’ is put entirely on Hindus. The ‘liberal’ establishment deliberately suppresses the huge menace of cattle smuggling and the inability of even the Police to curb it entirely. ‘Cow vigilantism’ cannot be controlled without cracking down on cattle smuggling because the former is often a reaction to the latter. In order to stop the ‘reaction’, which can and does end up harming innocent people sometimes, efforts must be made to stop the frequency of the ‘action’. However, again, we see that the Liberal Establishment hates violence only when it adversely impacts communities they have designated as ‘protected categories’.
This is not a phenomenon unique to India. In the USA, the Democrat establishment has continuously whitewashed the violence unleashed in the streets by Antifa, a vigilante group that considers everyone to the left of Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez as fascists or ‘fascist enablers’. The Antifa has attacked innocent Trump supporters for simply exercising their democratic right and the Democrat Establishment, in response, which includes the mainstream media, has glorified them beyond all measure.
In the current JNU episode, we see the same phenomenon at work. The ‘liberal’ establishment has entirely ignored and attempted to suppress the cycle of violence that was initiated by the Leftists on the campus. Instead, they are on a joy ride to prove that the ABVP is to be blamed for the mess that the University is in right now. The Liberal Establishment should just be honest for once.
They should say it clearly that they are hurt only because there’s the possibility that some of their footsoldiers got hurt in the process. They should admit that they have no problem with using street violence as a tactic to achieve political goals. The Left appears to have forgotten the age-old lesson of ‘As you sow, so shall you reap’. They appear to have forgotten that once a cycle of violence has been initiated, it’s very difficult to predict how it would all pan out. It appears that they love violence but just do not want to bear the consequences of it. They might play the victim card now but they will find that there are very few people outside of their bubble who will sympathize with them.
