Watch this India Today examination of the veracity of the Kanhaiya Kumar ‘azaadi’ video. And ask yourself a few questions:
#1. Why, though they had three official eyewitnesses at the scene, did the police chose to rely only on the “video evidence” provided by one particular channel?
#2. Who faked the video? And why is that question — given the enormous controversy it has triggered — not worthy of investigation by the CBI?
#3. Who gave the video to the news channel(s) that used it to drive the “anti-national” drumbeat, and to tar and feather an entire education institution?
#4. Was the “anti-national” furor sparked by honest indignation which in turn resulted from a video the public took in good faith? Or was it the logical culmination of a systematic campaign?
(Consider, here, that as early as September 2015, Subramaniam Swamy — the petri dish of ‘Hindutva’ causes — raised the ‘Swamy for VC’ call (false then, false now) by indirectly suggesting that he had been offered the role; and following up with the suggestion that the campus was a den of communists and drug addicts that needed cleansing. This militates against the notion that the current popular sentiment against JNU, carefully stoked by select TV channels, was triggered by contemporary events).
In passing, a more recent Swamy tweet:
@sudhir_mahendra : I am working on it. JNU will be cleaned up of traitors and Commies soon
— Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) February 17, 2016
“Working on it…?”
All available evidence suggests that a lot of people across the spectrum — politicians, media, police — have been “working on this” for a while now. (Remember also, in context, that no less than the home minister cited a tweet, also fake, to link the issue with a Pakistan-based terrorist).
A Supreme Court-mandated — and monitored — probe into the questions surrounding contemporaneous events would not be out of place, no?
PS: News report:
Kanhaiya Kumar, the JNU student arrested on sedition charges, is not among the names listed in an Intelligence Bureau report on anti-India slogans raised at a controversial event.
