Dear Tharoor, For Bhagat Singh Remark, You Owe An Apology

It will take a long time for Congress MP Shashi Tharoor to live down his off-the-cuff remark: "Bhagat Singh was the Kanhaiya Kumar of his times." The harried Tharoor has since tried to explain, semi-retract and otherwise distance himself from this ill-considered, spur-of-the-moment comment at a gathering of Kanhaiya-bhakts in JNU, whose applause for Tharoor's views on the sedition law seem to have got the better of his judgement.

(Here I owe an explanation. Shashi and I go back a long way. Both of us did our schooling in Calcutta, although from different schools; we joined St. Stephen's College in the same year, 1972. He was elected President of the Students' Union in 1974 and I, as his campaign manager, was chosen to be the Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer of the Union before I succeeded him as President the following year. He went on to the US for further studies and after a spell of teaching in Delhi University, I too went abroad for my doctorate. In other words, we have known each other for 45 years and, in fact, have been good friends too. So this critique is entirely political and ideological. I hope Shashi does not take it personally)

In an earlier article in this space, I had contended that Kanhaiya Kumar was no knight in shining armour who had arrived to deliver oppressed and downtrodden masses, that he was just an ordinary student leader propelled by circumstances into assuming a larger-than-life profile. There is nothing about him that is extraordinary: he does not seem to have original ideas, and his rhetorical ability has taken him thus far, and no farther will he go. He has become a medium-term hero within the campus of JNU, but his performance so far does not suggest he can rise to be a leader of any great worth.

In fact, Tharoor's own party has been hugely discomfited by Kanhaiya's appeal in JNU as it spells doom for the Congress Party's students' wing, NSUI. It makes no political sense whatsoever for a Congress leader to extol the virtues of Kanhaiya whose supporters are threatening to the wipe the floor with all other anti-BJP forces except their own.
 Whether Kanhaiya should have been charged with sedition is a debatable issue as the police's case against him seems to rest largely on some disputed TV footage. Since his release from prison, the mercurial student leader has been at pains to deny ideological proximity to Kashmiri separatists, claiming his role model is Rohith Vemula, the Dalit student of Hyderabad University who committed suicide, and not Afzal Guru. He has therefore tried hard to return to mainstream political discourse and deny involvement with seditious slogans like "Bharat, tere tukde honge, Inshallah! Inshallah! (By the grace of God, India will be cut into pieces)" and "Aazadi" for Kashmir. Given his background in the CPI's student wing, AISF, it appears that Kanhaiya is now determined to wipe off the sedition taint and emerge as a mainstream Left leader. So, Tharoor clubbing him with freedom fighters that were charged with sedition by the British is rather misplaced.

The comparison with Bhagat Singh is not only historically wrong but also hurtful to the vast majority of Indians who idolize the young militant nationalist who was sent to the gallows by the colonial regime. Bhagat Singh took recourse to armed struggle in a bid to gain freedom for his motherland. Even Gandhiji did not come to his support because he violated the Mahatma's tenet of non-violence. But the people of India remain mesmerized by his patriotic passion, the same way as they still admire Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose for his heroism, however misplaced both their methods might have been. Bhagat Singh is the stuff of legends for his fearless courage which made him walk up to the gallows chanting "Inquilab Zindabad". He made the supreme sacrifice any person can make by happily embracing the hangman's noose for the sake of his country's freedom. As a student of history, Tharoor surely knew what Bhagat Singh stood for and why he is idolized by Indians even today.
 How does Kanhaiya match up in comparison? His sole achievement has been to go to jail for a few days. Thus, the comparison is odious, flies in the face of historical facts, and is also an outright insult to the bravery and martyrdom of Bhagat Singh.

Tharoor's subsequent efforts to dilute his remarks, saying that his comment should not be taken literally, will fail to wash as he has often made remarks that are embarrassing, mostly to his own party. At any rate, we don't even know what exactly Kanhaiya stands for, if anything at all. The flash-in-the-pan student leader has since tried to claim that his concept of Azaadi is not to be interpreted in the Kashmir context, and what he meant was Aazadi within India. This construct is pure filibuster without any serious content. What does Aazadi within India mean: License to do anything and everything? Freedom to campaign for India's dismemberment? Is this any less woolly-headed that the slogan of "swaraj" raised by Anna Hazare and his ex-cohorts? Are we to glean from Tharoor's certificate to Kanhaiya that he agrees with the convoluted notion of struggling for freedom in a free country? Frankly, I don't think Tharoor quite realized the import of his flippant observation made in pursuit of a round of applause from his audience.

Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, BK Dutt and other revolutionaries like them had a clear-cut notion of their goal. Bhagat Singh's leaflet, "Why I am a Socialist", gives ample indication of his ideological conviction, which eventually resulted in the formation of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army. His was a short life spent entirely in struggling for the cause of Indian Independence. To suggest that he was a "Kanhaiya of his times" is a pathetic caricature of the heroism of Bhagat Singh and others who laid down their lives so we could live in the glow of freedom. Tharoor's comment, therefore, is odious and ought to be withdrawn immediately with an apology to all Indians.

(Dr. Chandan Mitra is a journalist, currently Editor of The Pioneer Group of Publications. He is also BJP MP of the Rajya Sabha.)

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