Friday evening, RPN Singh, Congress leader and former Junior Home Minister, told the media that the PM does not realise the power of the youth which can wreck powerful governments.
Singh was replying to a question on the Modi government's handling of the suicide of 26-year-old Phd student Rohith Vemula, which has sparked nationwide protests and outrage over the insensitivity shown in dealing with the case.
Singh would know well the veracity of his statement for the youth of India gave a scathing and fitting indictment of the UPA with protests over the misuse of power and the then government's many errors including its handling of the Nirbhaya case.
Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, who was booed at Jantar Mantar by protestors when she visited the area to show her solidarity over the Nirbhaya case, could vouch for this.
One can well remember the television visuals that showed images of the Chief Minister protected by police officials before she was surrounded by protesters who shouted slogans like "Sheila Dikshit
wapas jao" (go back).
Dikshit had made indifferent and inadequate statements over the gang-rape of a young doctor-in-the making, Jyoti Singh.
Jyoti, or Nirbhaya as we call her now, lost her life to the callousness of a dispensation which had put women's safety on the backburner despite an increase in rape cases. If this wasn't enough, Dikhsit's foot-in-mouth remark made things worse, not just for her, but her party. She
claimed in the Delhi Assembly that "only one gang rape" had taken place during her regime.
As student protests got larger and angrier, Sonia and Rahul Gandhi tried damage control by reaching out to the family of Nirbhaya; the government then sent her to Singapore for treatment, but she did not survive. Meanwhile, in what resembled a scene straight out of a film, innocent protestors who were marching towards Rashtrapati Bhavan and the PM's residence were subjected to water canons and tear gas. Rahul Gandhi chose to meet student representatives much after the demonstrations had surged.
During its election campaign in 2014, the BJP did well by making women's safety a major issue; it cited the Nirbhaya case in television campaigns. One would have assumed that the Modi-led NDA government would have learnt from the mistakes of its predecessor, whose arrogance in dealing with student protestors was firmly rejected in the election by young Indians. But the Rohith Vemula suicide has proved that both the Congress and the BJP are equally out of synch with what the youth wants and needs.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, one of the world's most social media-savvy heads of state, took five days to finally speak of Rohith's suicide which created a nationwide debate on Dalit discrimination. Speaking at the Bhimrao Ambedkar University in Lucknow on Friday, the PM extolled the virtues of the father of the Indian constitution. It was after some students shouted slogans against him that he spoke of Rohith, visibly moved as he declared "Mother India has lost a son."
The student dissent was not taken very kindly by the university which reportedly saw officials
cancel the stay of the protesting students at the University hostel as a punitive measure - a step similar to the one taken by the Hyderabad university against Rohith Vemula.
PM Modi may have turned emotional and acknowledged the scalding pain of a young student's death, but check out the responses of his party members and HRD Minister Smriti Irani to the tragedy.
Murlidhar Rao, who is one of the most important leaders of the BJP and the RSS,
said that Rohith's letter suggested that he was psychologically ill.
Another party spokesperson, Sanju Verma, went on to label Rohith Vemulla as anti-national and called him a terrorist sympathizer. Her tweet read ".@BDUTT Did a disgruntled terror apologist, known for abusive anti-national rants (read his FB posts) drive himself to death? #TerrorApologist?
Wonder if Modiji indeed felt the pain of Rohith's grieveing mother who had to face the humiliation of her
son being labelled anti-national.
Somebody had clearly not briefed PM Modi on the circumstances in which Rohith, who would have turned 27 this month, committed suicide. So here are a few details, Mr Prime Minister.
From July, the university had stopped paying Rohith his monthly stipend of Rs 25,000 (excluding HRA). On August 5, the university set up an inquiry against Rohith and four other Ambedkar Students Association members, two days after they allegedly assaulted ABVP leader N Susheel Kumar.
Soon, union minister Bandaru Dattatreya wrote to HRD Minister Smriti Irani urging action and claiming that the Hyderabad University had become "a den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics". The five members of the Ambedkar Students Association were suspended. In January, the five moved out of their hostel rooms to a tent they set up on the campus and began a hunger protest soon after which Rohith committed suicide, perhaps realizing the futility of fighting a lost battle in a country where all political parties are in a frenzy to appropriate Ambedkar but not his children.
As an aside to jog the BJP's memory, Ambedkar had faced the worst of criticism at the hands of RSS ideologue and then BJP member Arun Shourie in his book "Worshipping False Gods."
Last year, the RSS mouthpiece denounced Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University as an anti-national den while the HRD ministry in May 2015 took action against the Ambedkar Periyar Study circle at IIT Chennai for allegedly "spreading hatred" against the PM. And Smriti Irani, who refuses to see the caste angle in Rohith's suicide, may have phoned his mother to express her condolences, but cannot be cleared, according to this writer, of catering to majoritarian politics.
Like the Congress, which insists on presenting Rahul Gandhi as a youth icon despite not being able to connect with the youth in two consecutive terms of the UPA, our people's Prime Minister and his government too seems to have lost the plot in dealing with students. From waging a direct, unpopular battle with the students of the Film Institute to the Rohith Vemula tragedy, we have gone one step further in alienating minorities and dissenting young minds from the mainstream.
(Rana Ayyub is an award-winning investigative journalist and political writer. She is working on a book on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which will be published this year.)Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.