By Nusrat Jahan

There is a massive ongoing protest going on in Jawaharlal Nehru University, against the arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar, the President of JNU student’s union. He has been charged with sedition.
On the 9th February 2016, ex-members of a student organization ‘Democratic Students Union’ had launched a protest against what they believed to be ‘the judicial killing of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat’ and in solidarity with the Kashmiri people who are being deprived of their democratic rights. Kashmiri students from inside and outside the campus allegedly attended the event. ABVP members then arrived at the spot and started intimidating the students, many of which were Kashmiris, by saying “Ye Kashmir Hamara hai, saara ka saara hai.”
The organizers of the event rebutted them by shouting: “Hum kya chaahte? Azaadi!”
“I don’t support the secession of Kashmir. I claim to have insufficient knowledge of the situation and conditions of the people residing in that region. Hence, I am neither for nor against it. Hence, I have no problems with a group of students simply shouting slogans in support of a particular region’s freedom. They were not planning a conspiracy to overthrow the government and seize Kashmir from India. They were simple students who read, travel and learn about socio-political issues and have a stand about it” – wrote JNU student Harshit Agarwal in his answer to a Quora post seeking knowledge on the incident.
AFSPA is a law that has been giving the police unnecessary and often unjustified power in troubled areas for years now. The students were standing against this law and hence started shouting “anti-national” slogans such as “Bharat ki barbaadi tak, jung rahegi, jung rahegi!” Apparently, these students were not even from JNU (discovered after close speculation of a viral video). Harshit Agarwal claims that the police arrested the JNUSU President from within the campus with “no substantial evidence” even though he did not shout out any slogans.
Heaps of JNU students formed a human chain yesterday demanding the withdrawal of the sedition charges against Kumar. Earlier in the very same day, the members of ABVP had also held a protest claiming that those who support Kanhaiya are also contributing to “anti-national” actions.
The JNU incident has become a severely controversial issue and the internet populace is debating over it every single day. By now, it has been decently established that the people shouting the so called “anti-national” slogans were in fact Kashmiris. However, the Delhi Police has not taken any measures against them because arresting Kashmiri students in Delhi can potentially tarnish the BJP’s alliance with the local political party in Jammu and Kashmir. As a result, the likes of Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya are in jail instead. On the other hand, Umar Khalid is not even religious. “He is a communist pagal.” Hence, Umar cannot be in any way get tagged as an anti-national. He is neither a Kashmiri nor a Muslim. Hence, the entire case goes on to demonstrate all the complexities that one gets entangled in if they are an “Indian Muslim”.
There have been numerous unreported cases in the apparent “politically sensitive” campus of JNU, of under-privileged students experiencing humiliation and abuse from the very people who spurt out slogans of equality and unity on stage. However, these groups of students fail to speak up against them as they know how vulnerable they actually are against the privileged ones and other strictly hypocritical officials.
In conclusion, the controversial debate, the hypocrisy, and the silent/loud protests will go on until actual changes are brought on to the picture: Kashmiris getting the freedom and political rights they very well deserve, and equality in its truest form instead of just being a fancy word to make you look like a nice progressive Indian.