JNUSU president does U-turn on 1984 riots

Jawaharlal Nehru University Student Union president Kanhaiya Kumar on Wednesday made a departure from his controversial stand that there was a difference between 2002 Gujarat riots and 1984 anti-Sikh riots, a day after his fellow comrades in the varsity firmly objected to his view.

“If we have to fight for social justice and get Rohith Act passed, we will have to struggle for justice for incidents like Bathani Tola (carnage in Bihar by the Ranvir Sena in 1996) , Hashimpura (1986 communal violence in Meerut), 1984 (anti-Sikh riots) and Muzaffarnagar (communal violence in Uttar Pradesh 2013.) We will have to stand with them (victims of these riots),”he said.

Kanhaiya was addressing a protest march to Rashtrapati Bhavan, organised under the aegis of a Joint Action Committee (JAC) of the Left-backed students unions to demand “justice” for PhD scholar Rohith Vemula.

The JNU Student Union president’s departure from his stand on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots was seen as an effort to maintain larger Left unity in the university campuses where students have been protesting against the Vemula’s suicide and slapping of sedition charges against Kanhaiya and other JNU students.

“There is difference between the Emergency and fascism. During the Emergency, goons of only one party were engaged into goondaism, in this (fascism) entire state machinery is resorting to goondaism. There is difference between riots of 2002 and 1984 Sikh riots. There is a fundamental difference between a mob killing a common man and massacring people through state machinery,” a news agency had quoted Kanhaiya as saying a penal discussion in JNU on Monday.

His remark, however, stoked a controversy and prompted a firm counter from his fellow comrades in the JNU Students Union.

Reacting to Kanhaiya’s remark, the All India Student Association (AISA) president Sucheta De said :“To say that 1984 riots were mob frenzy and not state sponsored would only justify the ‘big tree falls’ theory regarding Sikh massacre,” she added.

She also wondered why should a Left leader try to defend the Congress government’s role in the anti-Sikh riots, “something that “even Rahul Gandhi and his party cannot defend.

“Both 1984 and 2002 were acts of state-sponsored violence and we must not draw contrasts between two human tragedies,” said Shehla Rashid Shora.