The protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) act, the NPR and the NRC keep gaining momentum, with reaffirmation of the basic spirit of the Constitution emerging as the dominant feature, despite the BJP government’s efforts to portray them as disorderly and divisive.

At a rally in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, organised on January 21 in support of the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act(CAA), Union Home Minister Amit Shah reiterated that there would be no going back on the legislation. In the course of the Jan Jagran Abhiyaan (people’s awareness campaign )conducted by the Bhartiya Janta Party(BJP) on the Act, Amit Shah took on the opposition, especially the Congress, the Trinamool Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who also addressed the meeting, said that money was being paid to the protesters, a charge that has been repeated by BJP leaders in Delhi as well. Adityanath cautioned that those raising the slogan of “azaadi”, as was heard earlier in Kashmir, would be dealt with firmly and charged with sedition. Uttar Pradesh, is one of the states where the largest number of people, 21, were shot by the police during protest against the CAA, the National Register of Citizens(NRC) and the National Population Register(NPR).

The overarching impression gained from a march from Jammu to Srinagar is that the people are hit hard by distress, a sense of betrayal, uncertainty, loss of rights, financial distress and lack of accountability on the part of the authorities.

“Jab har saans mein bandook dikhe toh baccha kaise bekhauf rahe”, remarked Anwar, a Gardner from Srinagar when asked about the situation in Kashmir. The special status of Jammu and Kashmir was revoked by articles 370 which provided special status to the state, and 35A, special rights and privileges to permanent residents of the state, without any consultation, on August 5, 2019. Civil society members from various states recently attempted a “restore democracy march” from Jammu to Srinagar. The Marchers were not allowed to interact freely with the press or local community in many places. The police stopped the march at Ramban, Midway between Jammu and Srinagar. Indeed a police vehicle followed us and ensure that we crossed the Ramban border district on way back to Jammu. Nevertheless , six of us continued our journey to Kashmir the following day from Jammu.

Even the government of India pushed an apparently discriminatory Act- the Citizenship (Amendment) Act- down our throats in December 2019, the sense of betrayal and alienation in Jammu and Kashmir, the poster child of subversion was haunting.

The news of Davinder Singh’s arrest brings strange hope, of check of wounds, for the eight million people of Kashmir whose memories are alive with the past injustices of the Macchil, Chattisinghpora, Pathribal and Barakpora massacres.

The arrest of Davinder Singh has shaken Kashmir’s complex security grid like never before. He told his interrogators that he was helping the militants he had been with when he was arrested get outside the Kashmir Valley against a payment of Rs. 12 lakhs. The motive and the final destinations of the militants are still not known. But Davinder Singh’s initial confession instantly invoke memories of the Parliament House attack in 2001, which brought India and Pakistan to the brink of an all-out war.

According to a letter written to his lawyer by Afzal Guru, the accused in the Parliament House attack case who was hanged and then secretly buried inside Delhi’s Tihar Jail, it was Davinder Singh, who forced him to take a militant named Muhammad to Delhi. Muhammad was among five Pakistani militants who carried out the attack.

But despite Afzal Guru’s confession to the court, Davinder Singh’s role in the Parliament House attack was never probed. The court only believed the part that Afzal Guru brought Muhammad to Delhi, but not the part that he did so at Davinder Singh’s behest. While Afzal Guru was hanged “to satisfy the collective conscience of the nation”, Davinder Singh remained untouched.

The question of why and how Davinder Singh escaped the radar when Afzal Guru, the convict in the Parliament House attack case, mentioned him as the person who made him accept the crime under coercion remains unanswered.

On October 24, 2001, Muhammad Afzal Guru, the convict in the 2001 Parliament House attack case who was hanged to death on February 9, 2013, in New Delhi’s Tihar jail, wrote a letter to his lawyer, Sushil Kumar, senior advocate in the Supreme Court. The attack on Parliament house, in which five terrorists and nine person, including five Delhi police personnel, lost their lives on December 13, 2001, led to the trial and conviction of Afzal Guru, who was alleged to have provided logistical help to the terrorist in Delhi. He was apprehended in Srinagar and brought to Delhi within a few days of the attack. The trial court, the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court confirmed his death sentence one after the other.

In the letter which Afzal Guru wrote to his lawyer, he claimed that he had been made to accept the crime under coercion. He claimed that the designated court ( the trial court) had sentenced him to death on the basis of the police version of the case and under the influence of the mass media. Most important, the story of how Afzal Guru came under the influence of the then Deputy Superintendent of Police, Davinder Singh(whom he misspells as Dravinder Singh), which he narrates in his letter, is very credible.

Afzal Guru said he was introduced to his senior Superintendent of Police(SSP), Ashaq Hussain of Budgam, through his relative Altaf Hussain, who also acted as a link between Afzal Guru and Davinder Singh. Afzal Guru said in his letter that Altaf took him to Davinder Singh, who asked him to do a “small job” for him which involve taking a man to Delhi and helping him get a rented accommodation. He said in the letter that he had no option but to help the man, whom he did not know earlier and whom he suspected to be a non-Kashmiri. The letter said:”I took him to Delhi. One day he told me that he want to purchase a car. Thus I went with him to Karol Bagj. He purchased the car. Then in Delhi he used to meet different persons and both inside of us he, Muhammad and me used to get the different phone calls from Dravinder Singh.

The arrest of DSP Davinder Singh, who was travelling with militants, reawakens questions on his possible link with the 2001 Parliament House attack case.

The dramatic arrest of Davinder Singh, Deputy Superintendent of Police in Kashmir has stirred a hornet’s nest. It is a game of smoke and mirror in which something specific becomes visible rarely. With the police officer’s arrest, something momentarily became visible. Before the smoke gathers again, what would it tell us? What is it exposing and what it might be covered up?

The questions stare us in the face. Would these questions ever be answered?

Any sensational incident in Kashmir that makes it to the media in India is invariably a palimpsest for an accumulated sense of injustice that has riddled the local population for decades. That is what the arrest of Davinder Singh has rekindled.

At the time of his arrest, Davinder Singh was part of an anti-hijacking team of the police serving at the Srinagar airport, one of India’s most sensitive defence installation, and one where the Indian Air Force also controls all commercial air traffic. But he has a longer history of being a dreaded counterinsurgency police officer with a fearful representation of torture and overcharging.

The shadowy police officer was nabbed and arrested on January 11, along with Naveed Babu, a wanted commander of Hizbul-Mujahideen along with one another, militant and their civilian associate.

The dramatic arrest of Devinder Singh, Deputy Superintendent in the Jammu and Kashmir police, along with Islamist militants raises new questions about the bleak relations between state actors and terrorism.

Critical questions relating to the beating interplay that realpolitik and the larger state have with imstruments of terrorism and the consequent compromises that counter-terrorism agencies have to make once again came forcefully into public discourse in the first and second weeks of January. The Central to this development is the dramatic arrest of Devinder Singh, a Deputy Superintendent of Jammu and Kashmir police, on January 11 from the Srinagar-Jammu highway while he was allegedly carrying Naveed Baby and Altaf, two Islamist Jehadi terrorist reportedly belonging to the Hizbul-Mujahiden and Lashkar-e-taiba groups respectively and an overground operative in his private car, and the course the investigation into this arrest has taken. In the process, some old questions in the larger issues of the “military-militant” complex have been revived and new questions have arisen.

The questions relating to the case are essentially linked to Devinder Singh’s three decade long career as a police officer, who is certainly chequered. In strict official terms, he was only a Deputy superintendent of police-level officer, tipped to be promoted as superintendent of police soon, but the reach and influence that he had within the police and administrative system was apparently much greater than what the formal positions he had carried.

The government, inspite of the growing countrywide opposition to the CAA takes a contrary stand.

On January 1, braving the bitter winter cold, people gatheted at India Gate in New Delhi, sang songs, held  placard and shouted slogans against the Citizenship Amendment Act(CAA) 2019. In other part of the city, several women were collected under a tent in Shaheen Bagh, some with their children, with the same objective: oppose the CAA. The outrage over the CAA was not confined to Delhi, it spilled over to almost every city in the country, the only discernible difference being the size of the protesting crowds. The protest have echoed abroad as well- in the United Kingdom, in the United States and even in Cape Town in South Africa.

The CAA has been perceived as highly discriminatory as it offers the naturalisation of citizenship to refugees and “illegal migrants” from six specific communities(Hindu, Christain, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, and Parsi) from three neighbouring countries namely Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. It ignored the citizenship claims of others who might be already residing in India either as refugees or illegal migrants but do not belong to the Hindu, Christain, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, or Parsi communities. The assured message is that all the six communities selected in the CAA for preferential citizenship are inherently “Indian” while other refugee groups or migrants are not.

The bias could not have been more apparent as the CAA singularly excludes Muslims(political refugees or economic migrants from any country whatsoever) or for that matter, thousands of Tamil refugees residing in camps in India from such regularisation of citizenship.

Jawaharlal Nehru University unique admission policy ensures that students come from all corners of the country, from all socio-economic backgrounds. The JNU learning experience takes place both inside and outside the classroom, in the debates and discussion that the university is famous for, and in the struggles and agitations that make headlines.

Of the many thousands of students who have passed through the portals of Jawaharlal Nehru University(JNU) over the past five decades, few would say that the time they spent in JNU did not transform their lives, world views and social attitudes.

Classroom studies in JNU, mostly at the postgraduate level except for fresh entrants in the foreign languages courses, are themselves are quite different from those of most other universities. The course content is framed somewhat differently and is taught and tested by most faculty with considerable hardness in a semester system, and in a manner that challenges rote learning and encourages critical thinking.

Republic Day is a national holiday in India. The holiday honours the date on which the Constitution of India came into effect on 26 January 1950 replacing the Government of India Act  (1935) as the governing document of India and thus, turning the nation into a newly formed republic.

The Constitution was adopted by the Indian Constituent Assembly on 26 November 1949 and came into effect on 26 January 1950 with a democratic government system, completing the country’s transition towards becoming an independent republic. 26 January was chosen as the date for Republic day because it was on this day in 1929 when the Declaration of Indian Independence (Purna Swaraj) was proclaimed by the Indian National Congress  as opposed to the Dominion  status offered by the British Regime.

The JNU students protest against a recent massive hike in fees is part of a larger movement against the privatisation of higher education.

By the turn of the decade the assault on the higher education system that started when the Bhartiya Janta Party came to power in 2014 has become more and more arch. Over the past year many campuses, from Jamia Millia Islamia to Jadavpur University, have faced cowardly attacks aimed at breaking the backbone of the youth fierce resistance to the state. Jawaharlal Nehru University emerged as a symbol of all that the Sangh Parivar must destroy to crush the soul of liberal higher education in India.

The latest overflow of violence inflicted on the JNU campus by goons of the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad(ABVP) was a tailpiece to the student’s movement against an unjust hostel manual and a massive fee hike.

In the larger context of the political situation in the country, the students movement is also a fight for the preservation of public higher education.

Over the past few years, the policy of neoliberalism and Hindutva politics have steadily eroded the principle of affordable education. This trend is evident from rapid privatisation of universities, contractualisation of jobs, exponential hike in students fees and de-secularisation of curricula.