THE FRAMING OF SEDITION charges against 67 Kashmiri students of the private Swami Vivekananda Subharti University (SVSU), Meerut, following an Indo-Pak Asia Cup cricket match played in Dhaka last month, has raised political temperatures in Lucknow and Uttar Pradesh on the eve of General Election 2014.

While witnessing a live telecast of the match on campus on March 6, the Kashmiri students reportedly cheered Pakistani’s wafer-thin victory over India, allegedly committing the heinous sin of cheering the Pakistan team and reportedly raising anti-India slogans. Next morning, a notice was pasted on the doors of the Dhingra hostel suspending the 67 students for “misdemeanours”. A little later, the police arrived at the hostel, asking them to pack their bags, and subsequently dropped them off at the Old Delhi railway station with instructions to head home and not return until the situation cooled off.

According to SVSU vice chancellor Manzoor Ahmed, it was the police and not university authorities who filed sedition charges against the students. “The action we took was to suspend them for three days. But when the atmosphere on the campus took a communal turn, I was compelled to ask them to go home. As their guardian, I am responsible for their safety. Once they return, I will arrange for extra classes so that they don’t lag behind in academics,” says Ahmed.

Ironically the students from Kashmir are enrolled at SVSU under a Central government scholarship scheme designed to integrate Kashmiri students into the national mainstream. Currently, the university has 74 students enrolled in various courses under the prime minister’s scholarship scheme. Countrywide 250,000 students from Kashmir are studying in institutions of higher education under this scheme.

With the police upping the ante by filing sedition charges — punishable with a life term — Jammu & Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah intervened and persuaded his UP counterpart Akhilesh Yadav to withdraw the charge. “Sedition charges against the students is unacceptably harsh punishment. It will ruin their futures and will further alienate them,” he said in Srinagar.

Clearly, the Samajwadi Party-led state government, which has been severely criticised for failure to take prompt action when communal riots broke out in 22 villages of Muzzafarnagar district last August resulting in 60 deaths and 43,000 people being rendered homeless following rioting and arson, over-reacted by slapping sedition charges on the students. And minority opinion countrywide was quick to condemn the state government. “Such knee-jerk reactions will only send them back to Kashmir where real anti-nationals may exploit their sentiments,” commented Maulana Rashid Firangi Maheli, naib imam of Lucknow’s main idgah, to The Times of India’s Lucknow edition (March 6).

Predictably, political parties and formations discerned an opportunity to derive political mileage. The BJP’s Uttar Pradesh unit protested that the students had “insulted the nation” and complained to the Election Commission that withdrawal of sedition charges was against the model code of conduct. On the other hand, across the border, Hafiz Saeed, head of the terrorist organisation Jama’at-ud-Da’wah, announced scholarships for the students if they wished to study in Pakistan.

In the meanwhile by way of abundant caution, the SVSU management has advised the suspended students to prolong their unscheduled holiday until after the elections. (Meerut goes to the polls on April 10). Most of the 67 students are unlikely to return. 
Puja Awasthi (Lucknow)