D P Tripathi, general secretary of the Nationalist Congress Party started his political career in Jawaharlal Nehru University as an activist of the Students' Federation of India (SFI), the youth wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He tells Aditi Phadnis his JNU story
Tell us a bit about your association with JNU.
The story begins in 1973 when I came to JNU as a student. At that time I was associated with the CPI(M)-affiliated SFI. I became president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union when Emergency was declared on June 25, 1975. As president of the union I was part of the mass movement that kicked off as a result of the Emergency.
When the Emergency was declared, we held a protest meeting in JNU. Our rector, Professor Moonis Raza, called me to his office and said: "Young man, the cricket match is over. Now is the real struggle. It will be a long struggle, so prepare for that. And don't organise these open meetings, you will be arrested."
I went underground. Many of my colleagues, including Arun Jaitley, were arrested the day Emergency was declared. On July 8, 1975, hundreds of policemen and more than 50 trucks and vehicles surrounded the university. It was as though they had come to enemy territory.
I couldn't escape as all the entry and exit points had been sealed. So I decided to sleep in a friend's room in Periyar Hostel, not my own. The police were knocking on every closed door, looking for D P Tripathi.
I was pretending to sleep in my friend's room with a sheet thrown over my face. I heard the policeman say, "He can't be stupid enough to sleep in the hostel when he knows we are looking for him". They went away without even waking me.
My confidence in the stupidity of the police saved me but many other students were arrested that day. The incident was widely reported in the international press.
After that, we continued our agitation from the underground. In September, there was another three-day strike in the university.
Maneka Gandhi was a student of German at JNU. She came to attend class. I stopped her and requested her to respect the strike. She was furious. To stop Sanjay Gandhi's wife and the prime minister's daughter-in-law from attending class! She responded, "Okay, but I'll be back." P S Bhinder was deputy inspector general (DSP), Delhi Police. He came with a band of policemen. Prabir Purkayastha, a student at the Centre for Studies in Science Policy, who was picketing, was asked if he was D P Tripathi. He said no, but they still arrested him. By the evening, it was clear they had jailed the wrong man, but he was still kept in jail. He was also tortured.
This was the only case during the two years of Emergency when a person was arrested due to mistaken identity.
Then what did you do?
I went underground. For some time, I stayed in a washerman's house behind the Statesman Building on Barakhamba Road. Later, my party comrades found me a hideout in Chittaranjan Park. Bahugunaji (Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna) helped me a lot. What is today Harishchandra Mathur Lane was then Electric Lane. One of the houses there belonged to a Congressman who had been appointed governor. I even stayed there at Bahugunaji's suggestion and used the governor's car and his cyclostyling machine! We moved around constantly, never staying more than a few days at the same place. I toured different parts of the country to organise resistance against the Emergency.
I was in constant touch with Prakash Karat and many others in JNU, as well as student leaders from Allahabad and Benares, who had escaped arrest. Prakash actually married Brinda while in hiding. We had made all preparations for the wedding but a few days prior to the ceremony, I got arrested.
When and how were you arrested?
I was arrested on November 11, 1975, somewhere between the old JNU campus and the new one.
The next morning, around 4.30 am, I was taken to Ward 2 in Tihar Jail, where the first person to welcome me was Arun Jaitley. He said, "Bahut der se intezaar tha, kahan the? Aa gaye na. Aao aao (We had been waiting for a long time, where were you? Come, come)!"
At that time, the JNU Students' Union (JNUSU) put out a press release, which captured the mood of the times beautifully. It said: "Having failed to stamp out rising protest on the campus, one bunch of henchmen of Indira (Gandhi) headed by B D Nag Chaudhuri (the vice-chancellor) 'derecognised' the JNUSU. Seeing that it would not disrupt the union's functioning, another bunch of henchmen headed by the DSP, Hauz Khas Police Station, resorted to arresting Tripathi. We salute Devi Prasad Tripathi for ably and courageously leading the students in the last four months at such great risk. We are confident the students will continue to nurture and support the union in his absence".
What makes JNU an institution apart from all others?
Its liberal consciousness, the relationship between students and the faculty. I was part of the SFI and the other group of students in the Opposition were the "free thinkers". We were quite derisive of them. But we were all close friends. JNU fostered the values of broad-based democracy.
But that spirit was eroded in the 1980s when students attacked homes of teachers, especially left-wing teachers....
It was an aberration and a reflection of a lot of things that were going on - changes in the admission policy, for instance.
The current events in JNU are deeply unfortunate. What can you say when a vice-chancellor writes a letter and invites the police on campus? These days vice-chancellors have become chancellors of vice. JNU was the only university to have seen the struggle against the Emergency with the tacit support of the university administration. You are now undoing that ethos and dismantling it.
An acute administrative crisis seems to have gripped institutions of higher learning. What do you attribute this to?
What can I say? I, along with three others, wrote a letter to the President and the Prime Minister against the style of functioning of Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Minister Smriti Irani and the erosion in the standards of higher education. Whether it is an attack on people of integrity and proven competence, who head prestigious institutions such as the IITs or central universities, or distinguished personalities involved in the selection process, no one has been spared and the autonomy and self-regulatory mechanism of institutions of higher education are being systematically eroded and damaged. There is the case of distinguished scientist Anil Kakodkar, IIT Delhi Director Raghunath K Shevgaonkar, and Delhi University Vice-Chancellor Dinesh Singh. Shevgaonkar resigned over sharp differences with the HRD ministry on certain issues. Singh was issued a show-cause notice.
What is your view of Narendra Modi and the National Democratic Alliance government? With institutions such as JNU being eroded, do you see another Emergency being imposed?
When I was released from jail, I was welcomed as a hero. On January 27 that year, my friends organised a meeting that was attended by Romila Thapar, Namvar Singh and many others. We all cried that day. But those were tears of joy. The Emergency taught us many things. But the most important lesson was that we should not take democracy and freedom of India for granted. With Ghar Wapsi and Love Jihad, the Sangh Parivar fringe is trying to assert its identity through undemocratic ways. Though the majority of the ruling dispensation is trying to stay away from such tendencies, the trends are visible. Let's see what happens.
Autocracy emerged from Indira Gandhi's personalised politics, a system where everything revolves around one person. In the Bharatiya Janata Party, neither Atal Bihari Vajpayee nor L K Advani did this. But Narendra Modi revived personalised politics by running a presidential style election campaign. The entire campaign was woven around one man; its slogan was "Ab ki baar, Modi sarkar".
