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The Campus Interrogation Centre

Two research scholars at JNU manage to ask the home minister some uncomfortable questions

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The Campus Interrogation Centre
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In a season of near-unanimous love for P. Chidambaram, it was left to two research scholars from that last bastion of dissent, the Jawaharlal Nehru University, to ask some uncomfortable questions. The usually unflappable minister, after hearing them out, invited them over for a cup of two. “Thanks, but no thanks,” they said.

Two months ago, when the student wing of the Congress, the NSUI, invited the home minister for a talk, the rank and file of the student body was present in the small auditorium, ensuring in the process that the usually “troublesome” left-wing student groups and perceived Maoist sympathisers in the campus did not get a place. Instead of standing out waving black flags, the usual mode of protest, Vibha and Divya, from the Progressive Students Union (PSU), wearing black dupattas, managed to get in the auditorium and shout out their questions when they were asked to write them down.

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Both found Chidambaram’s responses to wide-ranging questions about violence on Maoists, tribals, the policy of the Centre in the Northeast, specially the continuance of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, and even issues on poverty, vague and unsatisfactory. A touchy subject was Vedanta and its mining activities in Niyamgiri (Orissa), whom the home minister represented in his avatar as a lawyer. “It’s not as if he disappointed us. He is the darling of the middle class ever since he gifted them with a dream budget. But to us, he is the State, and must be made accountable for the actions that a democratically elected government engages in,” they say. For both scholars, Chidambaram presents a problem because of his zero tolerance to dissent. But, careful to be seen as liberal, he heard the two students out.

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