It was supposed to be a cultural event with an idyllic, out-of-the-world name – “Country without a Post Office.” Yet when it was held in the hallowed grounds of leftist Mecca, the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Feb. 9, 2016, it turned out to be anything but. What followed was more like a day in an asylum taken over by lunatics. The event meant to be cultural became a protest march against the “judicial killing of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhatt.”

There was anger, there was rage, and there was a barrage of vile rhetoric as vitriolic slogans pounded the air - Slogans such as “Afzal Guru tera kaatil zinda hai, - Afzal Guru your killer is still alive” “Hindustan ki barbadi tak jang rahegi – we will fight till India is destroyed”, “Bharat ko ragda de, zor se ragda de – India should be stamped out,” “Bharat tere tukde honge Inshallah Inshallah – India will be broken to pieces, Inshallah Inshallah“, “Pakistan Zindabad – Long live Pakistan” and many more.

Needless to say, the “Country without a Post Office” morphed into a verbal lynch mob faithfully following the reigning doctrine of the leftist bastion – battle for any nation but your own.

This was not the first time that JNU students wore warrior gear and marketed thunder. The alphabet soup of student organizations Democratic Student Union (DSU), All India Student Federation (AISF), Student Federation of India (SFI) among a few, have held many such events supporting Maoists against the army, supporting Kashmiris against the union, inviting separatists such as Geelani, declaring Afzal Guru and Yakub Memon as martyrs, supporting China’s stance in Arunachal Pradesh and in general providing gist for the mammoth propaganda machine of the Congress. As per a May 6, 2000 online report of The Tribune, they even went to the extent of organizing an indo-pak mushaira in the midst of the Kargil war and beat up three army personnel present in the campus.

The wannabee jihadists of JNU hailing the destruction of India were not exactly an all-purpose “free speech lovers”, as claimed by the besotted media. Afzal Guru had attacked the parliament house, the heart of Democracy in 2001. As per investigations of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), at least 3 attacks on police and army camps along the Jammu Pathankot Highway in the past one year was linked to Afzal Guru’s so called “martyrdom.”

Hence, even by JNU standards which was not averse to celebrating the murder of 75 jawans by the Maoists in 2010, it was a stretch for the leftists to take center stage in a vile agitation in the cause of a declared terrorist who was tried and convicted by the Supreme Court. However, assured that a still slavishly-devoted media will tell their story, they resorted to their usual trademark tactic of using men of straw to do their dirty work in the “theatre of the oppressed.”

The Sonia run UPA and its disparate coalition have in the past, looked the other way and even winked at these nefarious activities. But this time, the political needle had changed direction and the land was no longer slashed by shadows of the exiled Italian Queen. Delhi police swung into action and arrested the Emir of chaos, the President of the student union Kanhaiya Kumar, and issued look out notices for five other absconding students, including the organizer of the event Umar Khalid.

According to an Intelligence Bureau (IB) report, Umar Khalid the organizer of the event, had access to massive funds to plan several such demonstrations across universities in India. Scan of his call records show a disturbing pattern of calls made and received from several locations ranging from Jammu and Kashmir, Gulf countries, Bangladesh to several cities in India, and which show a sudden increase between Feb. 3 and 9, 2016. A mastermind in ensuring chaos, he enlisted another loose cannon, Banajyotsna Lahiri who proposed the title of the event as “A country without a post office: Against the Brahminical cannibal collective conscience, against judicial murder of Afzal Guru.” Some other “champions of liberty” provided the cannon fodder and the stage was set for a show down with the much maligned regime.

Skeptics may argue that Kanhaiya Kumar was an innocent victim of an event gone wrong. As per a Feb. 15, 2016 Navbharat Times report, Kanhaiya Kumar had knowledge of the absconding student Umar Khalid and his terrorist connections. He also knew some of his paymasters were outsiders. Many of his friends were seen shouting “Azaadi Azaadi” for Bengal, Kerala, and Kashmir. In spite of his seditious talk, Kanhaiya Kumar is a free man, free to lead a march against Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani. Let him claim the same benefit from any other nation including the “tolerant” West. Better still let him ask the soldier from Bengal or Kerala about giving up his arms and joining his agitation for “azaadi for Kerala or Bengal”. If he is true to himself, he would soon learn that freedom of the mind is different from freedom of the mouth.

The JNU administration traditionally sits on the fence before deciding which side to jump. This time sensing the direction of the wind, the administration decided to play ball and set up an enquiry committee comprising Professor Rakesh Bhatnagar, Professor Himadri Bohidar and Professor Suman K. Dhar. The committee identified and debarred the students who were raising anti national slogans including Kanhaiya Kumar. JNU registrar Bhupinder Zutshi clarified the reason for withdrawing permission for the event, “There was nowhere mentioned in the permission request that the event will be on Afzal Guru, they just said that they wanted to organize a cultural event. How can any talk about disintegration of nation be national?”

In spite of all this, the usual drumbeat of support for JNU students from the entrenched media barons continued. When Kanhaiya Kumar made bail 3 days later, he was hailed as the man-against-the-system hero and given exclusive interviews. While India’s show time hailed the new freedom-of-speech messiah, 23 year old Captain Pawan Kumar and 3 other jawans lost their lives fighting the clones of Afzal Guru in Pampore, Jammu and Kashmir. When the chattering classes waxed high on endless debates of Nationalism and free speech, the brave jawans holding the flag of freedom lay dying on the cold earth. They got no exclusive interviews. They had no such luxury.

There were also no exclusive footage regarding the nine jawans of the Army’s 19 Madras battalion who lost their lives following a killer avalanche in the wild and frozen wastes of Siachen. The tricolor flew forlornly on the inhospitable glacier where they lay buried under 25 feet of snow in icy graves. Hampered by frequent snow blizzards and giant walls of ice with the mercury hovering around minus 45 degrees, rescuers somehow managed to save one brave heart who was in critical condition. Lance Naik Hanumanthappa Koppad later succumbed to his injuries. He gave up his life along with nine other brave hearts Subedar Nagesh TT, Havildar Elumalai M., Lance Havildar S. Kumar, Lance Naik Sudheesh B., Sepoy S. Mustaq Ahmed, Sepoy Mahesha PN, Sepoy Rama Moorthy N., Sepoy Ganesan G., and Sepoy A. Suryavanshi.

They all died so that India could hold Siachen. None of these heroic martyrs made it to even a footnote in the elitist media. TV footages of their heroic deaths would have drowned the hostile rants of venomous, tax subsidized students of JNU.

Adding insult to injury, the usual loud mouthed media was conspicuous by their treacherous silence in Sempora, Kashmir. Very few sounds escaped their powerful megaphone against the holed up terrorists who took pot shots at the security forces in the Entrepreneurship Development Institute in Sempora a mere 15 km from Srinagar. Even when Kashmiri youth clashed with security forces and prevented them from aiding the jawans as per TNN’s Feb. 23 report by Saleem Pandit, the media’s serpentine logic spun them as “freedom fighters.”

Coming to the million dollar question - why do JNU students trample the tricolor and hail the snakes in the grass? And why do the media celebrate their activities? Needless to say it’s in the nature of the ideology beast - in this case a virulent version of left-leaning socialism idolized and propagated by the secular icon and JNU founder, Nehru. Created by an act of Parliament in 1969, JNU inherited his “burning vision” and tattooed his leftist thinking on intellectuals, academicians, scholars, writers, journalists, opinion makers, news outlets, media, public figures, politicians and anybody with ability or influence.

A rhetorical high ground ensued with the aid of the Marxists and their bully pulpit. The commie slogan “religion is the opium of the masses,” hypocritically changed to “Hinduism is the opium of the masses.” The reign of the left leaning dynasty acquired a secular glitter and the voting pattern of the Islamists secured their throne. Thus the unholy alliance of leftists and Islamists percolated through the core of major institutions with the media becoming a leftist version of Fox News and JNU its virulent offspring.

The media moguls’ deference to the dynasty’s patronage and its national and international backers is not going to change. The Dynasty is down but not out. Its mischief making appeal is of great value to enemies both known and unknown and their power will be ensured in one form or another. They will unleash their media bloodhounds from time to time to overwhelm, and destroy the one-man-wrecking-crew that put shackles on their looting orgy.

Fortunately, the dinosaur-like old media is finding competition. The expanding gateways of social media bristling with verbal barbs and sharp repartees is actively taking on big networks of sophistry. Hopefully, from this grassroots coup will emerge true ideals of nationalism resonating with the breath of the dying soldier, “this is my own, my native land.”