JNU alumna Swara Bhaskar's open letter to Umar Khaled

Umar Khaled, who’s said to be the face and mind behind the Jawarharlal University event that’s escalated into a political controversy, has a former classmate putting things into perspective for him.

Bollywood actress and JNU alumna Swara Bhaskar has written an open letter to the PhD student who’s being charged with sedition for allegedly shouting anti-national slogan at an event organised to protest the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

Bhaskar, who did her Master’s in Sociology from the prestigious institution, wrote, “No, you are not a terrorist Umar Khalid, you are a radical and an idiot with poor judgement of what to say where, but you do NOT deserve to be jailed, tortured or killed for that.”  Read the entire letter below…

Dear Umar Khaled,

You don’t know me and I don’t know you either. That was until you became Indian media’s newest catch – “The terrorist mastermind from JNU, hub of all anti-national activities.” Let me introduce myself, I am a JNU alumnus. I spent two years doing my Masters in JNU at CSSS and am now a Bollywood actress. I was never a member of any student political party in JNU though I voted Left.

DSU (Democratic Students Union) reappeared in JNU after a hiatus sometime during my two years there and I always found DSU students and their positions far too extremist and radical to be practically possible and also too dogmatic for my liking. But then my leftist friends accused me of being both a centre-ist and also a rich – privileged English-speaking bourgeoisie – elite brat! I don’t think we would have been friends even.

My initial reaction to this whole Afzal Guru event, the anti-India sloganeering and pro-Kashmiri independence chants was “Oh boy! DSU at it again!!” I scoffed and chatted with friends about how silly DSU still was. That was until Kanhaiya was arrested and you and six or seven others went underground, everyone got slapped with sedition charges and the public discourse in this country erupted into the most emotive and also most polemical discussion about patriotism and sedition. Trust you guys in DSU to phailaao raitaa as we say in Hindi!!! Kabhi chain nahi aataa na tum logon ko!(sic)

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