With middle fingers raised, a group of young men shout, “That’s what [Frederick] Engels said. That’s what Karl Marx said.”
It isn’t a protest against the Communist Party of India. It is a protest against a few Jawaharlal Nehru University students out for a movie in Delhi’s Vasant Vihar. With their middle fingers not getting a suitable response, the young men continue shouting derisively, “JNU!”, “Pakistani!”, “Anti-National!”.
Until they're asked to leave by the police.
Clearly, the atmosphere of intolerance and hatred is now spilling over from social media to real life.
Still, the incident is surprising because it comes a good six months after the JNU “sedition” controversy in February. But it might have also something to do with news anchors bringing up JNU students and comparing them with army officers on the borders on recent episodes of their show following the Uri attack.
Similarly, following the incident in February, the same channel had portrayed Umar Khalid as a "JEM sympathiser" and as an "Islamist". Believing these reports to be true, death threats had been issued against these student activists.
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