http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/coffee-break/why-the-events-at-jnu-are-downright-sinister.html
WHY THE EVENTS AT JNU ARE
DOWNRIGHT SINISTER
Kanchan Gupta
14 February 2016
[First it was Hyderabad University. Now it's JNU. This bush fire will spread further. The purpose is to disrupt the India Story with a new urban insurrection. A robust and energetic political response is needed
Student politics is not something new on campuses across India. Young, easily excitable men and women, often from families where children are kept on a tight leash, their noses buried in textbooks and forbidden to watch films, tend to find campus life liberating.
Fashion is a passing fad. There was a time when drainpipes were considered radical chic. Then came bellbottoms and-floral print shirts with dog ear collars. Jeans followed, as did kurta-pajama and Kolhapuri chappals. I am told skinny fit trousers, the new name for drainpipes, are all the rage these days.
But unlike changing sartorial preferences, there is one constant that marks campus life and that's leftism. Being a leftie was radical chic more than three decades ago when I went to college. It is equally so today. Leftism comes in many hues and each shade finds its quota of adherents, depending on factors that are largely far removed from either politics or commitment.
Not all of this is innocently pacifist. In the late-1960s campuses in West Bengal erupted with student violence in the name of waging war on class enemies. There was the far Left, the reactionary Left and then there were the Congshals, folks who were Naxals during the day and Congressis after nightfall. A Vice-Chancellor was murdered, bombings became commonplace and Revolution was in the air.
It remained in the air. Comrades who were picked up by the police ratted on fellow comrades. It did not require more than the sight of Runu Guha Neogi, the dreaded Assistant Commissioner of Calcutta Police who was fond of a pair of pliers, for them to disown Marx, Lenin and Mao and denounce their colleagues in hiding.
In exchange of turning collaborators, so the story goes, they received a one-way ticket to the US. The USEFI office in College Street worked in tandem with Lalbazar; American universities got some of the best brains of that generation, the police got wanted students on the run. I have met at least two of them, living the good life in American suburbia.
The turbulent decade of the 1970s is long dead. The Revolution, or rather the seductive idea of Revolution, lives on and has spread beyond West Bengal. Students seduced by the charms of Left activism are not necessarily evil. They seek nobility and liberation, they crave for righteous virtues, they feel they should be in the vanguard of the struggle against injustice and oppression. The many shades of Left beguilingly offer them the high they seek.
Most move on as they settle into jobs. Many end up as bureaucrats, dutifully upholding the very system they once railed against. A minuscule minority volunteers to become foot soldiers of the Left and end up either dead or bitter. Nothing can be more pathetic than a middle-aged revolutionary.
The only lot sadder than them are intellectuals who play useful idiots, all the while pretending they are serving the cause of the Left while knowing too well they are really worthless and will be discarded with age like horses sent to the kacker's yard. The majority gradually shifts to the centre, if not right of the centre.
Jawaharlal Nehru University, which is currently in the news, is no different from colleges and universities across the country where the luxury of state funds affords Left activism. As a Central university, JNU has never lacked in money or in radical chic. In the guise of promoting free thought and democracy, a cunning teachers community, populated with useful idiots posing as intellectuals (or vice versa) indulges waywardness among students.
Leftism has become an instrument of both coercion and liberation. It coerces students to toe the line. The students believe they are liberated. Cynicism abuses innocence. It is nobody's claim that the 90-odd students who gathered last Tuesday to observe the 'Martyrdom Day' of Afzal Guru, a terrorist who was executed for masterminding the attack on Parliament House after due process of law, represent the majority of students. They don't.
But that the majority seems to be okay with a small group screaming "Bharat ki barbadi" and other offensive slogans, is what is worrisome.
This is not about Free Speech. It is about the abuse of the very system that sustains these students. The Indian taxpayer spends between two lakh rupees and three lakh rupees on every student at JNU every year. They demand and get all the rights and privileges of citizenship of this country.
Till such time they are fobbing off the Indian state and living off the Indian taxpayer, it ill behoves them to piss on both their benefactors. They are free to ridicule the Indian state, militate against the Indian Government and join the ranks of subversive elements after giving up the privilege of a tax-funded existence. And, having exercised their choice, they must also be prepared for the consequences.
It is shameful that the protective cover of a university campus should be used for propagating violence. That is precisely what the students who had gathered in solidarity with a terrorist were doing last Tuesday. Listen to their sloganeering, look at their contorted faces, and you would know these are young adults who are not unaware of the true import of their deed.
Does that merit arresting the leaders and charging them with sedition? I am not too sure. Our courts may not agree. After all, Binayak Sen, who was a facilitator of Maoist terror, has been set free by the courts. Yet, something needs to done to halt the slide into chaos and its scary attendant consequences.
There is clearly mischief afoot to unleash turmoil and discontent (as opposed to dissent) in campuses.
First it was Hyderabad University.
Now it's JNU.
This bush fire will spread further.
The purpose is sinister: Disrupt the India Story which is drawing global attention once again, hobble the Government, kill the economy.
Evil minds are at work.
Students are being used as cannon fodder. Campuses as launching grounds for a new urban insurrection.
This calls for a political response that is robust and energetic. It calls for fighting back those who peddle Revolution to the young and impressionable. It calls for engaging with students directly in as many campuses as possible, at least those of the Central universities and institutions.
Here's a suggestion.
Let Prime Minister Narendra Modi wade into the mass of students and speak to them directly. He did it both as Chief Minister Modi and Candidate Modi, remarkably creating a constituency that played no small role in creating the Modi Tsunami of 2014. Why can't he do that now?
The writer is a current affairs analyst based in NCR
RB Kishore
VP,AIRIEF,ED(Retd),LICLife Member,Probus Club044-2815 5810 & 098 4034 0591.
