Why general angst against JNU students worries me

As always, it’s been a while since I wrote a blog. I am scrapping out a few minutes this morning to put this out, for I believe it’s important.

Tons have been spoken and debated around the JNU students (or non students from outside) and their sloganeering. For a natural born cynic with little faith in politicians of any colour and a complete, holistic disconnect from anyone who dabbles in politics, I steer clear of the wrong and right.

However, what has concerned me, are the underlying colours of extreme Right wing beliefs and values that have popped up online, on social media, and in multiple urbane conversation circles. To my rather visual imaginative mind, its like spotting neon coloured saffron underwear beneath a sheen of 'education', sophistication and prestigious Engineering/MBA degrees, which leaves a rather unappetising taste in your mouth.

While in our free country, and that’s why, messy, chaotic, absolutely beautiful country, what you wear under your pants is your business and I must not comment lest I wake the 'Offended' sleeping giant (yet again), I would want to direct thought and argue in favour of a few significant points.

1. It’s important to know WHY in India you can shut off the capital’s water supply and also sloganeer in favour of a  convicted militant. It’s because we are a true blue democracy. We really do have freedom of speech and expression. Beautifully, we have the right to agree to disagree. And we need to preserve it.

As a student of history, I have always been summarily amazed to see how Japan, Great Britain, the USA and most Islamic states rewrite the negative roles played by them in global events in school textbooks. China, of course, recreates it. Its only when their bright eyed, bushy tailed students arrive at university classrooms, do they realise that their countries basically committed intellectual fraud.

Here in India, we do no such thing. At 9 PM every night, we let news anchors on top 3 English channels takes swipes at each other in public; as if their personal parking lot fisticuff when they worked together a decade ago, is relevant to our lives. Still, we let them scream, shout, argue (sometimes spit involuntarily) and pontificate on TV and consume it like entertainment. Where else do you have such freedom and such colourful debating on national or political matters?

To extend your imagination, let those who yell, shout, scream and sloganeer do their thing. It doesn’t matter, to a large extent. This is a strong nation, and it can withhold a few dissidents. You pack in over 1 billion people into one space (however large) and one identity, and some trouble is bound to occur each day. So let it be. Don’t fret and fume over it, ignore it if you don’t like what you hear.

2. What you see on news channels or sometimes,read in the papers, is not always true. It’s someone’s version of the truth. Journalists are human, and particularly TV editors, have replaced red blood cells with TRP in their bodies. That’s what drives their thinking, not a noble cause or overwhelming desires to serve the nation.

Apologies if I burst your bubble of remaining relevant here, but really, there is nothing more to it. Like all of us, they battle EMIs, expenses of living and harbour ambitions of a better life. Their version of a better life is directly proportionate to the revenues of their channels. For that, anything within state regulations of broadcast, is fair game.

If you really want to develop an informed opinion, step out of your comfort zone; visit a newer, different space in your own city or town; and then build your point of view. While it might be fashionable to have a ‘passionate’ point of view on either side of the debate (Pro JNU, anti JNU, pro government, disillusioned with government, or pro martyred soldiers), generate one based on real reading and research. If nothing else, your self esteem will rise beyond the daily views wheel that parades itself as news on Indian TV these days.

3. A trend that upsets me is the general obsession with three new identity markers of a person- BHK flat (how many BHKs or for the well endowed, how many flats), car or number of cars and holidays as exhibited on social media (often holding drinks with little umbrellas or pouting in a most frightening manner).

Get over it, people. Eventually, through the course of a lifetime, we will all acquire these material possessions. Everyone does end up with a roof over their heads in India (again a beautiful fact unlike the land of milk and honey, USA). And even if you would like to live, breathe and walk around thinking you rule because you own XXX amount of new identity markers, PLEASE do not use them to judge others.

So if there is a person in your real or virtual neighbourhood who flaunts a cotton bag, wears a kurta and doesn’t always wear smart shoes, don’t mark him/her out as a ‘leftist’. Really now, it’s only practical to wear Indian cotton and  carry the much condemned ‘jhola’ as battle gear in our dusty, polluted, crammed cities. Often,  Utopian points of view of some people does irritate. But like you and me, they have a right to it and a right to express it.

In a nutshell, we might not all own BHKs, cars and Facebook worthy holidays, but we do all own the capacity to think and the capability to put it across to other humans.

To clarify my position here, I am not pro JNU or pro Leftist thinking. Quite the contrary. Having said that, I am concerned about the dismissiveness and proclivity to harsh judgement many amongst the literate, qualified strata possess these days (I won’t say educated. True education goes beyond a degree, a job in an AC glass and chrome prison).  Lets all live and let live. Let organised chaos prevail in our conversations.

In the end, lets all step out in the sun and get a chai- samosa university style here in India. Take my word, meeting real people and speaking to them will make a positive difference. After all, no one can quite forget the halcyon days of university life.