In the wake of New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) fiasco, where its student leader has been arrested and jailed over sedition charges, never has the nation’s need to defend an idea of the university been felt more acutely. It is sad. It is necessary and a timely socio-political audit. It is not improbable that intolerance in a diverse country like India, now actually demands handing out of nationalism certificates, by those who currently wield political power. The idea of India, at the heart of the present crisis, is in contest with its own ethos and experience of collectivity and plurality.
Over the past few days we have seen the JNU drama circulated over both old and new social media. There is fear in the campus. There is also hope and solidarity. A new civil literature is being rewritten. A fanatical social order is also inordinately exposed. We have seen divided reactions insomuch, as is also the huge support of towering consciences from the global community. Causes and effects of the public revolution from JNU, by the end of the day, will be forgiven (and forgotten), because classrooms are not parade grounds, students are not armed militants. In the end, only love will matter: the sanctity of learning as life-long is indisputable; the institutionalization of knowledge as progressive is moreover intrinsic to livelihood and economy concerns; the higher education of the university as secular is uncontestable, and, above all, the love for wisdom is always insatiable.
Tumultuous thoughts on social change or powerful alternative social world, we are once again brutally reminded, need not necessarily evolve from the university. Fear and divisive politics are capable of creating and shaping a new standard of social norm. And, these new social values need not necessarily be progressive. Afghanistan was one of the most progressive Muslim states decades back; today, it is but war-torn and a medieval society. The coming of RSS-backed BJP-government is not without a certain social tension, which includes attempt to capture every mundane tentacles of symbolic power and imaginative institutions. The most popular trait of such forces is its one-track-mind and anti-intellectualism. The unenthusiastic history of the boring but missionary-like life of the present Governor of Nagaland, one Mr. Acharya, is our nearest textbook manual on how religious fanaticism operates with masterly devotion and is politically valorized. The deplorable life of the law-keeper advocates who took naked pride and showed no remorse in physically abusing students and teachers appearing for the hearing of the JNU student leader at New Delhi’s Patiala High Court is no less different. Fanaticism and fascism are both sides of the same coin; and, sadly, the apologetics of Indian liberals nostalgically parroting what is becoming to the country now will have little consolation for the violent intolerance that has become the new rule.
How the social vulnerably allows regimentation of political power to overpower the civil space is not a new event in history! Addressing the students at JNU campus, Rahul Gandhi reminded us once again about the subtle rise of Adolf Hitler. We do not know what is India’s future! What we know, historically, is that the Indian sub-continent has never been a socially embracing society! Contemporary urban middle-class’desire to feel good or assured inasmuch inform us of the present social panacea,i.e., the pathological lack-referentof India as the land of the iconic Mahatma Gandhi. The social stratification, culturally rooted in many major Indian societies, is both a public psyche and an individual burden—and, any attempt to either maintain or perpetuate or marginalize the divided social fabric is already portent with violent forms. The hurried attempt to harmonize conflicting socio-economic slippages in the Indian context, through a fundamentalist hegemony of Hindu nationalism and ABVP-RSS-BJP political power, will have little bearing of success—except to further polarize the diversity of the multiple.
Today, it is becoming more difficult and incomplete to circumspect the situations and changes taking place around us, however national or local, without evaluating the politics of the day! “The world we live in,” as Deborah Eisenberg scathingly observes, “has been and is being increasingly politicised so that our daily experience is more and more a matter of public policy.” The federal affairs of fiscally and symbolically running the country were severely diluted with the coming of the present BJP-government. Moreover, for an emergent democracy like India that is also extremely diverse, the social gestures in the art of governance are foremost to any community health and public temperament. The radicalization of hatred and fear in the country is structurally symmetrical both with the processes as well as resistance against the undemocratic appeasement policies.
The university stands as the last citadel, as an informed public culture and conscience! Without any prejudice, it is now amply clear that the ABVP-BJP has ambitiously decided to target and threaten individuals and institution(s) into its governance designs that otherwise stands to resist such coercion. To fight irrationality and communal politics, the public stands to reclaim it with social leadership. To lend a voice of conscience and rationality, the university stands to fulfill its steadfast commitments. The history behind establishing JNU is concomitant to the ideals and place of India in the world. The competitive manner in which students are drawn from all parts of the country is also generic to the need for national participation, in creating an all-India team. It is also prudent to mention here that the formation of and support for Naga Peoples Movement for Human Rights (NPMHR), which first articulated the extra-judicial killings of Nagas through heavy militarization and draconian laws, took its roots in the late 1970s from the hostels of JNU, in the background of Indira Gandhi’s repressive emergency regime.
The task of the university is not a mere site for churning graduate degrees! The university is, and must remain, a temple of ideas. Facts are sacred but Ideas are divine! The university is, and it must uphold, the culture of conversation and dialogue. Opinions are free but Reason is always dear! The university is not a space, but a habitat of critical thinking for culture and arts, progress and scientific temper, research and argumentation. The university is mandated to think and formulate life skills—for the care and welfare for the weaker sections of society, for the fair dissemination of unbridled human conditions and its situations, for the nurturing of nationhood and good citizenship. The atrocious attempt to seize JNU is a fascist project for communal power. It is no longer an issue of sensibility war: about barbarians at the gates of civilization. It is out rightly an attempt to curtail our freedom of thinking and expression. It is an affront to our imagination and the aspiration for the good life, which is beyond party-politics or national boundaries.
Imaginations are without boundaries. It is not about it should stay like that; it can only be it will always be like that. No power can stop the freedom of imagination. The technological industrialization of social memory in the past two centuries have shown that those societies that have non-biasedly and freely imagined its past have exhibited the present strength of productivity, or future potentiality, in cooperation and knowledge—to survive progressively and democratically. This is not apocalyptic; it is apostolic! The core enemy of any fundamentalism (including religious or political) has always been the public intellectual.
An issue like JNU today is also a soft reminder to our local needs and situations—whether there is an urgent need for reason and debate for the advancement of our thoughts and conditions, or whether gun-toting culture of nationalism shall continue to enforce how and what our thoughts ought to be, or what must we say, or think? For a society that is young but vibrant, it is an equal challenge to cultivate critical ideas and thinking for a good society. Changing times call for changing personalities in different fields. Values, like virtues, or like shame, are not universally static; they do change, not only with time but also through the constructive tasks of how we question, or voice our opinions on social equity, human rights, democratic practices, or on public enemies. The university must be defended! The university is an embodiment of and for the good life!
Kekhrie Yhome
