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It
appears from what the newspapers say or what the media shows that the entire
country has become secular in mindset and that all participating individuals in
demonstrations and rallies against the Citizens Amendment Act would go all out
to uphold their secular beliefs against all odds. They would not flinch from
taking recourse to even violence if it ever came to that.
If
all this were true one would have all the reasons to be happy. A secular
mindset is always welcome as it shuns prejudices and hatred for other
communities as is normally witnessed. It is a liberal and harmonious way of
life thatpromotes efforts to try and understand the opposing antithetical
views. Diversity of views is welcomed and each is allowed to coexist along with
the contrarian and prevailing majoritarian view. Basically, it is a tolerant
society that has a place for every way of looking at things in a society. It
also has to have the majority with a very large heart that has the capacity to
accommodate various opposing viewpoints without any rancor or bitterness or
heartburn.
This
would be an ideal society but unfortunately it just does not exist anywhere.
Human beings being what they are they live through their lives with all the
emotions of love and hate, likes and dislikes and all their biases and sense of
fairness. Hence, if onewere to scratch a secular person one would find underneath
the thin veneer of secularism all the ills of prejudices and hatred for other
compatriots. Many of those who are taking part in the rallies and
demonstrations against the CAA and/or NCR are certainly not secular in the true
sense of the word as they are unwilling to appreciate the contrarian point of
view. The recourse to violence in the demonstrations in Uttar Pradesh confirms
that beyond doubt. A secular individual would argue it out rather than be
violent and use force to bring home his
opinion.
The
ongoing agitations against the Citizenship laws have mobilized massive crowds.
Worse, various places oflearning have seen violent students and others destroy
public and private property. Unfortunately, the students have been mobilized by
various political parties through their subaltern units in the universities or
colleges or other places of learning that exist in the shape of students’
unions. Each union toes the political line of its master causing confrontation
with the opposing union. The places of learning have thus become kind of war
zones as exemplified by what happened at Jawaharlal Nehru University of New
Delhi. Students came for the “fight” wearing masks and wielding lathis. These
students are certainly not secular.In fact they came for a “war” against those
who happened to hold opposing views.
Students
should not be out on the streets, they should be in theclassrooms. They should
be kept out of various societal controversies where political parties of
various shades push their agenda. Politicisation of an issue only divides the nation
– more so the student community. Such divisive actions need to be avoided.
Similar sentiments were given expression to by the cricketing icon, Sunil
Gavaskar recently while delivering the Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial Lecture.
Hinting that it was not for the students to take sides in the current
agitations against the controversial citizenship laws, Gavaskar said, “The
country is in turmoil. Some of our youngsters are out on the street when they
should be in their classrooms. Some of them are ending up in hospitals for
being out on the streets”. He went on to say, “We as a nation can go higher
only when we are all together,when each one of us has to be simply Indian,
first and foremost. That is what the game (Cricket) taught us….We win when we
pull together as one” Gavaskar’s advice to the students was that they should go
back to the classrooms. That is their main duty. Pithily he observed “They have
gone to the university to study, so please study”.
There
can be various and even differing views on the matter but one has to consider
the facts that the parents of the students have spent their hard earned money
to send them to colleges and universities. Even the State expends large sums of
money to provide for their education. They just cannot avoid their responsibility
in this regard. No society would ever like them to abstain from the classroom
and fight on the streets against the arms of the law. Most of us have gone
through this stage of our lives and have now come to realize that all that
orchestrated recalcitrance and anger against the established authority were
futile and were of no use in building a good future for any of us. In no way
such conduct could be considered as doing a good turn to the parents who,
inflicting great pain on themselv, spend their last bit to have their wards
properly educated.
It
is politicization of campuses that is at the bottom of this problem. Students’
unions have become nothing but political arms of various political parties holding
varied ideological views distracting the students from their basic reason of
being in educational campuses. I recall the pre—independence days in Gwalior
where the college used to have a union of students. It used to be guided union
with a faculty member guiding it. The union generally would deal with affairs
relating to students’ welfare, their extra-curricular activities, sporting
events and so on. The union never indulged in politics and, since it was a
princely state, the organisations like Students’ Federation of India were kept
out of the campus. Yet the College produced politicians like AtalBehari
Vajpayee who not only was a great debater and a fiery speaker he also
collaborated with the member of the family of the same ruling feudal to form a
political party and later rose to become the prime minister of the country.
Politicians
are a bane for the campuses. They try and mould the young minds to suit their
conveniences. They vitiate the environment causing antipathies, dividing the
student community. Howsoever one might say that the campuses are breeding
grounds for future politiciansnone could objectively say so. The students are
misguided and misdirected only to form the bulk for political parties,lending
them weight in so far as numbers are concerned and, worse, they are used only as
their foot soldiers.
Arvind
Subramanian, former Chief Economic Advisor to Government of India and currently
teaching at Harvard University writes from the US about the anguish caused to
him as he saw the imagesof Indian educational institutions in turmoil streamed
across the globe. Quoting a protagonist from a Mira Nair film he asks “Aren’t
these our children who need to be protected from ourselves, from our
instinctsto hate and harm? These young our college students, need to be
nurtured, educated and equipped to build the wealth and the future that we want
for our country”.
Surely,
students are our human capital which needs to be nursed and cared for. Instead
of dissipating their energies in futile fissiparous warfare they need to be
encouraged to build an economically strong nation making the country proud.
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