Azadi...Azadi...Azadi!!

Kanahiyya is out on bail. The JNU campus celebrated like a freedom fighter has come out of the jail of an enslaving government. Thousands had gathered to celebrate, jeer, laugh, mock and shout at his homecoming. It at least proves that those who shouted anti-India slogans are not just a minority, there are thousands of JNU students in general who pay lip service to their ideology and follow them in spirit, who share the belief, who agree with the few who have been in the news recently for ant-India posturing and sloganeering.

In his homecoming speech Kanahiyya and Co. were shouting repeatedly, ‘Ladke lenge Azaadi!’ I just want to ask what freedom you are asking and fighting for? You get a room at the monthly rent even less than a snack at a junk food outlet. You pay fees even less than a cinema ticket in a multiplex in a mall. Your lunch and dinners are subsidised to the extent that even a daily wage earner pays more on a roadside stall to quieten the hunger rats in his famished stomach. You are absolutely free to follow your basic instincts, so that you simply focus on scholarship instead of wasting time like typical non-JNU youths in curiosity following the opposite sex. You are free to get education from the best scholars in the country. You are free to grow up and spend your formative years in an environment that puts you ahead in competition to become IAS officers and build lucrative careers in MNCs. The Government of India gives you all these facilities because you are considered to be students par excellence. Just because you crack an entrance exam! But do you consider yourself to be just students? Aren’t you jumping too far ahead into future to be petty politicians even before you complete your scholarship? Scholarship and research has taken a backseat; politics is driving the students’ psyche now in JNU. And it is sad and pathetic. The Indian Government spends hundreds of crores not to hear political shouts, it does for research, growth of minds, discussion, better citizens, not the ones who shout, jeer and cock a thumb a the Indian state almost on principle.

Being a JNUite has been misinterpreted in a way so as to mean only anti-establishment. The problem with a premiere institution is that its students might carry a superiority complex that in turn makes them think that whatever they act, feel and do is better than the ordinary. The JNU fame over the decades has developed a mentality that they are exclusive and better than the rest and hence need to hold privileged, apart-from-the-rest attitude and opinions and only this mentality can instigate some of them to shout pro Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhatt slogans. There cannot be any other psychology other than this. The highest seat of justice has decaled them to be the enemies of the state, who are these little extra-idea-fed hatchings to question the procedure of justice dispensation at the highest level in the country. It’s a direct declaration of distrust in the state. As sun warms up, rain gets us wet, this leftist ideology has inherent tendency for chaos and disturbance that ultimately leads to violence. These little intellectuals are just in infatuation with the idea. It’s better they go romancing with the girls instead of being sloganeering paper tigers playacting the show of revolution on a safe stage in a highly-subsidised educational institution. How many of them go to the real mess in slums and bring ‘Azadi’ for the hungry and the destitute?

It’s highly deplorable that JNU campus is now politicised beyond imagination. How can students pursue scholarship in such surroundings? The management has to stamp its authority and put scholarship over politics. That is what JNU should be known for, not slogans like ‘India go back!’ If India goes back, will most of them even be able to pursue their education in costly institutions outside? They come from very poor families. Isn’t it freedom that they are privileged to get the best education at the cheapest rate? Isn’t it freedom that Kanahiyya whose family runs on 3000 INR dents Indian democracy with his anti-state propaganda and hogs national limelight? They are getting damn subsidised education from the poorest of the poor man’s money that directly indirectly goes into government’s coffers. They are just supposed to be good educated citizens of India and do something extra than the lesser mortals to make India better.

I got my education from Jat College in a small town in Haryana and always held a grudge for not having studied at JNU. Thanks to our extra-brained JNUites, my grudge lies in a dustbin now. I am happy for getting my education where I did. At least I believe in Indian democracy as it stands. Who knows what an intellectual-psychopath I would have turned out had I joined that institution! At least considering myself luckier after watching the jeering crowd yesterday night after the freedom fighter came out of the jail for the cause of the masses.