Does #JNUShutDown make young India anti-national?

How will you distinguish "good" from "bad"? For us as humans, it could be difficult as no one has the power to jude good or evil. It is fluid, at least for me. One's good is another's bad. You can argue otherwise and that would prove the point. But for an authority - a government - it is quite easy to make the distinction.

For a power structure, a government in place, there are set parametres, categories and points of distinction through which people are characterised or objectified. An authority always sees people as subjects. So to objectify an individual is a modern tool to impose a rule. Without this, it would be hard to impose the rule or make the distinction.

"The subject is either divided inside himself or divided from others," wrote French philosopher Michel Foucault. "This process objectivises him. Examples are the mad and the sane, the sick and the healthy, the criminals and the 'good boys'."

Doesn't it look like something similar is happening around us? Good and bad. The patriot and the anti-national. Pro-India and anti-India. Anyone who raises questions, with logic and reason, to the authority is considered an enemy. Put aside, boxed, and then perished - as was witnessed at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) last Tuesday evening. A group of scholars had come together to raise questions and express their right to speak, under the open sky. The peaceful gathering was to remember two Kashmiris - Mohammad Afzal Guru and Maqbool Butt, who were hanged to death and lie buried in Delhi's Tihar jail.

The state or its representatives are angry - more like furious about this. "How can students raise pro-Pakistan slogans and support a terrorist who was sentenced to death?" This question has been asked many times in the past few days and will be asked again. Here the parameters are: pro-Afzal and anti-Afzal. Anyone who remembers Guru as a human being is an enemy. It is not a surprise since Nathuram Godse, the man who shot dead India's founding father, is suddenly a hero.

With every change in power structure, the parametres also change. Knowing some of these students, who have organised the protest gathering for several years now, it can be said that their ability to stand and question authority has never changed. They have stood against the authority and stayed on the side of the marginalised.

A young generation of Kashmiris, which stood there to lodge protest against the hanging, has been protesting its whole life. To every Kashmiri born after the 1990s, understanding "power" and "humans as objects" comes as easily as daily meals. That has been life. The moment one goes out in Kashmir, the symbols of power are visible and right next to them the symbols of resistance - piled over the years. You are caged and insanity is imposed.

The protesters were all scholars, studying the very theories that set the world right. They raised questions that the authority would wish to ignore. For Kashmiris though,there were not just questions alone, there were demands. "We want freedom." These three words have been researched, studied and overdone by the authority for last 68 years and yet seem complicated to many.

Now the state has already put aside these scholars - calling some of them seditious and anti-national. Kanhaiya Kumar, the president of the JNUSU, will certainly come out and be part of the next protest. The authority used "sedition" as a parametre, used in past too against many.

Something strange, though, is that an All India Student Association (AISA) member and other organisations, except Democratic Students Union (DSU), have been telling media that they were not comfortable with the slogans, that they condemn what was said about India. One of the AISA office-bearers was quoted as saying they would not support the organisers because they too could get arrested.

This controversy points to the fact that the Left - a major part of it - only uses Kashmir as a plank to promote its parties. Protesting against Afzal Guru's hanging was a star event until the state exerted force. That shows even Left-politics is diplomatic and confusing. If they are scared of standing in solidarity with Kashmiris or Kumar, what Left are they talking about?

When the logical questions are not heard and categories used to distinguish people. When state violence crosses limits. When people's legitimate rights are trampled upon. There comes a time when words turn into actions. And we have seen that happening at many places - more so in South Kashmir's forests.

When young scholars also believe the "gun solution" is the only way out of a decades-old dispute, it is time to address the problem before the very structures of authority are overthrown and history overwritten.

That won't be surprising if we glance at the history of the world.