No point shutting down JNU. Students don't learn to be intolerant
Not long ago, the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) organised an oratory competition on "The Use of Technology for Good Governance" on Good Governance Day, that is December 25, where 13 students spoke, and I was one of the judges. We were given four parameters on which to mark them: content, structure, language and delivery. Before long, however, left-backed student wings started protesting outside chanting slogans like "Vice-chancellor hai hai!" and "Modi ke chamche hai hai!"
They were so loud that we could barely hear the speakers at the competition. We were greatly annoyed by this disruption, and I sincerely wished that there had been some technology handy to silence those protests that day. I met my friend Phani the same evening and we shared a cup of chai at the Sabarmati Dhaba. We laughed about how he and I saw each other at the protest. I was sitting inside while he was sloganeering outside. In my discussion with Phani, I told him that if they really had differences in opinion, they should have come in and made their points as a part of the oratory competition.
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This way, their points could have been heard by everyone inside, who, by the way, were definitely not "Modi ke chamche", and they could have had a lavish dinner at the Mughal Darbar dhaba with the prize money. What better way to set the establishment right! Phani smiled as he agreed with me on this point, and we continued to speak about other issues around us, like how the campus had changed over the years, and about the pretty girl feeding a dog at a table in front of us. This is life in general at JNU.
I often felt that these student unions must reinvent the way they protest - maybe try a new body language instead of the age-old "lal salam" sequence with the fist going from the forehead up into the air, and come up with more definite, practical, result-oriented methods and go about it in a less noisy manner.
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In spite of the differences I might have with the politics of the Left, my feelings towards the University are different. JNU is a multicultural and multi-layered institution with students and faculty of all strata of society. It is also a place where dhabawalas selling chai and samosas are accorded the same level of respect as other students or even faculty members at times, and where mad poets live their entire lives at dhabas and their death is celebrated in style. It has always been a haven for political debate and dissent, and issues like these, that may be taboo for the rest of the country, are raised day in and day out.
What usually needs a special event backed by security outside, is usually a topic of daily debate over a cup of chai for JNU students. Such is the plurality, and the level of tolerance inside JNU.
People don't feel threatened when they express their points of view, and thus their ideas get a form of expression in these discussions, and this facilitates dialogue, and with dialogue we develop bonds and affinities, through which opinions are changed and extreme thoughts tend to develop milder tones.
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Thus, the marginalised gets a chance to find a comfortable spot in the mainstream and there are increased levels of acceptance and a sense of acceptability for the fringes. If you call this kind of space a hub of anti-national activities only because we allow a release of feelings otherwise suppressed, feelings which would otherwise tend to find more violent forms of expression, then I would sincerely beg to differ. Universities are not meant to be instruments for conformity, but instead, instruments of freedom of thought and expression.
Today, when someone asks me where I am from, I say I am from India. When they ask me which part of India I am from, I usually just shrug my shoulders, because I don't know how to say it in one line. I'm an agnostic Tamil, brought up in Mumbai and Aurangabad to a Christian mother and an atheist father, and have been in Delhi for 15 years.
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Needless to say, I had a lot of plurality in my house and upbringing, not to mention my dogs who have taught me more about loyalty and unconditional love than any politician ever has, to date. The only identity I have, besides being human is that of being an Indian, and that is being taken away from me when I am being called anti-national, just because I say that people must be allowed to say what they feel.
When I went to Delhi as a second generation Stephanian (St Stephen's College, Delhi, following in the footsteps of my father), I had my first culture shock when I playfully kicked the boy sitting in front and accidentally caught him on his balls, which made him send out a muffled scream. The girl sitting next to me looked up and asked me what had happened. I turned around and said, "I kicked him where I shouldn't have," and she turned around and said, "Can he get it up anymore?"
For someone coming from Aurangabad, where the girls in school barely made eye contact or shook your hand when you met them, girls and guys hugging and kissing each other on the cheek as a normal form of greeting was quite uncomfortable.
My years in Stephen's were a great educational curve for me not merely because of what used to happen in class but because of the most wonderful interactions I would have with the brightest, most well-read, multi-talented and articulate minds across the nation, and I absorbed a lot.
I wanted to support my education, so I took up this job as an accent trainer where I mostly worked on night shifts, and would travel on my Thunderbird motorcycle all the way to the Delhi University's North Campus for two years in order to finish my MA. Life was tough and busy, but in two years, I had an MA degree, after which I continued this routine in JNU. Please note that I had no time for protests and always rode with my helmet on.
My job in accent training got me interested in linguistics, and I wanted to earn a degree in the field. At the interview round at JNU, when I told the interviewers that I had worked in the corporate industry and wanted to study accent training, six pairs of eyebrows went up and I was grilled for nearly half-an-hour in that room.
"All of us are ta/da," said Ayesha Kidwai (using the retroflex Hindi t and d), that now familiar smirk on her face, and I humbly agreed. I convinced the interviewers that accent training or language teaching is not something that tries to prove one accent to be superior to another, but is just about realising the fact that there is a job market for a certain kind of accent and if training people on being comprehensible to people across the world gives them a job, then I don't see anything wrong with it. At that time, I remember Franson Manjili asking me in that interview, "What if one day India became powerful and the West wanted to learn Hindi?" I said that I would love that day. Today, I have been teaching Hindi at a university in Hawaii for a year, as a part of the Fulbright FLTA programme.
When someone from an apolitical background like Stephen's walks into JNU, the contrast is stark. The active politics, the power vested in the students' union, the sloganeering, the protests, the strikes might initially seem absolutely unnecessary.
JNU students often lived in their own world, happy demonstrating on campus while the rest of the world went by as usual, except for the autowalas left marvelling at a space where women could amble around freely after dark. Not everything in JNU is hunky-dory either. There are politics, shameful actions, propaganda and retribution amongst faculty, students and staff in every department.
As my fellow JNUite and tennis buddy Yogesh rightly said, questioning JNUSU's view of freedom of speech and expression, "When they forcibly stop students from attending classes or when they stop American and Israeli officials from entering the premises or they lock up the registrar in his car!" Should we aspire to get better? Yes, definitely! Is there room for improvement? Always!
However, there are amazing things happening in JNU every day. Right now, a group of volunteers are planting trees in areas affected by forest fire, tending to animals that cannot shout their slogans, and there's something special about playing tennis on half-rolled clay courts with odd bounces when you've got nilgai and peacocks for an audience.
JNU has now received a platform to tell the world outside its walls what it believes in, about sensitivity towards the environment and towards cultures, about how a society can exist without having to fear consequences and retribution, and how peace can be maintained despite the presence of conflicting opinions, and how men and women can talk freely about their political beliefs, their sexuality, their religious and spiritual inclinations without fearing retribution.
And for those who judge JNU without having ever visited the campus, I urge them to visit the campus. There are free talks on nationalism being organised by teachers now that they can listen to and actively participate in. We do not throw stones at people at JNU.
To conclude, the Linguistic Empowerment Cell (LEC) at JNU, where I had taught for five years, was set up to empower students to be able to read, understand, speak and write in English so that they are not left behind in comparison with their more privileged classmates only because they grew up speaking a less ambitious mother tongue.
JNU empowers people from the remotest corners of the world to think for themselves and to succeed. Without JNU, a lot of these students would not have received the opportunity to achieve a good education. When you don't want your taxes to be directed to JNU, think about what will happen to these students.
When you follow a biased media and call everyone from JNU anti-national, I fear that those fanatic right-wing elements will be incited by this and will scout the streets and rough up everyone from JNU. I teach Hindi at the University of Hawaii now, where they often say an ancient Hawaiian proverb, "I ka '?lelo n? ke ola, i ka '?lelo n? ka make." (In language there is life, in language there is death). I hope we realise the power that lies in language and learn to use it wisely.