Don't #ShutDownJNU, reboot it
Rawbert! Is pille ko liquid oxygen me daal do. Liquid ise jeene nahi dega, aur oxygen ise marne nahi dega.
(Robert, put this son of a bitch in liquid oxygen. Liquid won't let him live and the oxygen won't let him die).
A few years ago, when this writer visited Jawaharlal Nehru University's iconic Ganga Dhaba, amid news of its imminent close down, yesteryear silver-screen villain Ajeet's legendary lines came floating into the mind.
The dhaba appeared to be in a similar condition, wherein the "liquid" of global (or should we say globalised?) world pushed it to the point of decimation while the oxygen of the inherent Leftist nostalgia would just not let that happen.
Its fate seemed precariously hanging in the balance. Today, as the sedition controversy engulfs JNU, on the issue of a group of students celebrating the "martyrdom" of Afzal Guru, who was convicted and hanged for his role in the 2002 Parliament attack, it's all but apparent that Ganga Dhaba was merely a mirror image of the university it found refuge with. Actually, JNU itself has become antiquated. It dwells on the past which no longer exists, and refuses to acknowledge how much the world around it has changed. It's an artificial construct wherein one is made to believe that everything is alright with the Left and that a socialist order will soon see a Phoenix-like rise from the ashes of the current capitalist order, thanks to what Marx would call capitalism's "inherent contradictions".
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JNU is archaic for one more reason. Howsoever it may try, it can't remain isolated in its fantasy world, especially in the era of social media. Gone are the days when it would organise a "cultural programme" at the height of the Kargil war in 1999 and invite Pakistani artists to virulently abuse India, and get away with it. More so if two Army officers present there are assaulted just because they choose to protest against such anti-India outbursts, to the extent that they could escape only after one of them takes out a pistol and fires in the air.
Gone are the days when some JNUites would openly celebrate the killings of 75 CRPF personnel in an ambush at Dantewada in 2010, and the rest of the nation would simply refuse to react.
For, there's a beast in the shape of social media which is ideology-neutral and thus can't be "fixed". So, when some students, again at a "cultural show" in JNU organised to celebrated the "martyrdom" of Afzal Guru, began their rant with Kashmir's Azaadi and went on to seek India's barbaadi, it was bound to have a nation-wide resonance, more so after Mail Today broke the story, subsequently picked by Twitter and Facebook.
Once it went viral on social media, there was no option for the traditional media but to pick the story, even if there were strong temptations to play it down for the old-time, nostalgia-cum-ideology sake. So, to think what one is witnessing at JNU is something new is far from true. In fact, students - you may call them "fringe", but it's this fringe group that dictates the narrative on the campus - have crossed the Lakshman Rekha several times in the past, whether it's the Kargil misadventure or the occasional support for Maoists or even the act of showing black flag to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
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So, what's the way out? For, why should the country give subsidy of more than Rs 3,00,000 per student if these very students call for India's disintegration? The answer doesn't lie in shutting down the institution, which many Right-wing activists are demanding today. This, in fact, shows the weakness on their part to take on the Left intellectually, and thus the call to shut the JNU down!
The answer lies in opening the university's doors for more than just one ideology to flourish. Let a thousand (ideological) flowers bloom, as a famous Maoist saying goes, on the campus. Here it's worth recalling the case of Shankar Sharan, professor and columnist in several Hindi newspapers, on how he was denied a doctorate degree by JNU for a decade - and which he got only after a judicial intervention - just because his thesis didn't meet the ideological requirements of the university.
Sharan, to his credit, revised his thesis after his field visit to the erstwhile USSR in the late 1980s. Interestingly, Sharan was then a Marxist cardholder. And if this is the case with an insider, God help the outsider!
JNU functionaries also need to think why the university has nothing worthwhile to show except, as one former Delhi University professor tells this writer, two things - it either helps students become civil servants, or make them enter politics.
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Most students use this place as a hostel where they get good, cheap food and a relatively peaceful milieu to crack competitive exams, or cosy up to political parties. In the entire scheme of things, the thing intellectual remains peripheral.
Till this remains the case, JNU, like Ganga Dhaba, would find itself fed with liquid oxygen which won't let it live but also won't allow it to die. In this crisis, however, there's an opportunity for JNU to change its script forever. The question is: Will it?