Dissent is one of the many forms of
expressions and a democracy should be able to accommodate it as long as there
is no accompanying violence. Do the students shouting slogans hurt India? May
be yes. Do these slogans hurt India more than the violent protests in provinces
where there is an insurgency? No! if a certain number of students are shouting
slogans that are anti-national, a state as large and diverse as India should be
able and willing to swallow it without letting its pride get hurt. We think India
is easily capable of doing it but increasingly less willing to do so. However,
at the same time, it needs to do it more often and more decisively as seen in
case of the JNU developments since 9 February.
Radicalism is a huge challenge
facing the country today. There can be no doubt about it. However, addressing
radicalism in the age of Internet and social media has to be equally smart.
Radicalism is spreading in part due to the spread of inequality of wealth,
access and due to real, perceived and imagined persecutions of religions,
identities, and nationalities. It goes without saying that radicalism is a
bigger challenge in the information age because indoctrination and allegiance
building can process can be done in a remote way and creation of lone-wolf
attackers is possible as seen in cases of various cases of ISIS membership
cases across the world. However, those who are protesting with placards and
flags are less likely to be radicalized in the way in which it is feared today.
Lone wolfs are only likely to be the individuals who have no such space for
democratic dissent, or those who think that there is no value of a protest in
addressing one’s grievances.
Many
years ago, when Farid Zakaria had labeled India as an “illiberal democracy”,
eyebrows were raised and denials flashed out in no time. However, as a
democracy that takes pride in its diversity, we need to ask ourselves over and
again whether we still respect that diversity or if we have lost sight of it in
the project of homogenization. Homogenization presents an immense danger of
trampling of the diversity and that is where we must remind ourselves of the
quote of Evelyn Beatrice Hall, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend
to the death your right to say it.” This definition should be the benchmarking
of a liberal democracy that India needs to become to be a just accommodative
system. Such a system cannot be built at the cost of some dreams for the sake
of others and for the sake of any larger
national idea at the cost of diversity. For that to happen, one has to learn to
apply liberal politics in a non-selective manner.
Universities are great incubators of ideas. Anyone thinking of
JNU having become anti-national, may benefit from watching a documentary titled
Berkley in the 1960s on the most fascinating
era in modern American domestic politics and something which brought that
country out of the modernist determinism by and large. Universities on the
other hand, are huge contributors to a person’s idea of the country. The author
can acknowledge that his notion of India underwent many substantive changes
with the time he spent in JNU, which is a true example of the many diversities
that India has. From a nation building process too, the fact that many students
from a region marked by insurgency are studying in the country’s premier
national universities is a hallmark of the success of state system, even if
they are shouting what is seen as anti-national slogans. Yes, even then,
because at least they are not adding to another lost generation there and
reducing the security costs for the state. May be their inclusion in the
mainstream opens the door for more dialogue, may be they will become new kinds
of role models for their next generations? Also, a state can always monitor
those with any reasonable doubt by using methods that let it stay quiet. That
is more likely to be substantive too in the sense of security.
A discursive, deliberative university space is of imagination
and of optimism, which is exactly opposed to the idea of nationalism, which is
here & now and which is in the form of Bushism of “if you are not with us,
you are against us”. Therefore, there is a reason and logic to look at
university spaces as those safety valves that build nations in a slow but a
much more substantive manner. We used to do that mostly, but have lost it
sometime in the frenzy of nationalism.
