Thoughts on Dissent, Radicalism and University

     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.