We can’t give up hope. Even with all of the negative events that are happening. We can’t be distracted by that, we can’t let the negativity convince us that nothing can be done. Giving up without a fight is worse than giving up while fighting.
For all the vicious, threatening and sexist trolls, she has stood her ground. Besides, for an ex-cricketer and a flamboyant bat whom we all loved (Virender Sehwag), a talented Bollywood actor (Randeep Hooda), and a junior minister in the Centre who is routinely putting his foot in his mouth to prove his Hindutva credentials to the powers that be (Kiren Rijiju), a 20-year-old girl can never have a mind of her own. Period. So who is “polluting” her mind, they are asking?
They seem to be unanimous that she has no capability of exercising her independent opinion. So, why is she a “political pawn” — the Haryana actor, macho as ever, is asking, as self-righteous as a man can be. One gentleman has threatened to ‘rape her’ on her Facebook wall, according to media reports, adding graphic descriptions about his perverse fantasy.
So how and why is it that a young girl is incapable of thinking through her own mind and why is she subjected to such vehemence and condemnation? What makes the collective of male machismo to be so obsessive about her being manipulated, her mind polluted, and being used as a political pawn, whereas all she is doing is expressing her honest, strong and authentic opinion, as a young woman and a thinking, intelligent, sensitive student? So what is wrong with that, and even if you disagree, why do you mock her, degrade her and threaten her? In response, she has simply tweeted: “Political pawn? I can think. I don't support violence perpetuated on students? Is that so wrong?”
What is it about this nation, and its macho manhood, which glorifies India as a nation of the young, and claims to worship women as ‘goddesses’ etc., and, yet, repeatedly chooses to crush the independence of the young, especially girls and women, their kaleidoscopic schools of thought, their music, theatre, cinema, seminars, books and literary festivals, their freedoms and individualities, and even a simple status picture with a placard.
We have seen how a young and talented actress from ‘Dangal’ was recently hounded and condemned, for no rhyme or reason. We are all witnessing how the young female filmmaker of ‘Lipstick under my Burkha’ is being hounded by the same man who made life miserable for the filmmakers of Udta Punjab? Earlier, we know too well how Deepa Mehta’s ‘Water’ and ‘Fire’ were blocked, violently, and by whom, and so was ‘Parzania’ in Gujarat, and ‘My Name is Khan’, among other films.
Surely, being on this side of the fence with fanatics, the censor board chief, a favourite of the Sangh Parivar, is now being joined by fundamentalists from the other camp too. Mirror mirror, they behave the same, don’t they? The film, as a creative medium, can go damned; and so can the adult audience, who can make their own choices, can’t they?
Even the Supreme Court has chosen to shift its paradigm on the national anthem. But, who can change the khap panchayats stalking the male consciousness across the mainstream dominant discourse and citadels of power?
Clearly, Gurmehar Kaur is no Leftist. Even if she is a Leftist, what is wrong with her being one – and there is no one shade of Leftism in the world anymore, it’s as much a rainbow as a rainbow in a twilight zone can be. Often, invisible in a dusty sunset. Leftists are part of the secular, pluralist, constitutional democracy called India, isn’t it? You can be Right, Left or Centre, as long as you don’t brutalise violently other people’s spaces to argue, think, disagree and debate. As long as you are not Ku Klux Klan, White supremacists, or jihadi terrorists bombing Sufi dargahs in Pakistan, or, beheading journalists.
If you don’t like the other’s ideas, in good or bad faith, celebrate your own; why indulge in violence in the name of pseudo nationalism, like the Nazis burnt the books, or sent everyone to the gas chambers? Lies and propaganda don’t hold for long; you can keep branding everyone ‘anti-national’, or ‘seditious’, or accuse them of trying to break the nation, without any evidence, whatsoever. It can sell and jell for a while, it can become a part of a dubious rhetoric, but is as fake as fake news, as post as post-truth, and is as much doctored as the doctored videos which were proved to be doctored in the JNU controversy in February last year. And, why lie, when you can fight with truth? Why make Goebbels and Hitler your role model?
Nowhere has Gurmehar, now a student in an eminent college in Delhi University claimed to be holding a brief for any ideology. She stands for peaceful and open debate and discussions, without violence. She stands for peace between nations, and not war, despite her personal tragedy and that of her family. Her father was an army officer who died in the Kargil war. Earlier, her silent anti-war video had found hundreds of thousands of supporters (15 lakh views and multiplying), going viral in 2016, in which she simply said: “Pakistan did not kill my dad, war killed him.”
After the one-dimensional violence unleashed on a peaceful seminar at Ramjas College by AVPV storm-troopers on Feb 21/22, 2017, in which professors and students were brutally assaulted – they were no clashes — she put up a post with a placard: “I am a student from Delhi University. I am not afraid of ABVP. I am not alone. Every student of India is with me. Students against ABVP.”
The post went viral, across the campuses of India, from Punjab to Mumbai University. Thousands of students used the same message and posted their pictures. Her status message also, reportedly, said: … It was not an attack on protestors, but an attack on every notion of democracy that is dear to every Indian’s heart. It is an attack on ideals, morals, freedom and rights of every person born in this nation. The stones that you pelt hit our bodies, but fail to bruise our ideas…”
“People have been threatening me with violence on Facebook and calling me antinational. One man… posted a comment on my profile picture and gave a detailed description of how he would rape me. I think this is very scary. Rape threats to women of your own country in the name of nationalism is not correct,” Gurmehar told NDTV.
There was a great American-German film called ‘The Book Thief’ made by Brian Percival, based on a book by Australian author, Markus Zusak. It’s a film about the whole society turning Nazi in a quiet lane in an idyllic small town in Germany, with many becoming bloodthirsty informers. In this little lane, called ‘Heaven Street’, which is bombed later, a German family gave shelter to a young Jewish man in the basement. In this home, comes a little girl, a stranger, whose mother too seems to have disappeared in the war against Hitler’s holocaust. The young Jew teaches her new words, as she reads for him from a book.
The words, like Gurmehar’s placard, become ephemeral butterflies, colourful rainbows, shining rivers and soft petals of truth, flying against violence and brutality, to restore sanity, imagination, beauty and humanism. When they burn the books and sing a robust war song of Nazi nationalism, she waits and picks up a book on the sly, a burning book, because she loves stories, new flights of imagination, magical dreams.
In her innocence, she is no ‘political pawn’. She knows the value of hope, peace and knowledge, in the times of war and death. Like Gurmehar Kaur, young, independent, authentic, brave. Telling the truth, in the face of lies and war cry!
For a country in the throes of a discourse which uses kabristans and shamshans as electoral trump cards, and which blocks films, seminars, books and theatre, Gurmehar is the moment of great and infinite hope. A revelation! Her India, is the India of her dreams. Because, she, like her eclectic generation, carries no baggage of hate politics. Because she is the new scaffolding of the nation-state and India should be proud of her. Like, she said, her father would be, always.
And in millions of such Gurmehars reside the idea of Hope eternal and a democracy that will survive these narrow walls and a nation that will always awake in that heaven of freedom.