Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives
Our image of a college student was clearly someone who is free-spirited and openminded, someone who loves to have a go at orthodoxies; but that image needs to be urgently updated in our minds. Campuses increasingly are being infiltrated by students who are pretty much the opposite of that. Seems like the students have undergone some epic transformation – from freewheelin’ spirits to ban-happy youngsters; from asking awkward questions to suppressing ‘offensive’ speech. Suddenly the Campus seems to have metamorphosed into some intolerant being.
This was starkly reflected this February at Delhi’s Ramjas College when a seminar on tribes in Bastar had to be called off by the college because of threats from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP) the student wing of the ruling BJP’s ideological parent Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), garbed under ‘saving’ the Delhi University from “antinational elements”. The anti-national element in question was linked to the other campus – the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) – which has also been under serious attack from these right-wing student’s trying to rid the campus of its liberal tradition.
The college had sent an invite to JNU students Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid to address the seminar. Khalid was arrested on sedition charges over a fracas on the campus in February 2016 which was never proved. But the ABVP felt it was its moral duty to safeguard its version of nationalism. The Ramjas College clash reignited the debate on nationalism. No wonder that even the President of India had to warn against the rise of such a culture. There should be no room in India for an intolerant Indian, Pranab Mukherjee has repeated ad nauseam since
“India has been, since ancient times, a bastion of free thought, speech and expression and colleges must not propagate a culture of unrest. There must be space for legitimate criticism and dissent. The time has come for collective efforts to rediscover the sense of national purpose and patriotism.”
The President was categoric when he said: “These temples of learning must resound with creativity and free thinking. Those in universities must engage in reasoned iscussion and debate rather than propagate a culture of unrest. It is tragic to see them caught in the vortex of violence and disquiet.”
At precisely the time they should be leaping brain-first into the rough and tumble of grown-up, testy discussion, students are cushioning themselves from anything that has the whiff of controversy. This is a disaster, for it means our universities are becoming breeding grounds of dogmatism. As John Stuart Mill said, if we don’t allow our opinion to be ‘fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed’, then that opinion will be ‘held as a dead dogma, not a living truth’
The ‘no platform’ policy of various student unions is forever being expanded to keep off campus pretty much anyone whose views don’t chime perfectly with the prevailing groupthink. Where once it was only far-right rabble-rousers who were noplatformed, increasingly everyone from Leftists to feminists who hold the wrong opinions on transgender issues has found themselves shunned from the uni-sphere.
And in the age of technology only helps speed up the process. Now, ideas and information can spread like wildfire. In a matter of hours, a protest of thousands can be organised. A regime can fall in 140 characters. Social media is a tool for disruption: it can destabilise traditional power structures and unite at a remarkable speed.
Yet as with any powerful new tool, there are dangerous pitfalls. If Edward Snowden proved one thing it is that information is no longer sacred and privacy is a thing of the past. In such an age, the constant diffusion of information can become just as dangerous as it is empowering.
Technology also means that it has never been easier to whip up a false sense of mass outrage — and target that synthetic anger at those in charge. The authorities on the receiving end feel so besieged that they succumb to the demands and threats.
The current assault on university/college campuses is made worse by the fact that it isn’t about universities at all. The right-wing is using universities as public altars where students and teachers are offered up as sacrifices to the Great Jingo. A vicious chauvinism is being publicly articulated and performed using students as extras and colleges as props
A divided campus – which once incubated ideals and ideas –struggles to balance inclusive values with its legacy of fighting for the right to voice your opinion, however ugly it may be.
This is where the local history of Ramjas meets the pan-Indian plans of the Sangh Parivar. The ABVP that led the attack has, since the inauguration of the Narendra Modi government, been the prime mover in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s bid to capture Indian universities. In Hyderabad, in JNU, in Jadavpur University, in Jodhpur University and, now, in Ramjas a pattern has repeated itself. The ABVP will first take exception to an event on campus. This could be a film screening, a lecture, a demonstration, a seminar, anything that can handily be described as anti-national. It will then solicit the aid of helpful BJP legislators or ministers to use the sinews of the State the relevant ministry or the local police force - to intimidate university administrations, to arrest its ideological enemies on campus or to look the other way while its goons go rampaging.
In its present avatar, with the BJP in command of an absolute majority at the Centre, the ABVP isn’t a student body, it is a vigilante organisation. The BJP sees Indian universities as treacherous swamps that need to be drained. The finance minister, Arun Jaitley, said as much at an event at the London School of Economics immediately after the violence at Ramjas. There is, he said, “an alliance of subversion” in Indian university campuses between separatists and the ultra left.
The Sangh Parivar's current assault on university campuses is made worse by the fact that it isn’t about universities at all. The ABVP is using universities as public altars where students and teachers are offered up as sacrifices to the Great Jingo. A vicious chauvinism is being publicly articulated and performed using students as extras and colleges as props.
But large public universities aren't easily silenced. And it is not only in India that the issue of free speech and freedom are under attack
A recent riot at the University of California Berkeley raised some big questions about the future of the free speech movement. A divided campus – which once incubated the ideals of the 1960s – was sent into lockdown as it struggled to balance inclusive values with its legacy of fighting for the right to voice your opinion, however ugly it may be.
When the Berkeley College Republicans invited inflammatory Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos to speak on campus, over 100 faculty members signed letters of protest, urging the administration to cancel his visit, while an op-ed by veterans of the free-speech movement defended his right to speak. The university decided that the Berkeley College Republicans, a separate legal entity from the school itself, had the right to host Yiannopoulos – but many in the community didn't agree with that decision, pointing to other schools that have successfully prevented his appearances
They were successful in stopping him. But what does that mean for a campus uniquely tied to the idea that everyone – even those holding ideas widely condemned and deemed to be offensive, ignorant or hateful – has the right to say their piece?
But it isn’t just about blocking a single speaker. “It is really about making them understand the danger they pose by treating these insane neo-Nazi ideas cavalierly,” the protester says. “People talk a lot about ‘freedom of speech’ and I think this fetish of speech misses the larger point. It is about ideas of freedom itself. Who has it, and who is denied it.”
One day, these students, with their lust to ban, their war on the offensive lingo, and their terrifying talk of pre-crime, will be running the country. And then it won’t only be those of us who occasionally have cause to visit a campus who have to suffer their dead dogmas.
A journalist and film-maker for many moons, Prashun Bhaumik has been fortunate to combine work and pleasure – his love for travel and food. When younger he took two years off to discover his country which he feels is the world in itself. Other times he has found himself in the oddest of places at the greatest of times, such as in South Africa when Nelson Mandela walked free after 27 years (Indians were not allowed to go to SA then), when Baghdad was bombed the first night by the allied forces or in Cuba as the Soviet Union was crumbling. Prashun truly believes travel is life’s best educator