Rebelling against authority comes naturally to youth. Campuses are sensitive to the entry of police. These are some simple facts that all of us who have either been young, or are parents, understand. Administrators are trained to understand this.
The NDA government headed by Narendra Modi, often acclaimed as the Hindu Hriday Samrat, has been getting into confrontations with students of different institutions, starting with FTII, Pune.
An anonymous complaint last year against the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle at IIT Madras was sent to the HRD Ministry headed by Smriti Irani and was followed by the de-recognition of the student body. A bureaucrat in the ministry sent the group a letter accusing it of "spreading hatred for the Hon'ble Prime Minister and Hindus". RSS
shakhas and other right-wing groups like the Vivekananda Study Circle, Dhruva and Vande Mataram have been functioning on the campus unchallenged. After violent protests by student bodies, the de-recognition of the Ambedkar group was lifted.
After the tragic suicide of Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad, we now have the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University or JNU on the boil. There is a common pattern of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) - the student wing of the BJP - complaining against political rivals to BJP leaders which is followed by the government throwing its weight behind the complainants and against those on the other side of the ideological divide. It is one thing for political parties to make forays into campuses at the time of student body elections - despite the recommendations of the Lyngdoh Committee. Some interference in recruitment of teaching and non-teaching staff has also come to be an accepted norm in our centres of learning. The Left does it and so does the Right. While the RSS does it very methodically, the Congress flounders in its attempts to interfere in recruitments.
The ABVP not only wins sporadic elections in JNU (Sambit Patra had won in 2001 and the student party won one position last year), the campus even has regular RSS
shakhas. While earlier elections were fought with ferocious ideological overtones, with changing times and the decline of the Left, the JNU is also witnessing a shift in discourse where the issues of basic amenities decide the fates of candidates and parties.
From mainstream media to social media, there have been loud opinions about the allegations of anti-India slogans raised by students of JNU and the reaction of the government. Smriti Irani called it an assault on Mother India. The Minister of Home Affairs invoked a fake tweet emanating from a parody account of Hafiz Sayeed (Sayeed himself issued a denial) to link the JNU protests to the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
This is not the first time that slogans have been raised in memory of terrorist Afzal Guru or against India. Several key members of the PDP, which is the BJP's ally in Kashmir, have expressed strong opinions against his hanging. Its ally in Punjab, the Akali Dal, was at one point openly advocating the cause of Khalistan.
Mohandas Pai, a leading commentator, echoes another opinion gaining currency in the hashtag wars on the JNU controversy -
that the tax payer's money spent on universities is meant to fund not their politics but their studies. This has been the most bizarre argument offered on the issue. Because a university is funded by the state, is it meant to obediently adhere to the ideology of the then head of state?
Campuses are meant to be battlegrounds of competing ideas and ideologies. It is through debate that the worth of an ideology is proved. JNU has had the proud privilege of being a rich platform where ideas were debated. There can be no dominant intellectual discourse on any campus in the age of the internet where all dogmas get threatened and challenged. Should the likes of Dinanath Batra be allowed to add obedience as part of the curriculum?
When was the last time a private university posed difficult questions, forced governments to course-correct and challenged majoritarianism? Do we want our universities to manufacture de-ideologised robots obediently slouching their way through life? Is the tax payer a monolithic entity whose opinions and expectations from campuses are known to the state, its chosen mouthpieces or its patronised thinkers?
Adherents of the Charvaka philosophy stood on the steps of the temples seeking alms from worshippers and lashing out against tenets of Hinduism. They still got alms. They still challenged the faithful.
(Pawan Khera is a political analyst with the Congress party.)Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.