School of Languages, JNU, New Delhi (Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/School_of_languages_JNU_Delhi.jpg)
— by Shreyas Sharma (via Facebook)
For over a decade, I’ve taken great pride in mocking JNU as a relic of the Left movement, which I scorn.
Even today, I maintain that the slogans that were chanted in the campus were unacceptable.
But unacceptable only in terms of the fact that I DIDN’T LIKE THEM. Unacceptable to me, because I believe I belong to a great nation, and I will take exception to anyone who promises to divide it into a thousand pieces.
Not unacceptable in terms of sedition charges against the students’ union president (who did NOT do the chanting), Jaish-e-Mohammad murmurs against an extreme Leftist/atheist who happens to have a Muslim name, lawyers attacking journalists for reporting facts, and a police commissioner spouting poetry borrowed from a film song after all that has transpired.
What differentiates us from animals? Animals react in a predictable manner, humans don’t (necessarily). That’s what makes conversation fun: a different impulse, a different reaction, a different thought.
I am not Umar. I am not Kanhaiya. I will argue with them. I will try to make them see sense in my point of view. But if, despite all my efforts, they fail to see it, fair enough. Also vice-versa.
People of JNU and those standing in solidarity with it, please continue the good fight. I need people on the other side of the court to play conversational tennis with.
We, the right-leaning but still slightly sane people of India need you, more than ever.
I don’t want to be the new Left to this new Right.
— by Shreyas Sharma (via Facebook)
