{"id":63,"date":"2016-02-18T12:45:30","date_gmt":"2016-02-18T12:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gherao.com\/?p=63"},"modified":"2019-10-29T07:43:36","modified_gmt":"2019-10-29T07:43:36","slug":"need-people-on-the-other-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gherao.com\/?p=63","title":{"rendered":"Need people on the other side"},"content":{"rendered":"

— by Shreyas Sharma<\/a> (via Facebook)<\/p>\n

For over a decade, I’ve taken great pride in mocking JNU as a relic of the Left movement, which I scorn.<\/p>\n

Even today, I maintain that the slogans that were chanted in the campus were unacceptable.<\/p>\n

\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

We, the right-leaning but still slightly sane people of India need you, more than ever.<\/p>\n

I don’t want to be the new Left to this new Right.<\/p>\n

— by Shreyas Sharma<\/a> (via Facebook)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

— by Shreyas Sharma (via Facebook) For over a decade, I’ve taken great pride in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5,3,7],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-voice","tag-jawaharlal-nehru-university","tag-jnu","tag-sedition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gherao.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gherao.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gherao.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gherao.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gherao.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gherao.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64,"href":"https:\/\/gherao.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/64"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gherao.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gherao.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gherao.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gherao.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}