The “liberal” angst about debate being stifled in the country would have been credible if they were not speaking from every platform possible that they were not being allowed to speak; or if they were not as intolerant of dissent as they say their opponents are; apart from being much more contemptuous of their opponents in the firm belief that they are superior and are entitled to “their” turf. There is no room for disagreement there, as far as they are concerned.
In the specific case of the Ramjas-DU incident, “liberal” hackles are raised, and rightly so, when a young Gurmehar Kaur is subjected to trolling on social media, but then they themselves are in the forefront of the lampooning when an even younger Jhanvi Behal seeks a debate with left icon Kanhaiya Kumar to teach him the meaning of nationalism. The hypocrisy is so stark and examples of selective outrage are so many that one column is not enough to enumerate them.
The latest narrative being sought to be constructed about the right throttling dissent, unlike the “liberal-left”, flies in the face of both history and contemporary politics. In the arena of student politics, fisticuffs became passé for West Bengal’s left and ultra left students aeons ago. They were more comfortable wielding firearms and bombs, when not breaking university furniture or throwing bricks and wounding their opponents, sometimes fatally. After all, it was in West Bengal that the Naxalite movement took birth, with ultra left students and teachers, among others, at its core. It’s a different matter that armies of comrades, eventually, saw light and answered the call of Mammon by joining MNCs or shifting to foreign shores. In fact, it is West Bengal and Kerala, both with strong leftist underpinnings that have witnessed, and are still witnessing, the maximum political violence and bloodshed. For every Ramjas-like incident, Bengal has had a hundred, if not more. But these states are too remote to register on national consciousness.
The real problem is that things are getting seen in binaries: right-left, fascist-liberal, Sanghi-Commie, us-them, etc.
At the same time, just as the Ramjas-DU commotion showed, the right is losing the battle of perception, even as it tries to snatch the narrative from the “liberal” camp. Disrupting debates because of their anti-India content or getting into brawls, foisting sedition cases, giving Pahlaj Nihalani a free hand, is no way to win the battle. All this just helps the other side to build the perception that the right is boorish, unreasonable, authoritarian and fascist. Considering the “liberal” side of the spectrum has always been guilty of manipulating the narrative to suit its own end, it’s a bit rich for them to take the moral high ground. At the same time, they have been less ham-handed about exercising control. Whereas, finesse is a word not easily associated with the right side of the spectrum.
In the DU case, it is difficult to fathom why Union ministers would wade into an incident that’s nothing more than an altercation in a college. The ultra-left has been screaming death to India for decades. No amount of wishing, or even conniving for the dismemberment of India has affected the republic. Once upon a time, even the now-chastened CPI-CPM used to call “China’s chairman” their chairman. But then the system got better of the comrades and they became a part of the squabble for power that marks Indian politics. So the republic is safe. But it’s not known if the present-day campus revolutionaries are safe from the influences of a globalised world.
The real problem is elsewhere—that things are getting seen in binaries: right-left, fascist-liberal, Sanghi-Commie, us-them, and so on and so forth. Labelling people into narrow compartments refuses to acknowledge individuality and freedom of thought. Also, it divides. There has to be a meeting ground, more give and take, otherwise there will be too much hatred. To adapt a quote by playwright-actor-director Mark Rylance, who said while presenting an Oscar to Viola Davis last Sunday, “Opposition is really good in society…Sometimes, the most supportive thing is to oppose…opposing without hatred.”
It applies to both sides of an unnecessary divide.
From now on, Joyeeta Basu will appear on these pages, but occasionally.