In Solidarity with JNU

(This piece was written on 18 February 2016 after attending a peaceful protest march in Delhi, for the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University who have been arbitrarily accused of sedition.)

The march today was so beautiful. There were thousands of people chanting slogans and singing songs, marching together for democracy. There were people carrying flowers, wearing flowers, waving flowers, and handing out flowers. There were young people and old people, school students and college students, working professionals and professional students. There were straight people and gay people, cis people and queer people. There were women and there were men.

I went wanting to document first and participate second, but ended up documenting only the first hour and participating for another four. The atmosphere demanded it (as much and more than technical constraints: my camera battery died and therefore the last images are phone-captured). In the very first hour I found most of these gems, and the key idea I want to bring across is the peaceful and profound nature of this protest.

I was nervous in the beginning, not being impervious to the climate of fear and intimidation created around supporting anything the government doesn't like. But through the afternoon, I found myself surrounded by so much confident energy and gritty resolve, such fierce and impassioned defences of the right to dissent, that the worry dissipated. There are thousands of people out there who share concerns regarding this government's dangerous crackdown on universities across the country, people willing to brave the risk of physical violence to demonstrate their displeasure. These may be small risks in the larger scheme of things, or compared to what some people live through their whole lives, but they feel real enough when you're the one facing the spectre and trying not to call yourself a coward. 

I found instead an atmosphere of laughter with friends and civility with strangers, a spirit of unity and togetherness for meaningful action. Not one person I saw there was disengaged. Instead, they inspired and uplifted one another, inclusive and diverse in every way. A very different timbre and tone from the ugly negativity I have seen at every ABVP gathering, or experienced online at the hands of trolls. It was heartening, strengthening, nourishing, not venomous or destructive.

But make no mistake, this positivity rests on a grim resolve of pure steel, an utter refusal to allow this country and its institutions to be hijacked, a complete rejection of divisive strategies that seek to homogenise politics and culture into a single unassailable monolithic construction that denies individual liberty and identity.

There are consequences to every action, and Kanhaiya and JNU have become the spark to light the powder keg. Goswami's reckless harangues have created a vitriolic atmosphere that has claimed as its victims all reason and rationality, all semblance of calm, all guise of due process. Innocent and intelligent students have been evicted from their homes; teachers, students, journalists and lawyers have been viciously attacked with sticks, stones and words; reputations are being torn to shreds, of both institutions and individuals. This while the RSS and the BJP are insidiously inserting under-qualified loyalists into crucial positions of power, subverting every system that has the potential to foster progressive thought, for fear that it will lose them the next election. And the world watches...

But given the outpouring of support for JNU, national and international, across campuses and institutions, across the sciences and the arts, across generations from Chomsky to the high-schooler trembling slightly at the protest today, they may have found that this time, they messed with the wrong university. 

#StandWithJNU 

(Scroll through images from the protests below)