The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Monday 22 February 2016

JNU ROW: NOW THAT THEY ARE BACK

Now that the five accused including Umar Khalid are back on JNU campus, lets expect that everyone will act as per the experiences (and the learning) that JNU has thrown – since the row broke on February 9 when some students organized a protest event to commemorate Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat, two terrorists convicted and hanged by India.

Umar Khalid and some other Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students surfaced (or resurface) late last night. Apart from its political facets – like making a flash appearance and speaking of surrendering in full media glare so as to keep the police and the opposing groups on a watch – the simple principle of continuity makes it a logical decision. Let law takes its course.

Yes, there is nothing called an ideal scenario in our country – or in fact anywhere in the world - just degrees of relative ease and complexity – amply highlighted by the double standards shown here by the Delhi Police – but as it is India’s national capital – and it is in full media glare – and as the issue has already generated reflections internationally with Noam Chomsky, Orhan Pamuk and others writing appeals (Noam Chomsky, in fact, shot an email yesterday to the JNU vice-chancellor (VC) questioning why did he allow the police inside the JNU campus) – and as it has divided the people in urban India in pro and anti camps – it is not easy for the Delhi Police and the establishment elsewhere to continue the way it has worked so far.

And they have a significant development to back them – the Jadavpur University VC, in Kolkata, didn’t allow the police inside the campus in spite of the pro JNU students protests and sloganeering.

Hope sense now prevails on the Delhi Police and those opposing groups.

Or is it so?

It doesn’t seem the Delhi Police has learnt any lesson. After committing a social hara-kiri by acting unnecessarily tough on JNU students and conveniently ignoring O P Sharma and the rioting lawyers at the Patiala House Courts Complex, they did another such mistake.

The Delhi Police failed us again the last night. It couldn’t dare to touch O P Sharma and the accused lawyers for full three days even if they were out there, brandishing their hooliganism on cameras. The Delhi Police didn’t try even once to reach them and apprehend them. Instead, it kept on sending summons and summarily released them on bail even if they responded to the summons after two-three days.

But it reached the JNU campus in the middle of night to arrest the accused students – when this whole sedition case and the ‘anti-national Vs national’ debate is based on some video clips the authenticity of which were never established. In fact, the clips are being said doctored now.

It is good and logical that the JNU VC didn’t allow the Delhi Police inside the campus this time.

Let law takes its course. Let fight be at the ideological level. Let JNU be JNU. Let's realize the gap between students and terrorists. Let's not overreact anymore. Let's now say no to hashtags like #JNUCrackdown or #CleanUpJNU or #StopAntiIndiaCampaign.

Let's hope no more firecrackers later in the day – with sense prevailing inside JNU and outside its environs.

The nation comes first – for the JNU students, for them, for us – for everyone taking sides. Healthy dissent, ideological differences and vertical divides in societies are must-haves for any country if we don’t violate the Constitutional norms.

Now, who will decide when ‘a Constitutional norm’ is violated? Well, we have courts for that and a robust judicial system and a vigilant Supreme Court. Let’s base our trust there.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the Indian cricket team captain, made a ‘to the point’ remark yesterday when he said that we must keep in mind that our armed forced are making supreme sacrifices at borders so that ‘we can keep debating things like freedom of speech’. We must respect that. Nothing goes beyond that sacrifice – we all, politicians and society, must keep that in mind.

And this remark came in the context of the Pampore encounter with terrorists in Jammu & Kashmir that is in third day and is still ongoing with six lives already lost, including five security personnel. And one of them, Captain Pawan Kumar from Jind, Haryana, a 23-year old Jat, wrote a thoughtful note on another issue that people are wrongly trying to impose on India – the violent protests by Jats in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh – to forcefully usurp something that is supposedly not for them – the caste-based Reservation.

Captain Pawan Kumar wrote in his last Facebook post before being martyred in Pampore (from a Press Trust of India report) – “Kisiko reservation chahiye to kisiko azadi bhai. Humein kuchh nahin chahiye bhai. Bas apni razai. (Some want reservation and some independence, I don't want anything, brother, I want only my quilt).”

It should haunt everyone – those in JNU – those outside it, maligning it – politicians, police and society – and the people demanding Reservation and trying to force their way in.

And as Pawan Kumar graduated from the National Defence Academy, he is also a JNU degree holder as NDA has collaboration with JNU for degrees.  

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/