JNU seems to be constantly in the news. Whether it is the various awards of excellence it receives, or the heights the alumni reach in their career post-JNU, or the allegations of anti-national or amoral activity in campus, or the government’s constant but eventually doomed efforts to reign in the students. By the way, this isn’t new. Ever since it was established in 1969, this has been a hotbed of rebel students taking on the establishment.
Interestingly, this is not limited to the JNU but to other institutes as well. Jadavpur University (JU) in Kolkata is another example, as are many like Anna University in Chennai or the Film & Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune. The common threads in these are (a) the difficulty of getting admitted due to extremely high standards required for entry, thereby ensuring that only very intelligent students get through, creating not just a group of very smart, young, passionate, politically & philosophically aware, and highly creative people being billeted together for years, but also a kind of sour grapes syndrome for those who could’t make it, (b) prime real estate in a central location, and (c) state subsidy in everything from tuition fees to hostel charges to food to parking.
These combine to create friction between those that study there and those that purportedly pay for it.
The problem isn’t that the government cannot afford to subsidise JNU, the problem is that students studying there seem to have a spine, a voice, and the will to retain their intellectual faculties (and to apply them critically). In short: the kids talk back.
And to the privileged middle class, that is intolerable. They are incredulous that someone who is living off their largesse should have an opinion of their own! That these people shouldn’t know their place and station in life. That they should not lower their gaze when in the presence of their generous benefactors. “अपने बाप से बराबरी करोगे? तो क्या मां से संबंध रखोगे?” is the shocking rhetorical argument in their middle class minds. These sentiments are the same ones they have with their own children. And the methods to correct this delinquent behaviour are also similar: talk of discipline and comparisons with soldiers, threats of physical violence, actual violence, and finally cutting them off the money. The argument always is, “As long as you stay in my house and eat my food, you follow my rules. No rebellion will be tolerated.” Apparently, the release from this will only happen “when you grow up”, which, as we all know with Indian parents (even if second generation NRIs) is another way of saying “never”.
I don’t want to go into the inbuilt flaws in this argument or the nuances and differences when applied to children vis a vis adults, young as they may be. All I want to state here is my theory of why the privileged (mostly upper caste) middle class has so much indignant anger about the JNU students.
And yes, before I forget: ditto Kashmiris. And ditto Muslims who chose voluntarily (and in face of tremendous social pressures from many of their peers and family members) to stay and make India their janm & karma bhoomi. And yes, ditto Dalits like Rohit Vemula and Payal Tadvi who chose to dare to break out of what they were born into and dream of flying towards the sun. (As an aside, the middle class seems to have similar attitudes towards the “domestics” or “servants” or “maids”, not even allowing them the dignity of being called “employees”. Think about it. You may have heard about how some of them have become “too big for their boots” and even sending their children to English-medium schools and so on now-a-days. Yes. Same thing.)
The middle class is angry at them because they think that these people should be more grateful for their generosity and display such gratitude from time to time as demanded by them, be it via constant acknowledgment & self-flagellation, or prostration & acquiescence to displays of loyalty to the middle class and their gods (which include the nation-state). And while this anger was exposed only in private gatherings and within friends & family once, it is since 1992 that it found a political voice, which was strengthened to a large degree by the opening up of the economy (and hence, the sharp increase in prosperity and access to resources that further allowed them to increase the height of the wall intervening their lives and those of the riff-raff) at about the same time, by some divine coincidence, and resulted in the emergence of the platform (the popularity of the extreme right political party and its attendant “non-political” arms) through which such power over these spoilt children could now be exercised. In the process, it would seem that the middle class has made peace with the harm this would cause to the economy, ecology, future generations (the very same “kids” they seem to concerned about), general social fabric, and even their own livelihoods and safety as part of acceptable collateral damage. They have even stopped caring for the safety and continuity of the exact same divine, god-like nation-state Motherland they worship and conduct these sacrifices in the name of. The mad, rabid, insane, unseeing, unthinking focus on teaching these people their place, whether they be Muslims, Kashmiris, immigrants, leftists, centrists, artists, writers, film-makers, journalists, North-Easterners, South Indians, Dalits, Bhangis, Mahars, tribals, SCs, STs, Mullahs, Pakistanis, Arabs, Mughals, Uzbeks, Afghans, Persians, Bangladeshis, Africans, Sikhs, Madrasis, Christian missionaries, Italians, or whoever is either not part of the in-group of People Like Us (PLU) or who have or has wronged us or we suspect or think have or has wronged us absolutely any time in the past 5,000-odd years, is an all-consuming fire that the middle class has stopped caring for, even when it is burning their own homes and families to ashes in their pursuit for vengeance and self-validation.
These people who live under the chhatra-chhaya, the very umbrella that the middle class provides, need to be either more grateful, with no definition of what this might entail, short of complete and total surrender to the middle class’s whims & fancies, gods & heroes, and myths & legends, or be crushed mercilessly under the boot paid for by the middle class themselves, worn by the uniformed man in the employ of the government voted to and maintained in power by the middle class.
So, in conclusion, my findings are: The impotent anger and rage that the privileged upper caste middle class in India felt since long as their hard earned tax Rupees were seen being spent on people who demanded they be equal despite being the recipients of obvious largesse was given an outlet when their economic status improved dramatically as India opened up, and as political platforms for expressing such anger practically (via donations, votes, etc.) started becoming available to them. This outlet, which was initially a trickle, has now become a torrential waterfall of apocalyptic proportions that will drown everyone and carry away all before it, even the very middle class that first blew up the dam upriver wishfully thinking that it will only flood the fields of those who they hate.
