The Modern Micro Mahishaasuras of JNU

Posted by Dr. Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup


 The Modern  Micro Mahishaasuras of JNU

Those who want to hard sell JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, especially the anti-Modi -anti-BJP media lobby,  and see him as a lathi to charge the government, should  realize that the fellow  is a one-day summer sparrow  which doesn't make a profitable political summer for this media brigade.  I saw  Rajdeeep Sardesai and also the devil's advocate, Karan Thaper straining  their neck muscles hard   and turning blue in  face arguing that the learned lady judge of the Delhi High Court, Pratibha Rani,  has lesser wisdom than them and even lesser judicial acumen. How dare she depart from mundane legal jargon and write a powerful, evocative, and resounding judgment, which as another panel member in the discussion did maintain that it might well go down as one of a memorable and historic judgment that might one day become a text for the law students,  seemed to be their line!

These days the media is brain-starved of meaningful quotes, and so pitiably feed on whatever crumbs of banalities their blue boys mouth or eject as pearls of wisdom. Thus Rohit Vemula's parting lament cursing his Dalit birth as his only unwitting  crime, became instantly hailed as a pithy expression of anguish at caste-suppression. While I have every sympathy for the tender sensibilities he had which unfortunately the lad couldn't overcome, I am of opinion that Rohit should have realized that caste suppression was not a suddenly developed feature of universities or elsewhere but had centuries of history of condemnable ubiquitous practice in India. I would have been proud of him had he decided to live and fight the menace.

The latest is the hot selling quote of Kanhaiya 's "profound" revelation that, by shouting "Azaadi" amidst other references to Kashmir, and milling round and round like in an African tribal ritual, - which he must have been familiar with as the guy is said to be a  researcher in African studies, - he and his fellow leftist tribals  meant only (on second thoughts),  azaadi IN India and not from India. How sagaciously convenient!

And pray, let us know what kind of a "kaidi"( prisoner) he was when he , the son of a farm laborer earning just Rs. 3000 a month according to his own statement, could get admission to the country's prestigious Central university of JNU and also thereby getting his study expenses subsidized to the extent of over Rs. 3 lakhs per annum, with a fellowship to boot ( which he did literally)? What kind of a state prisoner he was when he could organize Afzal Guru and Yakub Memon days in the university campus, and in all probability could have got away with it scot-free but for the obnoxious slogans tantamount to biting the hands that feed him and his ilk?

Kanhaiya typifies that young impressionable generation coming from families of  poor to moderate means, and therefor harboring a deep- rooted grouse about their social strata, resenting their chick and well-off compatriots flaunting their opulence, and tit for tat desperately wanting  to overshadow the latter by taking the leftist union route. In the process they become leftist suckers rebelling indiscriminately against all that is conventional, established, prevalent and proper. Before they even realize it, their sense of patriotism becomes a casuality in that metamorphosis.