JNU Fiasco: Leave The Kids Alone

Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, has made a great contribution to the cause of learning in India. But sadly the students of this premier university are now being discussed for their intellectual daring which extended no further than a pledge to dismember their own motherland and a clever application of their assiduously acquired knowledge of “subaltern studies and dialectical materialism” to fox and hoodwink the plain, blunt policeman.

- Manoj Nath

To the inestimable achievements of Jawaharlal Nehru University one more has been added. It has produced an orator of outstanding merit in Kanhaiya Kumar. Kanhaiya’s very significant omission of Chandrasekhar in his speech, a former JNU Student Union President, who had stirred the conscience of people of Bihar by his fearless fight in favour of the lowest of the low against criminal warlords, shows great awareness of currents and cross-currents of contemporary politics even before he entered the choppy waters.

Some political parties are no doubt celebrating but would it be mere intellectual Ludditism or cussedness to raise the very quotidian, very banal but very topical issue? Even though as a body of thought Marxism still provides useful insights into the way our world works, it now belongs to the archeological museum of the history of knowledge.

The JNU university famous for its “Left-centric student politics” burdens the participants with a certain intellectual and moral posture. “Once a JNU student, always an activist” is perhaps too optimistic a view which may not be shared by all. They are not scarred for life by their brief flirtation with the precious ideology at the university. People like Chandrasekhar, and others of his tribe are the precious drops in the ocean. Most others are absorbed in the job market as IAS officers, journalists, politicians and professors, coping with the compulsions of their respective professions with sweet docility, just like everyone else.