New Divide

Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh recently, at a gathering at Udaipur’s Bhupal Nobles’ University, sought to brand the ‘educated’ citizens of the country as the brains behind what he called “white-collar terrorism.”

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The Minister was most likely referring to the doctors involved in the Delhi bomb blast of November last year. Coming from one of the senior most ministers of the government, this remark bespeaks a trend evident since 2014 to try and control higher education, restrict academic activities in seats of higher education and fetter free thinking. Critical thinking, it appears, is held as a taboo in the current ideology of rulers in many countries, including India. The powers that be in Delhi who once coined the catch phrase “Urban Naxals” to vilify and persecute urban-centric public intellectuals who dared question government actions and decisions, seem to have come up with this new idea of division by which education and the educated shall be given a bad name before obliterating them to create anew society of uneducated.