Once upon a time, I was a link in a human chain that gherao’d parliament. “Mandal report wapas lo,” I screamed at the top of my voice as we marched from our fancy South Delhi college to the Temple of Indian Democracy, neatly organized in rows of three, clad in carefully coordinated black and white protest dress code. Twenty-five years ago I knew little of what it meant to be dalit or backward, but that didn’t matter. In college, you joined the dram-soc, you joined Spic-Macay, you joined a debating society and you joined a protest. Thank God for Mandal for helping me check that vital component of extra-curricular activity off my list.
College – that purposeful time in your life. You think the world is going to be a Wonderful Place, and you are the one that is going to make it so. And you are going to do it by winning college debates, because, really, it is so straightforward, can’t you see? Your heart beats for the underdog, and you fight their fight because after all, if you don’t, who will? For the first time, you learn to form your ideas, and articulate them, and of course they have to be against the establishment because otherwise what’s original? And you learn to get a group of people to agree with you and you now have a Voice. And then you get a megaphone. And then you yell.
For decades, it has been thus with college life. And then we grow up, and live our lives, and our experience teaches (sadly, only a few of) us that winning debates can’t change the world, because it is not so straightforward, after all, and that there are more than two sides to the debate, and that every one of them is right in their own way. But each one of us has to make that discovery individually, because that is the Way of this World. If we came with a built-in chip of all the experience of all the others gone before us, this world would only have Buddha clones left!
There is a minor difference between Then and Now, however. What was earlier dismissed as stupidity, ignorance or misguided enthusiasm is now called sedition. Of course we have all said Unforgivable Things and done Unforgivable Acts at some point, disgusting enough for our parents to turn us out of the house and for teachers to throw us out of college but Then, they had two weapons – Wisdom and Patience. Wisdom to know that we would soon know better, and Patience, to wait in case that Soon didn’t come soon enough. Now, the weapons have changed. There is Outrage. Like a jungle fire it is quick to erupt and fast to spread, and scorching in its intensity. And there is Retribution. Swift, harsh and crushing.
Somebody add a Fundamental Right to our Constitution. Call it the Right to Make Mistakes. Well, ok, not criminal mistakes, but the trial-and-error process of learning to start-up your brains and getting them to function, of learning with difficulty the difference between dissent and destruction. The Prime Minister says that we must encourage quick failures and allow early exits to entrepreneurs. Sir, give these JNU guys an Exit, please. They may be idiots in my book, but so was I, in someone else’s book, twenty-five years ago, yelling outside the Parliament.
College – that purposeful time in your life. You think the world is going to be a Wonderful Place, and you are the one that is going to make it so. And you are going to do it by winning college debates, because, really, it is so straightforward, can’t you see? Your heart beats for the underdog, and you fight their fight because after all, if you don’t, who will? For the first time, you learn to form your ideas, and articulate them, and of course they have to be against the establishment because otherwise what’s original? And you learn to get a group of people to agree with you and you now have a Voice. And then you get a megaphone. And then you yell.
For decades, it has been thus with college life. And then we grow up, and live our lives, and our experience teaches (sadly, only a few of) us that winning debates can’t change the world, because it is not so straightforward, after all, and that there are more than two sides to the debate, and that every one of them is right in their own way. But each one of us has to make that discovery individually, because that is the Way of this World. If we came with a built-in chip of all the experience of all the others gone before us, this world would only have Buddha clones left!
There is a minor difference between Then and Now, however. What was earlier dismissed as stupidity, ignorance or misguided enthusiasm is now called sedition. Of course we have all said Unforgivable Things and done Unforgivable Acts at some point, disgusting enough for our parents to turn us out of the house and for teachers to throw us out of college but Then, they had two weapons – Wisdom and Patience. Wisdom to know that we would soon know better, and Patience, to wait in case that Soon didn’t come soon enough. Now, the weapons have changed. There is Outrage. Like a jungle fire it is quick to erupt and fast to spread, and scorching in its intensity. And there is Retribution. Swift, harsh and crushing.
Somebody add a Fundamental Right to our Constitution. Call it the Right to Make Mistakes. Well, ok, not criminal mistakes, but the trial-and-error process of learning to start-up your brains and getting them to function, of learning with difficulty the difference between dissent and destruction. The Prime Minister says that we must encourage quick failures and allow early exits to entrepreneurs. Sir, give these JNU guys an Exit, please. They may be idiots in my book, but so was I, in someone else’s book, twenty-five years ago, yelling outside the Parliament.
