Fabricating political compulsion

The messages coming out of the National Institute of Technology, Srinagar are quite eminent.  Cricket can be used for politics and more so for settling political scores. Politicians won’t think twice even if it amounts to causing divide under the name of nationalism.

Any cricket match between India and Pakistan always makes political statement. And leaders from across the border tend to make their presence felt by hogging limelight before and after the contest, making that match of cricket a contest of words.  Majority of people in Kashmir are known to have their sentimentsfavored towards Pakistan cricket team, and when India lost the T20 semifinal to West Indies the sentiments got flared and sounded like “enemies-enemy is-a-friend”. And the “non local” students reacted to remind the people that Kashmir is an integral part of India and same is expected of their sentiments. The divide appeared eminent as the politicians and the media in India had a free hand in coining and using phrases “Local Students”; “Non Local Students”.  The subsequent handling of the issue by the newly installed government in Jammu and Kashmir; and Modi government at the center only strengthened the belief that the premier education institutes are becoming a driving seat to emit wave of polarization and divide students on the lines of nationalism.  Soon questions were raised on how to treat the students who chant   “Bharat Mata Ki Jai”,and who don’t .The ruling BJP and its fringe element want this debate to not die a natural death and have their interest in keeping the fire burning.

Let’s go down our memory lanes and to the books of history that we got to read in Primary Schools in India. We were told that India is “Bharat”. “Bharat” is named after a king who ruled the country and simply “Bharat” brings to the mind a male image. Remember that in order to address India as a great nation, India ran a campaign “Mera Bharat Mahaan”. Similarly in Hindi, the description of a country is “Desh”, and in Punjabi –“Mulak”.  In order to express that India has won; have you ever said, “BharatJeetgayee,”? Unless the Hindi is a mix of Bengali and Bhojpuri! Hence any slogan may not be called a mandatory one when it doesn’t befit the distinction of the country. This fixation of the BJP and its cadres is more to create trouble than to really induce a sense of nationalism. Perhaps “Hindustan Zindabad” is a little more apt, even more impressive than “Bharat Mata ki Jai”.

Adding fuel to the fire, yoga guru Baba Ramdev said he respects the Constitution of India or else he would have cut hundreds of heads for not chanting ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’. “If someone says that he won’t chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai even if his head is chopped off, I want to say there is a rule of law and we respect the Constitution, otherwise we can cut hundreds and thousands of heads,” Ramdev told the media in India. “People should be ashamed of talking such things and should give respect to their motherland,” he added- another bid to not let the debate end. Readers need to be reminded that Baba Ramdev happens to be the same person who fled Ram Lila Ground in Delhi in a woman’s attire, when confronted by Delhi Police during the previous regime of Congress. Amid the raging debate over nationalism, Maharashtra Chief Minister DevendraFadnavis said that those unwilling to say ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ have no right to stay in the country. From Baba to a Chief Minister, adding fuel to the fire!

The behavior of many other leaders in BJP is not different than that of Baba and Fadnavis, and it smacks of the divide and rule policy of the British which helped to reconstruct ‘Hindus’ and ‘Muslims’ as mutually exclusive and antagonistic categories in the subcontinent.  Such statements can’t be taken seriously, but have potential to flare sentiments.

In Baba Ramdev’s case, a person who is not ashamed to kill his own countrymen over the language of a slogan one chooses to hail ones country is surely a traitor and an immoral psychopath. His right place in the country is either behind bars or in an asylum. When a government fails to read the need of the hour, it’s supposed to be hand in gloves with the mischief makers.  The Narendra Modi government needs to comprehend the action that it needs to take. First and foremost, it should attempt to bridge the divide between different kinds of students in various prestigious universities and institutions. The manner in which the NIT, Srinagar is being handled, it is likely to increase the divide between those who think of themselves as ranged against each other on Kashmiri versus non-Kashmiri lines. Serious effort must be made to encourage students to talk to each other and remove this feeling of being from different parts of the country and hence can have different and disruptive ideologies.

Possible? Only if the political compulsion allow the leaders to think rationally.