The Communist Ecosystem and the Indian Academia’s Abhorrence for Indic Ideas: An Analysis Part 1
- In Current Affairs
- 10:35 AM, Dec 02, 2020
- Ankita Dutta
Being in the academia myself, it’s quite interesting to read different opinion pieces that are written by people from different professional backgrounds on my alma-mater and one of the most politically volatile universities of this country – Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). It is a place which has gifted our country some of the best talents in the fields of humanities, science and politics, but also infamously known for trouble-mongers like Umar Khalid who was recently arrested under the UAPA for his role in the anti-CAA riots in Delhi. A victory march for Umar Khalid was organised in JNU on the very same night when writer-director Vivek Agnihotri’s Buddha In A Traffic Jam was screened outside the Admin Block in the open after the authorities cancelled the bookings of the auditorium in the last moment. While on the one hand, the area near the Admin Block echoed with the angry calls of “Agnihotri wapas jao….Sanghi wapas jao….”, the rallying cries of Vande Mataram and Bharat Mata ki Jai filled the air with a fresh wave of exuberance on the other. It was a historic moment! The tide was gradually beginning to change.
Well, a bit of a recap before what I would like to narrate in my essay.
JNU & the Clash of Ideas
The drama in JNU began on the cold wintry night of February 9, 2016 when an official “cultural event” was organised in the precincts of the Sabarmati Dhaba against the hanging of Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri terrorist who was hanged on February 13, 2013 for his role in the Indian Parliament building attack that took place on December 13, 2001. It was led by the then President of Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) Kanhaiya Kumar, supported by Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharyya, Shehla Rashid and other leaders of Leftist parties sympathetic to the Naxal cause. Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested on February 11, 2016 on the charges of sedition. Most of us residing in the campus at that time were completely unaware of the “cultural event”. We only came to know about the same after a WhatsApp video of a group of students in our own campus itself went viral on social media. They were shouting slogans like “Afzal hum sharminda hain, tere qatil zinda hain”; “Tum kitne Afzal maaroge? Har ghar se Afzal niklega”; “Bharat tere tukde honge..Inshaallah, Inshaallah”; “Hum leke rahenge Aazadi”! People who were never a part of the dirty politics of the Left but came to JNU to study and pursue their research interests were aghast at the situation that gradually began to unfold.
Starting from the row at FTII, Pune to the suicide of a PhD candidate at the Hyderabad Central University (HCU), the high-octane drama of Left sloganeering seemed to have had all culminated in JNU. Overnight, sympathies began to pour in for Kanhaiya, Umar, and Anirban. Posters were put up everywhere from the hostel mess to the washrooms, demanding the immediate release of these “student leaders”. PM Narendra Modi came to be branded as the demon who was utilising all means available at his disposal to disrepute and discredit democracy, freedom of speech and expression and the constitution itself. Indeed, the Left parties in JNU have always projected themselves as the messiahs of freedom of speech and expression, but whenever it comes to questioning their ridiculously one-sided narrative, one is being labelled as a ‘Sanghi’/‘Bhakt’/‘Fascist/goon, etc. Once when Yoga Guru Swami Ramdev was supposed to visit JNU to deliver a lecture, these same Left parties who swear by ‘freedom of speech and expression’ protested against the invite, calling it a “silent right-wing onslaught”. This narrative is unfortunately, appreciated by the ones who fall into the trap of the Communist ecosystem at an early age.
I always knew somewhere deep down that not everything is right in this university, from the way campus politics is being conducted to designing of the course curriculum in the social sciences by the overtly Left-leaning faculty here and the final selection of the topics by this same faculty for confirmation into the PhD programme. The graffiti pasted on the red-bricked walls of JNU, the pamphlets distributed in the hostel mess almost every evening at dinner time and post-dinner talks and lectures, the protest demonstrations from Ganga Dhaba via Sabarmati hostel to Chandrabhaga and back, and numerous other activities are some of the trademark features of this hallowed university. For any small-town, middle-class Indian student in his/her 20s having limited exposure to ideologies and political narratives, the change comes as a cultural shock at first.
But, beneath the outwardly free and open environment of this university, there is also an aside to the narrative which is being continuously silenced at the expense of the other. It is derided and dismissed as upper-caste and Brahmanical, and anything and everything that is even remotely associated with Bharat and ideas indigenous to it, are denigrated as ‘conservative’, ‘outmoded’ and various other fantabulous adjectives.
Communism & the Academia
Perhaps the historical genesis of this problem that has already assumed monstrous dimensions in India and elsewhere, lies in the highly convoluted post World War II scenario and the narratives fostered by the Communist ecosystem across the world. With the advent of the Cold War and the subsequent distrust generated throughout the globe among democratic countries, top posts in European universities and academic institutions came to be held by Cultural Marxists and proponents of ‘Critical Theory’. Gradually, the benign-sounding yet blood-thirsty Communist ideology metamorphosed into a fashionable academic discourse that derived its fuel from a glorification of the grand ideals of Multiculturalism, Open Borders, Intersectionality, Liberalism and Tolerance, etc. It has been successful in weakening democracies and democratic political systems from within by a continuous brainwash of the successive generations, whether it be during the Naxalbari movement in India and the violence perpetrated by the communist parties subsequently, or the protest by students in US universities during the Vietnam war against their own country, and the ‘Make Love and No War’ slogans of the counterculture movement of the 1960s.
They all stand out as glaring examples of the never-ending cultural and intellectual aggression of the Communist world led by the USSR much before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
But the question that seriously demands an honest answer here is – Has this aggression stopped after the fall of the Iron Curtain from the European continent? No, not really. The reality is that the Communist ecosystem has been masquerading amongst us by taking up much more complex and elusive forms. By hiding its real, venom-spitting agenda from the public eye, it has been able to spread its tentacles much more surreptitiously than ever before. The so-called “Liberals” of today are none other than Communist and Islamist sympathisers who love to theorise about Post-Modernism, Feminism, sexual liberation, Islamophobia, LGBTQ rights, etc. They use these ideas as convenient smokescreens to not only conceal their real faces but also deconstruct and destroy original, indigenous ideas, and also the cultural and societal fabric of democratic societies.
The grand ideas of Karl Marx that eulogise a ‘proletariat revolution’ and fantasise about the establishment of a ‘classless society’ seem too attractive to be true in reality. They are based on a certain vision and worldview that is unilinear and one-sided. Human society has many different facets to it and to fit it into a certain watertight compartment amounts to overlooking the multiple dimensions that characterise human relationships, human emotions, needs and desires. And this holds true not just for communism but for all the other ‘-isms’ that are presented to us as ideologies, inspired from the West. But, the case of communism is a classic one in that while it talks about poverty and the abolition of classes, it has proved to be an utter failure in addressing these very same problems which it seeks to resolve. The truth is that communism itself has become the root cause of many problems afflicting the world today. It does not require any further repetition here regarding the role of Communist China in concealing facts during the initial stages of the coronavirus pandemic and brazen violation of people’s democratic rights at a time when the deadly virus was spreading its poisonous fangs throughout the globe.
In India, communism has established a strong foothold for itself in different university campuses where its comrades have always raised concerns over all evils of the society, but never offered a genuine solution to eradicate these evils. Slogans of Azaadi and Laal Salaam echo through the walls of these universities that glorify the likes of Mao Zedong and Che Guevara. Ironic indeed! Especially in a country which has produced intellectual giants of the stature of Panini, Swami Vivekananda, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, etc. foreigners like Mao are adored as heroes in our own educational institutions. There is no problem in adoring and respecting a foreign-born scholar, but don’t our own stalwarts deserve equal recognition and respect on the same footing?
During the Kanhaiya row too, these same narratives began to be heard everywhere in the campus. Whatever happened in February-March 2016 was supposed to happen someday or the other in JNU. The Left here has always exercised a tight mafia-like grip in almost every other sphere, right from appointments in teaching positions to silencing every single voice that raises genuine concerns about their modus-operandi. With the coming of the Modi government to power and the subsequent crackdown on several foreign-funded NGOs in the country, the Left began to feel the heat. I remember during the Kanhaiya episode in JNU when a section of the Leftist professors had organised a series of lectures on the topic of nationalism (available on YouTube) outside the Admin Block of the University, a statement which was most commonly heard was – “We believe in the nationalism of Gandhi, and not that of Godse.” This is the academic ecosystem of India which identifies itself as “Liberal”, “Progressive”, and “Modern, and derives its legitimacy from Gandhi who has always been deified as the infallible ‘Father of the Nation’!
RSS – A Much-Hated Institution in the Communist Academia
As a young graduate student at Delhi University, I was introduced to the awe-inspiring ideas of revolution and classless society of Karl Marx through the eyes of my foreign-educated professors who spoke with such poise and confidence that it was hard to not believe them. At first, their grasp of the subject, their style of debate and the way they spoke, everything just bowled me over. However, the only one thing that always left me confused was why they spoke with so much hate against an institution about which I did not know much then, but definitely knew that it had gone out of its way to help several war refugees in my native state of Assam during the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict. Yet, at the same time, I also could not ignore reading hate pieces written by these same professors against this remarkably huge institution, which is none other than the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). This is the extent of intellectual and cultural aggression of the Communist ecosystem on societies and institutions the world over and upon the Indian society in particular.
During my college and university days, a mere mention of the words ‘RSS’ and ‘Hindu Rashtra’ meant unexplained hate and contempt! The Leftist discourse has always painted the RSS as a murderous, regressive organisation based on a parochial ideology that was responsible for the death of M.K. Gandhi. Thankfully, because of an upbringing that was strongly rooted in Hindu traditions, in the initial stages itself, I could smell though their very well-planned, carefully executed propaganda. It was one-sided. It was based on a toxic version of secularism. Most importantly, it fed on spreading lies and hatred against only one community, while the other was and still is always projected as “peace-loving” and victims in the hands of the majority community and the political establishment.
However, it was only in the later stages when I started doing some real ground-level study related to the subject of my research that the truth gradually began to reveal itself! What I had been taught till now was an entirely fabricated story crafted by a narrow, but quite influential and hypocrite “intellectual elite”. Influential, because this “elite” had left no stone unturned to discredit and disrepute an institution that, from the very beginning, posed a strong ideological challenge to their hopelessly shallow narrative based on an open hatred for Indian culture and traditions. Hypocrite, because questioning their narrative amounts to being labelled as ‘Sanghi’, ‘Bhakt’ or ‘Fascist’, while they keep glorifying themselves as the supreme upholders of the values of liberty and freedom of speech and expression.
Out of sheer intellectual arrogance, they have deliberately refused to acknowledge the selfless service rendered by RSS Swayamsevaks to the people of this country, irrespective of their religious or community backgrounds, especially during disasters and epidemics; and, this they have done without in return seeking any form of public attention or unnecessary media glare for their work. The journey of the RSS since its inception in 1925 by Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar has not been a smooth and romantic ride. There have been numerous attempts by successive governments at the Centre in alignment with a morally corrupt academia and a paid, agenda-driven media to malign its image time and again. But, one of the greatest achievements of the RSS has been the creation of a counter-narrative in a country like India where the Left’s almost hegemonic hold has permeated almost all spaces of public life, from media to university spaces and even the judiciary. The legitimacy of the Indian state is being continuously subject to questioning and sought to be destroyed by the Communist ecosystem, which is exactly what the RSS has been fighting against all these years.
Contrary to the Left, the RSS has been able to maintain its steely resolve and commitment to achieve the goals of national integration from Kashmir in the north to remote pockets in India’s Northeast like Majuli island in Assam. This has been despite the fact that it has lost so many of its Swayamsevaks and Pracharaks to sponsored political killings and mindless violence in various states of India. Also, many of the RSS Swayamsevaks serving in a particular state of India belong to other states. But they spend their almost entire lives in a culture and society so unique and different from where they have been born and brought up that they eventually become a part of that society itself. They happily learn to enjoy its local cuisines, learn the local languages of that region, and also adapt themselves to the local customs and traditions so that they can serve the local population in the best manner possible. This is the idea of Bharat as one single entity and it is this extremely strong feeling among the Swayamsevaks for the cause of Bharat Mata that binds them all together in their fierce commitment to nation-building.
E.g. there are several Swayamsevaks from the Southern Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu working in some of the most neglected and geographically isolated areas of Northeast India. In Assam’s Majuli, as many as 300 RSS cadres from different parts of the country have been working under the leadership of their senior functionary Yogesh Shastri for several years now. In this respect, sister organisations of the RSS such as Lok Jagaran Manch, Seva Bharati, Ekal Vidyalayas, etc. have also been playing a prominent role in helping establish a close rapport of the swayamsevaks with the local inhabitants of the area.
The motivation and inspiration of these Swayamsevaks to work in far-off areas away from their hometown, risking their lives and families’ well-being, and also putting their personal assets to risk, has failed the imagination of most armchair intellectuals of this country. They have failed to comprehend and accept the grassroot-level hard work accomplished by the RSS cadres in the face of numerous adversities, violence and hardships. They talk about NGOs and social service in their academic papers but have either bypassed or belittled this huge institution in a very much denigrating manner. Except for a very few honest writings, there is absolute silence in the rest of the academia about the RSS and the sense of sacrifice among its Swayamsevaks for their motherland inspired by the feeling of oneness with the entire country. If an outsider like Christophe Jaffrelot has left no stone unturned to rebuke the mission and objectives of the RSS through the usage of high-sounding West-inspired vocabulary, others such as Pralay Kanungo have dealt with it in a rather too academic manner.
RSS Swayamsevaks have fearlessly settled down and served in some of the most interior regions of the country for years after years, but there has been no sincere attempt in the academia to even critique this organisation in a comprehensive light! It has largely been because of the blood and sweat of these Swayamsevaks working in different parts of the country which made possible BJP’s ascent to power at not only at the Centre but also in various states, including the hill states of the Northeast. They might not have had the luxuryof elite English-speaking university education or swanky office spaces, but with utmost grit and determination, they have been successful in bringing about sweeping political change across the country. If there is something called ‘Revolution’ in the 21st century, then this is it in the true sense of the term. It is because unlike a fake narrative of secularism and crony socialism that has for long been fostered by the academia, these unnamed, unacknowledged Swayamsevaks have remained brutally honest with their politics and their allegiance to it for decades.
But the RSS has mostly been demonised through a genuine and strategically planned neglect by an elite minority of this country. Academic jargons such as Brahmanical oppression, minority discrimination, etc. have kept their political shops running.
Image Credit: India Facts
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