At the risk of antagonizing FB friends who are a part of the Kolorob community, let me put down my thoughts on the incidents at Jadavpur. First I would like to give the benefit of doubt to the students and would agree that the VCs behaviour was indeed atrocious. Like many other VCs he is a political creature and has acted as such. Subsequent events however need to be viewed through the perspective of history. JU was never a non-political campus. The University ( or its predecessors, NCE and BTI) were created on an anti-establishment platform and as a deliberate challenge to the more mainstream Calcutta University. From day one, the NCE and BTI were the two rival camps that had fought for the control of what, after Independence, became JU. At JU,the political gene is the dominant gene. Subsequent events have shown that student agitations at JU were invariably led by people with strong political leanings. There could be a finite, non-zero probability that the current agitation is not so, but there is significant scope for scepticism in this regard. Violence against teachers, principals of colleges has been the norm in Bengal and is growing steadily. This is because, as a matter of policy, the police have been debarred from entering campuses to restore order. Actually this has made student leaders extremely arrogant and violent. They know that since they are students they are above the law and can be as violent as they want to be towards college authorities. In fact JU has the dubious distinction of having its own VC, Prof Gopal Sen, being murdered on campus. This distinction between a student agitator and a non-student agitator is meaningless. Wherever there is mischief, or there is potential for mischief, the police must step in and do whatever it takes to restore law and order [ However I do acknowledge, that the police is heavily partisan in this regard and will not touch anyone, student or otherwise, who is close to the ruling dispensation ] Finally let us understand that campuses are recruiting grounds for political parties and they use popular causes like anti-nuclear, human rights, gender equity, land acquisition to attract simple and impressionable students and convert them to their own cause. So all these politically correct agitations are most likely to be smokescreens for a deeper politically conspiracy. On TV, the tone, tenor and body language of quite a few JU agitators showed that they are agitators first and students next. A college or university should be a place for academics and at best some social, cultural or even fun activities. Anything else, including covert politics, should be barred from campus. Students who participate in any such activity should be asked to do so outside the campus and as individual members of society, NOT as students of a college. And if they turn violent, they should expect a violent response from the police. No hiding behind your student ID there. So while the incidents at JU are regrettable, deplorable and indeed shameful, they should be seen in the context of the general law and order situation in Bengal. This is one of many such instances and should be treated as such. Nothing more, nothing less. P.S. In Bengal, students of IIT KGP and St Xaviers college have managed to keep the political types at arms length. If only the other colleges could do so !
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 02:39:26 +0000
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