For some people it gets a bit difficult to separate logic
from mindless rhetoric. Take the wars on social media,
for instance. If you support PM Modi’s diktats
or any BJP decision, you are a bhakt. If you oppose
it, rant about it, etc, you must be a Congress or AAP
supporter and you’re obviously anti-national. You
need to pack your bags and go to Pakistan. Why Pakistan,
one may ask? It’s possible the darkest region
of the world in any ‘patriotic’ Indian’s eyes. Over the
border, there are probably
many Pakistanis groaning
at the thought of their country
being called the enemy, but these are the facts as
stated by many right wing, sorry, straight-thinking
organisations and hence, it must be true.
Gurmehar Kaur faced such an onslaught of anti-
national jibes recently, when she decided to take
on the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, or ABVP
for short. The ABVP is the RSS-affiliated students
organisation, who take it upon themselves to ‘instruct’
other students on how to popularly behave.
Recently, the ABVP took on a few meetings at JNU
“ Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, the breeding
ground for anti-national thought in their eyes.
Women were assaulted, because that is the right
thing to do when dealing with anti-nationals. You
have the right to act like animals, humanity and decency
be damned really.
So, Gurmehar Kaur, daughter of a Kargil martyr
and friend to some assaulted girls, declared in a video
that she was not afraid of the bullies that ABVP
are. Cue the furore. The ABVP members on twitter
tweeted her, suggested things like rape, and abused
her. Virender Sehwag, former Indian cricketer and
social media funnyman, made a not so funny parody
of one of Kaur’s videos, where she held up a poster
stating that Pakistan did not kill her father, war did.
How dare she suggest that? How dare she vindicate
Pakistan while soldiers were dying at the border. The
ABVP were ‘rightly’ furious. Never mind the fact that
this was the daughter of a slain soldier talking, or
that she was condemning war, not glorifying Pakistan.
But, no, one cannot do that. Free speech is relative,
especially when you’re going against the grain
and talking down the leader of the country.
The ABVP and their ilk are perhaps the biggest patriots
in India right now, judging by the fact that they
take on everyone who dares to have an opinion that
may be moderately opposite of what they think. Perhaps
it’s time for the ABVP to show the rest of India
just how patriotic they really are. The Indian Army
have too many soldiers dying at the border and are
in constant need of new recruits. It would be the prudent
thing for ABVP and their friends in other organisations
to volunteer for the Army. In fact, it would
be the most selfless thing they could do. They could
protect India’s borders, in the same spirit that they
espouse when they rally together and ‘educate’ the
anti-nationals in India, during a debate. They need
to lay down their lives for the country and throw that
in the anti-nationals’ faces. Because soldiers are dying
at the border, remember?
