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Monday, March 25, 2024
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‘Listen to the kids, bruh’: Even Kanye West knows how to treat students better than India

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A quick search of the last few years of student protests will throw up a common theme of dampened dissent, active slander, and disenfranchisement of students as political stakeholders in the world they live in.

Indian social media had a field day laughing at the Mumbai ‘edition’ of the #MarchForOurLives protest — which, however well-intentioned, was rather tone-deaf and context-blind. Gun control in America is an important, burning issue. But is it a burning issue for us? I don’t think so. Having said that, India has a lot to learn from the gun-control march. And this learning has to happen now.

India has had a rich, textured history of student protests. One of the first agitations that left an impact on student politics was the protest at King Edward Medical College Lahore, against the academic disparity and discrimination faced by Indian students. The Non-Cooperation and Quit India movements saw students at the crux of what they managed to achieve. This isn’t new information. This is just information we’ve chosen to forget.

We’ve gone from a nation where young students put their lives on the line for the idea of a free country, to one that actively dissuades students from joining protests through verbal, non-verbal, offline and online intimidation. A quick search of the last few years of student protests will throw up a common theme of dampened dissent, active slander, and disenfranchisement of students as political stakeholders in the world they live in.

Think of Shehla Rashid’s voice being drowned out in ‘lipstick’ controversies. Think of Gurmehar Kaur’s stances reduced to “this child knows nothing”. Think of how the JNU students were labelled seditious and dangerous for raising slogans. Think of every single time you read the words ‘student protests’ and thought, “But why should students protest?”

The students protesting for gun control in the US have been vilified and called “anti-national”. They’ve been painted as terrible harbingers of the death of a nation. They’ve been dismissed as agents of political parties. They have been called mouthpieces of nebulous, dark forces, thereby implying that they couldn’t possibly think for themselves.

Sounds familiar?

It’s the same rhetoric that right-wing forces, keen on having their status quo maintained, have been peddling in India.

There is, however, one crucial difference. When the young activists in the US were slandered, people stood up for them and told them, “Your questions, your fears, your need for accountability, are all valid. You have the authority to ask these questions.” These protesters weren’t given grudging ‘permission’ by people tolerating their voices.

The process of not just allowing someone space but ceding it to them, and reiterating that they, too, have a right to it, is a catalytic one. It includes the very difficult action of shutting up and participating in listening. To quote Kanye West, “Listen to the kids, bruh.”

Contrast this to how the media and a vast chunk of the general public have reacted to JNU and DU students and their protests over the years. Reacting with “you are a taxpayer-money student, how dare you protest” is not just doing a disservice to them, but to the democracy we live in.

Education is a sum of its political parts. It is imperative for the civil society to hear young people out and understand where they’re coming from, because the more the rift between students and the realities on the ground grows, the more students fall through the gaps.

The fact that we’ve normalised violence against peaceful young protesters, and we’ve become complacent when they’re threatened and their voices diminished, is alarming. When the key stakeholders are pushed to the periphery and not even allowed to speak for their rights, the policies created serve no purpose except to keep oppressive forces in power.

This is especially heartbreaking when we allow the derailment when young subaltern voices like those of women, of Dalit Bahujan Adivasi activists, and of the disabled are involved. We seem to ignore the fact that students and their educated voices have made regimes tremble — we see it happening every day. That’s why student clampdowns occur.

Young voices are in the direct line of policy fire. Remember when the University of Delhi established a hurriedly created four year undergraduate programme just for political points, which failed and had to be rolled back? ?

Today, and in the coming days, young students are going to be marching, risking bodily harm, hate, and personal loss. They need us to stand up for them.

It would be a shame if we didn’t.

Harnidh Kaur is a poet and feminist.

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