JNU never taught me what makes an anti-national
Nothing prepared me for this job and the real world. In fact today, I am not sure what is real because the time and space that I have occupied as a child, as a student, as a young woman and now as a member of the police have taken me on so many different routes, so many different avenues with so many different experiences. Some of them have remained in sync over time and some are so damn incongruous that I have no idea if I was naïve as a child or have I just become too cynical at my middle age. It almost feels like my mind has learned so many somersaults that right now I can not disentangle myself and say which way is up.
Let me clarify before I get your thought process equally jumbled up. I studied in JNU for six whole years and I have been a cop for much longer than that. Well I also studied in Delhi University. I have been part of anti-nuclear protests in the university, but only once, until I realized that the seniors who were leading us had become victims of the escalation of commitment. They had become so invested in one view that they couldn't listen to any thing contrary or even slightly unlike from their own. Needless to say I didn't return to that. Life was a bit tough since I was saddled with parents who didn't believe in spoiling us with lots of money, perhaps they didn't have enough. Anywho, it meant that I had to study hard and clear entrance exams for anything I wanted. JNU seemed like a great institution and perfect for what I wanted to study: Politics with a specialization in International Relations.
Have you ever seen the campus? When I joined, the number of hostels were half of what is there now, the green cover was larger, the neelgai ran about with impunity, the furniture in the classrooms was older, the conference halls had a shabbier look, the guest rooms had a moldy smell and our hostel rooms had metal beds. We ate out of steel trays where the food was insipid meat twice a week, some lentil or legume or bean curry most of the other days that floated in watery masala-laden curry, served with hardened rice and rotis that could expel so much dry atta that would put a male model's black jacket in a dandruff ad to shame. When my mother visited me and ate that meal, she remarked that it was good that JNU was building our character by teaching us to eat food that 80 per cent of all Indian get to eat or perhaps not.
I couldn't agree with her then, but in the course of this job when we station ourselves in remote riot afflicted regions and eat with the villagers in relief camps I surely do appreciate what I learnt in JNU and also during our jungle training in the police academy. I haven't seen the inside of a hostel mess in more than a decade; I don't really know the status there today, but I have also realized after seeing the quality of PDS rice that subsidized institutions serve subsidized standard of food. Believe me, I have no disregard for any kind of food; in this job I have eaten whatever was available after many hours of hard labour on the trails of criminals that require walking in wet boots uphill for more kilometers than I even want to count. I know what hunger does to us; often boys have to remind me to wash my hands before I eat because I have just forgotten after walking miles in an uninhabited island to reach the nearest motorable point that I was conducting an inquest on a body.
I couldn't and I still can not subscribe to unions and associations of any kind. I couldn't play too many team games. It is a bit of both that I have to work with a team all the time now, yet we can't form any formal association and perhaps that helps my strictly guarded individuality. JNU campus assails the visual senses with the colorful, vivid, descriptive posters painted by talented students of all political leanings. As a newbie you are drawn into various conversations with diverse people especially during student body elections. We saw an American student run for a post even! From a leftist association no less and we thought it was perfectly normal and natural.
Every person is allowed to ascribe to any set of beliefs and thoughts. JNU was the better for such diversity. Campaigns that ran on topics that ranged from the Korean nuclear program, the Chinese goods flooding the market, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq also included subjects closer to the heart: the appam at Babu's canteen at SIS, the bread omelet at Ganga dhaba and whether Nescafe should be allowed to have a kiosk inside the campus. When just outside the gates women would not venture out at dark, women on campus could walk out of the library reading room after midnight all alone and sit and smoke with a coffee all by herself. JNU was at once Delhi and was so not Delhi. Of course, people like me got labeled bourgeois as we wore our shoes, carried back packs, chewed gum and didn't eschew other capitalist symbols like a mobile phone in those days. However I am compelled to believe that today none of them would matter. I made great friends in the institution and a large number of us joined the government in various capacities. Yes I admit, none of us who were studying to crack the UPSC ever joined the protest rallies nor did we stand for elections; at least that is true of the ones I know of. I may be wrong here.
As a student we were unhappy and disturbed if the police entered the university, I still see that educational institutions try to avoid police inside campus and prefer to conduct internal enquiries. As a cop I find it disturbing that the registrar approaches me only when the girl, a victim of cyber stalking has spent a few weeks trying to negotiate with the perpetrator as facilitated by the university gender sensitization committee on campus finds no relief and in the meanwhile the accused has managed to erase most cyber traces in the interim period. Like I said, some views have remained in sync over the years and some have completely been twisted as I turned into a cop from a student. The images I see on television, the tweets and comments on social media, the images in newspapers disturb me.
I am proud of my connection to JNU. I am equally proud to be a member of the police. I don't see a reason why both should be exclusive to each other.Increasingly I am beginning to believe that intent may not be the right measure of assessing a crime, as it is evidence of such mens rea is difficult to prove until the actus reus has been committed. I mean look at the statistics, the country has to deals with murders, rapes, breach of law and order, communal riots, killings by insurgents/ extremists. Why should we be so up in arms about words being said? I agree one can not bring back the words spoken, but let's for a second look at it this way: merely 10 years ago, without the omnipresent social media, the ubiquitous news channels and mobile phones with cameras at the hands of every individual the whole event in JNU would probably never have made it to the press; just finding a place instead in the annals of the spook agencies who have always kept a track.
I considered myself patriotic growing up, always calling myself Indian above it all. I am sure a lot of us did that as we read the pledge to the country and the nation everyday at school assembly. I thought it was a given in my years in college and university. It was never under question even though we heard rumors that during cricket matches between India and Pakistan there were pockets where the green flag had flown higher. I must admit I understood belonging to a country, that is nationality only when I started working as a cop; work which took me into remote villages in touch with tribes and people of all ethnicities. Aside from acting out on waging a war against the state as the terrorists did in Pathankot or the extremists do when they kill innocents and security forces in the north east, I am still trying to learn what exactly constitutes the anti national.