JNU:The Perversion of the Polemic

Arrey Naxalbaari.... Laaal Salaaaam...!!...Roaring voices soaring high, filling up the crowded air lanes of the red JNU sky, carrying forward the lingering legacy of the comrades of the east. As an outsider, you hear all kinds of stories about JNU, part true, part false, all romantic...guaranteed! So when you become a part of this “socially responsible university”, the first thing you do is go accosting these suave stereotypes, excitedly hoping them to be true (whether they actually are is another issue, worthy of another essay, probably longer than this one.)

So in this institution that prides itself in being the “red corner” of the national capital, with a student union that has been legendarily “anti-establishment”, the P-word assumes enticingly tempting proportions. Apart from the acclivity of its academic endeavors, the next best thing that abscises JNU from other universities of the country is its politics & the culture it has spawned over the years- revolutionary, intellectual and essentially non-violent.... while still being courageous, after all, showing black flags to the Indian prime minister requires balls, doesn’t it. In this sense, politics in JNU becomes so all-encompassing that it becomes difficult, almost impossible to understand anything on the campus in exclusivity. From belabored discussions around dhabas over chai and relaxed carefree smokes to organized debates between celebrated experts in a post-dinner capacity filled hostel mess, politics is everywhere in JNU. So much so that when you approach a girl here, you don’t ask her out for coffee straightaway (like in other places with similar emotionally demanding situations, which put to test all your communication skills). Instead, you remember Al Pacino from “scent of woman” saying “we should meet up for coffee sometime, to discuss politics” & give your best at appearing as a faithful comrade of Che, disillusioned with the unfulfilled promises of the establishment, angry with the world and most importantly, desperately in need of lady love to guide you through the blood-spilled thorny passage to the revolution. Erwing Goffman becomes your god and Marx shines brightly from behind her as your angel of redemption, with a red halo around his big hairy head. The coffee, meanwhile (or chai, as it’s JNU we are talking about) is reduced to a mere adjunct. Take a look around the campus and you will discover that canteens and dhabas are not mere eating joints. They double up as heavily-graffitied hot spots for political ideologies and discussions and also as agencies for mobilization of public opinion.


Such is the presence that politics in JNU commands in matters of students’ everyday lives. Even the professors wear their political ideologies on their proverbial sleeves. So, as you slowly get acclimatized to this politically supercharged island of confluencing ideologies, you finally have your first rendezvous with your eagerly awaited folklore-ish comrades, accoutered with their legendary jholas, kurtas and left-aligned rings of cigarette smoke. Divided on ideological lines of radical and liberal “leftism”, each of these groups of debate-happy connoisseurs of communism claim themselves to be more genuinely left-oriented than the others. You also, very soon, meet the right wing and centrist “conservative” “elements”, who are, with practiced convenience, called “sanghi lumpens” by their left wing comrades. The “rightists” and “centrists” receive this nomenclature, which has been bestowed affectionately upon them by their political brethren, with amazing abjectness. Now, what’s interesting here is that unlike most other universities in India, where the left struggles for an also-ran status, here in JNU, its the other ideological groups that play this part, surviving on mere “leftovers”.

So, while the left is forever trying to bring to light the blatant bigotry & the ever-absconding position of the right wing bugaboos on major political and campus related issues at the same time condemning their jaded calls for jingoism, the right, in its own largely unnoticeable & garishly grandiloquent gimmicks, attempts to bring out the romanticized hypocrisy and the abstruse ideological claims of the left. Hypocrisy, did one say? Well, you got to be careful mate, for this is the last bastion of the socialism in India, gloriously upholding the ideals of Marx, Lenin and Bhagat Singh, with the last name bearing ideological claims of both the left and the right. Anyways, it should not be forgotten that our comrades here, abhor all forms of hedonism and stand up against the naked narcissism of the bourgeoisie. So what if their cigarette expenses exceed the minimum daily wages of the workers they are fighting for? Come on, we are all answerable to our mortal bodies and their demands of immediate gratification and therefore are tempted to...or rather bound to fulfill our duties towards them by indulging in occasional pleasure “trips”. Even comrade Che smoked fine Habanos cigars, which by no means imply that he did not fight for the rights of his comrades. So treading his footsteps faithfully, our comrades here in JNU too, by acrimoniously attacking the governmental policies actuated by capitalist transformation, fight for the common good of the brotherhood...err.... and also of the sisterhood (careful mate; you don’t want to offend your rapidly-increasing-in-number-everyday feminist friends, do you?) Whoa! JNU is a politically charged place demanding political correctness all the time and you cant dare to be politically incorrect, even if it means incorporating a break in the flow of the passage on account of grammatical inconsistencies due to unnecessary ideological accommodation.

Color, comrades, is another inalienable aspect of the student politics of our great institution, with two hues varying in saturation, battling for supremacy. Now hold your horses & for once, don’t read between the lines, for its not racism that is being talked here, its just color, plain and simple. So the campus politics and affiliations are clearly defined on the colored lines of RED and SAFFRON, each trying to prove itself as the identifying hue of JNU. So there are shouts of “ bhagwa hai bhai bhagwa hai, JNU bhagwa hai” by the right wing patriots and “laal hai bhai laal hai, JNU laal hai” by the leftists. Now, even within the comrade camp, there is a fight over which group represents the true red. So, we hear shouts of, “jab asli laal lehrayega, toh hosh thikane ayega” and finally there are the unnoticed wails of the centrists and other groups who fill in by vouching for the tricolor. See how important color is?

Come election time and the entire campus transforms itself into a politically charged landmine-zone. Any kind of political incorrectness implies tripping over (sometimes over mines you set yourself) and thereby, voluntarily or involuntarily, though successfully in either case, inviting acrid controversies and unparalleled street credit, leading to overnight celeb-status to some and instant labeling as a killjoy onto some others. There is surprising warmth in everyday interaction and every other person seems like your best friend, especially those who come seeking your honored support to their cause. Election Committee members, who constitute of faces seldom known to people otherwise, command faithful avoidance and cosmetic respect, for they will be the ones required to manage all the chaos and pandemonium in the various GBMs and during the polling sessions and then stay up two nights and one day, locked inside the exciting interiors of the School of International Studies, counting and recounting votes. Their repeated demands to the Vice Chancellor for the deployment of EVMs have been religiously opposed by the union, for EVMs would reduce the time (read: days) required for counting and thus the counting extravaganza, spread over two nights and a day, would be reduced to a few hours, in the process, ending all the razzmatazz going on in the all-day, all-night bivouacs of various political organizations. The campus territory, meanwhile, becomes an agglomeration of pamphlets and posters of contesting candidates, efficiently covering every corner, every alcove of the campus, hardly leaving any space, even on the ground, unutilized. Adroit utilization of resources, you see. And in the cacophony of various ideological slogans, the concerns of some sections of students about environmental pollution and paper-wastage seem too insignificant to be considered. Moral of the story: politics is the religion of JNU and the Student Union Election is its annual festival, which needs to be celebrated in all its glory, without caring about petty financial, environmental and other related issues.

A final word of caution before we part amigos. Walking around the campus, when you hear gut-wrenching slogans of JNUSU “maachh-O, maachh-O” don’t just succumb to the innocent perversions of your naive mind and the phonetic comparisons it’s forcing you to make with similar sounding expressions of uncensored anger. Don’t start retreating, predicting a violent riot; look closer...for all our politically supercharged friends are doing is urging you, as members of the JNUSU, to “march-on, march-on!” You get the drift, right?

P.S. Word’s around that a new political outfit is making its presence felt around the campus. It’s called the FTG; the acronym, true to the democratic traditions of JNU, is open to subjective interpretation. For The Good, Fight The Goons, Fire The Guards, Fuck The Guerillas, are some of expressions floating around.... take your pick!


Mahim P. Singh
JNU