P.Chidambaram on the Student Agitation

P.Chidambaram, who was a Leftist once upon a time, was completing his MBA at Harvard in '68. He thinks there is some resemblance between what is happening in India now and what was happening then after the Summer of Love.

India in 2020 looks like the United States in 1968. France in 1968 was in a similar situation. My recollection of 1968 is that normal political activity in the US had failed and the ‘causes’ had passed to the hands of students in universities and colleges. The main cause in 1968 was the Vietnam War.

American kids did not want to get killed in a far off country.  Thus, their protests were rational and self interested. Moreover, the tax payer would be better off if they didn't have to pay for the quagmire in Indochina. Student protest didn't have much effect- they had deferments anyway- but conscription had to go because G.Is returned from Vietnam as either drug addicts or quadriplegics or drug addled quadriplegics.

The US was fighting a war in South Vietnam ostensibly to push back the advance of the Communists who controlled North Vietnam and to ‘save democracy’.

The US killed the crazy Catholic who was running things. But the puppet they put in was shit. 

In the aftermath of World War II, there was popular support for the doctrine of defending and protecting ‘liberal democracies’.

Fuck off! There was popular support for saving Western Europe from Stalin. 

The most visible battle line was drawn in Europe. There were the so-called Democratic countries and the so-called Communist countries.

Spain and Portugal weren't democratic. The latter joined NATO in 1949 while Spain had a military alliance with the US from the Fifties onward.  

Winston Churchill called the dividing line the Iron Curtain.
The US had a draft. Young men were obliged to serve in the defence forces. In the initial years of the Vietnam War, many volunteered to serve. As the war dragged on, and the lies of successive governments were exposed, support turned into scepticism; scepticism turned into suspicion; and suspicion turned into opposition.

This is misleading. If you volunteered there was a good chance you wouldn't be sent to Vietnam. The Army didn't want its future leaders to become junkies in a tropical shithole.  

It was the youth — especially students and the draftees — who first raised the voice of protest.

Actually, there had been protests against American policy in South East Asia as early as 1945 when the US Merchant Marine sailors protested use of American vessels to bring back the French colonizers. In the case of the Dutch in Indonesia, America did insist on a transfer of power to the 'natives'. Quakers too had become active in opposing American policy in the area in the Fifties and early Sixties. 

They asked, why is the US fighting a war in distant Vietnam? Why are young Americans dying in the hundreds? The political system failed to provide satisfactory answers.

No. What it failed to do was finance the war properly or come up with a strategy which might yield decisive victory. I suppose the truth is, no such strategy existed. Still, the war could have been fought with proxies. The South Koreans did particularly well in that theater.  

The elected representatives in the US Congress were late in catching the wind. When they did, successive US Administrations dug in their heels and vociferously defended the war. Whether it was Kennedy’s, Johnson’s or Nixon’s, the refrain was the same: victory is just one battle away.

This is misleading. Kennedy may have changed his mind had he lived. Johnson too was wrongly advised.  

Surprisingly, it was Richard Nixon — a hawk and resolutely anti-Communist — who sensed that the US was fighting a hopeless and unwinnable war and decided to pull out.

The kids knew why they were being sent to Vietnam. They did not want to go. That's it. That's the whole story. 

The ferment that we witness in the campuses of Indian universities and colleges bears a striking resemblance to the events of 1968.

Fuck off! There was no fucking 'ferment' in India in 2020.  

Students and youth have sensed that something is ‘terribly wrong’ in the way the country is being governed.

This is silly. American kids didn't want to get shot. American taxpayers didn't want their money to be wasted. The Generals realized the war was unwinnable. They'd made the same mistake as Truman had backing the corrupt KMT against Mao's Communists. So Nixon got the Pakistanis to open a backdoor to Beijing. 

Indian students know what is 'terribly wrong' with our campuses. There are too many stupid Lefties on them. 

There were many sparks like appointment of vice-chancellors with dubious credentials, unwarranted interference by bumptious governors/chancellors, flawed appointments of teachers, mismanagement in the conduct of examinations, restrictions on student union activities, fee hikes, etc.

All of which have always happened. But nobody cares. Why? Indian students are shit. So are their teachers. Higher Education is a white elephant. That is why Chiddu and his ilk send their kids abroad to study. 

Some university administrations were politically biased and favoured one political group of students over others and triggered clashes — the most notable was the administration of Jawaharlal Nehru University that openly encouraged the ABVP, the students’ wing of the RSS.

So what? Either the students beat the V.C or they get beaten. Nobody cares. 

Voices of protest were labelled the tukde tukde gang. Sedition cases were slapped against student leaders.

And Modi was re-elected. People now hate the students. They like seeing them in bandages. Mao realized this long ago. First he used the students against his opponents in the Party. Then he got the factory workers to enter the campuses and beat the shit out of the students. Those who survived were sent off to the villages. Chairman Xi was one such student. He learned his lesson well. Students should be beaten regularly- unless they are studying something useful in which case they should be forced to incur student debt so they'll get a paying job and enter the tax net. 

If the new ‘normal’ in universities was frightening, the ‘normal’ in the country at large was also oppressive. Every day brought more horror stories of rape and lynching, trolling and abuse, and arbitrary arrests.

Like Chidu being arrested on corruption charges.  He thinks the students are rallying to his cause. 

Mendacious boasts about growth, development and jobs

which Chidu made when he was in the Cabinet 

angered young men and women who were apprehensive about the future,

Chidu & Co were kicked out for their monumental corruption and incompetence 

especially about getting jobs. An observant student could discern that the force driving the new ‘normal’ and legitimising it was the majoritarian arrogance of the rulers that manifested itself in many ways: intolerance of dissent, contempt for other faiths, hard approach to enforcing law and order, censorship and other restrictions (such as shutdown of Internet), prolonged detention without charges, imposition of reactionary dogmas (‘inter-caste or inter-faith marriage will not be allowed’), etc.

Chidu is making a good point. Smriti Irani has had to divorce her husband because the BJP is opposed to inter-faith marriage. Indeed, she has been retrospectively stripped of her RSS membership because it turns out her parents were of different castes. Chidu knows all about this because he remembers being taught this at Harvard in 1968.

At the political level, the majoritarian arrogance was visible in the refusal by the government to engage with the Opposition and in rushing through controversial legislation in Parliament. Here is an example: Articles 5 to 11 of the Constitution of India deal with citizenship. The Constituent Assembly debated these provisions for three months before the Articles were adopted. By contrast, the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2019 was approved by the Cabinet on December 8, 2019, passed in both Houses of Parliament, and notified as a law on December 11 — all within 72 hours!

So what? The quality of debate has gone down a lot because people like Chidu say that BJP is preventing inter-caste marriage. Why not simply come out and say that BJP is flaying Tamils and making lampshades out of their skin? At JNU and Jamia Milia we daily see hundreds of millions of Tamils whose skin has been removed protesting vociferously. This also happened in '68 in America.

More than political parties — some of whom did extraordinary flip-flops — it was the students and youth who woke up to the real threat to India and the Constitution. They realised that the majoritarian arrogance and steps would lead to authoritarianism; more than that, it would divide India and pit Indian against Indian. Some Indians would become less than others in terms of rights, privileges and opportunities.

Currently, anyone can become head of the Congress party. If the BJP gets their way only Rahul or Priyanka will be allowed to head it after Sonia dies. 

It would be a catastrophic throwback to the India of 70 years ago and would erase the gains made since Independence.

One great gain has been power being concentrated in corrupt political dynasties- like the one Chidu has himself founded. Yet, back in the Seventies, this guy counted as a Leftist! Why didn't he just make money honestly like his ancestors or his fellow Harvard alumni?

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act has pierced the indifference and apathy of the younger generation.

Because they think it wrong for non-Muslims who have fled persecution from Islamic neighbors to get Citizenship. They should go back to where they came from and quietly change their Religion. 

The older generation has been put to shame.

Very true! We should have massacred those stupid Refugees ourselves. 

Thousands of young men and women have poured into the streets to protest, to march, to hold candlelight vigils, to wave the National Flag and to read the Preamble of the Constitution and reflect on its intangible but enduring values.

Like not letting in refugees from Islamic persecution. 

As expected, the ruling class has reacted with blind fury, bluster and banalities, but the rulers are nervous.

Of whom? The students? They will be beaten till they learn their lesson. That is what Mamta's did to the Jadavpur students back in 2014 when they were foolish enough to object to her goons grabbing girls on campus and taking them to their hostel room for a spot of r & r. 

The Prime Minister has allowed his Home Minister to assert that “we will not withdraw an inch from CAA”. It seems there is an irresistible force and an immovable block. Someone — or something — has to yield. On that will hang the fate and future of India. It’s an unhappy beginning to the New Year.

Chidu may be back in jail soon enough. This thought might be making him unhappy. Still, he sees a gleam of light on the horizon. The students will start beating all and sundry till the police and the army and the BJP runs away. The true meaning of the Constitution will then be made clear. Arbitrary arrests of Chidus for corruption must stop. Non Muslim Refugees must be kicked out. Only then will India become a true Democracy free of the taint of authoritarianism and those nasty non-Muslims who keep escaping from their persecutors across the border.