Opinion JNU VC’s comments on leftists: Who is the ‘us’ she’s talking about?

Pandit seems to forget that a university is not a place of learning if it does not fire the mind. The teacher should impart knowledge — guide, but not dwarf the mind. Let students go down their own path. Let them dream and turn their dreams into reality. Let us not treat their ideas, convictions and thoughts as signs of degeneration. The VC has openly declared her leanings towards Hindutva, and her association with the RSS. She is most welcome to do that. She is entitled to listen to the voice within her, but then, so is her student. Teach the student, guide her, but do not protest if she disagrees with you or, in her wisdom, decides to choose her own path. Let JNU be a cradle and not a tomb.

“The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court opened the court on a Saturday night to give Teesta Seetalvad bail. Will it happen for us?” the VC asked. What she means by “us” is baffling. Be that as it may, is it a crime to hold court on a non-working day and administer justice? The SC has done so in the past when the peculiarity of a case so demanded. Should law discriminate on the basis of political ideology, especially on issues related to the fundamental right to freedom and personal liberty? Would it have been right to deny Teesta Seetalvad justice because of her political leaning?

Kabir Das, the 15th-century saint and poet, puts teachers on a pedestal higher than god. A teacher affects eternity, and as the American jurist Robert Green Ingersoll says, one good teacher is worth a thousand priests. But are some of our present-day teachers imparting knowledge or impairing it?

Two horrific incidents were reported recently from schools, one in Muzaffarnagar and another in Kathua. The incidents elicited immense public outrage. In Muzaffarnagar, a teacher made students hit a fellow student, a seven-year-old Muslim boy, as punishment for failing to do his class assignment. She allegedly also insinuated that Muslim mothers do not pay attention to their children’s studies. The incident was captured on camera, and the video of the same was uploaded on social media.

Close on the heels of this incident, in Kathua district of Jammu, a Class X student of a government school was beaten up by a teacher and the principal for writing “Jai Shri Ram” on the classroom board. They also allegedly told the boy that if he did such a thing again, they would kill him. The boy had to be hospitalised for five days.

These incidents tell us that it is not the wayward students who are polluting the temples of learning, but in some cases, it is the teacher. Both incidents could have snowballed into communal violence. Mercifully, they did not. Unfortunately, bigotry and bias are getting embedded in our lives.

Let us mix our differences with togetherness. Diversity needs to be accepted as a strength. Let us keep young minds free from bias, hate and “ism” of any kind. The onus lies on teachers, both at the school and university level. Time to remember the golden words of American poet Gwendolyn Brooks: “We are each other’s harvest/ We are each other’s business/ We are each other’s magnitude and bond”.

The writer is a former judge of the Delhi High Court