Of all activisms, Left activism is the most pointless. Every other agitation may have some purpose or rationale, but the Red flag has never heralded anything of worth. Even the changes or ‘revolutions’ credited to it in various countries have eventually collapsed or ended in chaos. Communism itself comes with a commitment to combust and wither away.
It is a kind of self-fulfilling emptiness;agitation for the sake of agitation, as a habit, an itch or a collective product of idle minds working overtime as devil’s workshops. From its very birth in mid-19th century, Leftism has been a licence for laziness and a lonely, last resort for the listless. It is a late lamented lie that lingered a bit too long but is always lusting to latch on to life.
This parasite has lost much patronage. Unions, with their captive PSU crowd and its easy mobilisation, are out of business with strikes losing judicial sanction and people’s sympathy. Media’s five-star Leftism is confined to cosy intellectual ivory towers where bread and butter issues are discussed over high tea and higher stuff.
Private sector has banished the Left after globalisation. Farmers now know relying on the symbolic sickle will only make them sicker. Even filmdom has shed the red hues for finer colours. IT sector’s success can also be attributed to its insulation from the very viral Communist malware. Politically too, in tune with global trends, Marxists here have been completely marginalised.
Academic institutions like JNU are the last outposts. Post freedom, Nehru gave them the gift of school syllabus-setting. Since then Leftist historians and academicians have deemed education policy their divine monopoly, brooking no change whatsoever to their concocted versions.That’s how barbaric ‘bad’shahs and medieval marauders became benevolent monarchs! In college campuses the Left morphed into student activism. Though dead, the Left ghost still had a host to haunt.
Which is what we see today. Exotic Leftist ideas can easily afflict fertile, impressionable minds, because they are the stuff of youthful idealism. Really, one does not have to be a Leftist to lay claim to revolutionary, anti-establishment or humane thoughts. Any individual with basic sensibility possesses them. Everyone wants capitalism with conscience and an egalitarian society.
Corruption and communalism anger all. Every working person knows what dignity of labour is, be he a card holder or not!
However, the Left successfully packaged and branded themselves in that mould by just putting the rounded red seal on old-world wisdom and common norms of rights and wrongs. Yes, we must give it to them that they were fanciful. This despite being the opposite in many ways. Leftism is vain, vacuous elitism of the seminar classes; what does Karl Marx mean to a worker in khaki? The worst despots have been Leftists. Roads are built with hard labour and they place roadblocks; never constructive, always obstructionist. Productivity reflects only in lung power! Their dialectics are designed to deliver decay and disillusionment.
Agitating students must ponder over such history and home truths about their agent provocateurs. Just take a look at clippings of any student rally of a decade back. How many of those carrying placards are now in public space, let alone Leftist space? Hardly any. In fact, most of them would have become very ‘unred’ entrepreneurs or business leaders, and even be watching the current ‘crusades’ with a tinge of resentment at their own youthful follies and relief too at having a narrow escape from turning into a Prakash Karat or his bitter half! Angry students should learn this lesson from their Left alumni who left this charade for good … their good. They have everything to gain by shedding this chain.
The Government’s handling of the whole fracas is shabby by all standards. So, let students march, by all means, protesting the present. But they must remember to march past their instigators if only to march ahead in life. Should these youngsters with more important promises to keep and prospects ahead stupidly stake all by holding aloft photos of Afzal Guru, a declared and dead terrorist? At least that’s what the country’s laymen and lawmen fully believe. Just for their comfort, let me say that the slogan sponsoring intellectuals who have no future would only land students in trouble and themselves march on to some other ripe issue, as they did seamlessly from Vemula suicide.
Students’ priority should be sterling grades, not these sinister comrades. An outdated, destructive ideology, even if fashionable, should hold no attraction to aspiring nation- builders. But there is a more compelling reason for the students to see, well, reason.
Do they want Rahul, whose own campus record is mired in mystery, in their midst? Crowd, disperse!
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