Disclaimer: The views presented below are of the author and are not in any manner representative of the views of Vox Populi as a body or IIT Kanpur in general.
“Hardly ever have I known anybody to cherish such loyalty as I did to the British Constitution. I can see now that my love of truth was at the root of this loyalty. It has never been possible for me to simulate loyalty or, for that matter, any other virtue. The national anthem used to be sung at every meeting that I attended in Natal. I was unaware of the defects in British rule, but I thought that it was on the whole acceptable. In those days I believed that British rule was, on the whole, beneficial to the ruled.”
–Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth
As the evening transitioned into the night, a gathering of students and faculty members emerged from the otherwise innocuous chaos in which our campus functions. Most of us stopped for the SL canteen’s tea delaying the event by 15 minutes. These hundred of strangers formed a circle and without a word spoken, we knew that irrespective of our innumerable differences, we transitioned into a collective. A collective that doubts, that is not satisfied, that sleeps in distress, that laughs to veil nervousness and in that we were strangers no more.
You can find the report of what happened during the day in the following links-
The administration was kind enough to send three cameras so that nothing went unrecorded. The collective in its namelessness was to be dissected later, one individual to be discerned from the other, such are perhaps the perversions of collecting data. I walked next to a stranger, who arrived earlier and probably was not enticed by SL canteen’s tea. The words on the placard that he held were rather peculiar to me. I quenched my curiosity and tried to focus on the poem recitation that had already begun. The intimidation of our campus for reciting “Hum Dekhenge” by Faiz was perhaps fresh in our minds and nervous jitters were coming out like fireflies revealing themselves for a transient moment before becoming one with the everlasting night again.
One person after the other walked to the center, the stage of expression called for his whims, for his expression, and for our ears. In their awkward, nervous recitations, Pash, Shailendra, Faiz, Jalib, all these poets from different time and space, descended upon the stage.
The stranger confounded by the barriers of language requested me to translate what was essentially noise to him. I obliged and took note of the lines
“‘फूल शाख़ों पे खिलने लगे,’ तुम कहो
‘जाम रिंदों को मिलने लगे,’ तुम कहो
‘चाक सीनों के सिलने लगे,’ तुम कहो
इस खुले झूठ को, जेहन की लूट को
मैं नहीं मानता, मैं नहीं जानता”
Me: Umm.. well, you know uhh.. it goes something like, you say that the flowers are blossoming on branches, you say that the cups are overflowing and you say that the wounds are healing themselves. These blatant lies, this plunder upon intellect, I refuse to acknowledge, I refuse to accept.
The Stranger: I did call out the blatant lies and the plunder of intellect but I too accepted them. I had my PHY103 assignments to complete so I forgot, maybe I too never accepted them but only lived with them. To me, it seems like, more than the lies, we accept the walls between us. Professors, students, and workers are all interdependent and yet so discreet. Perhaps, you came across the news of the suicide of a security officer, the privileged us didn’t take a moment to offer condolences. Grief cannot be imposed and I refuse to blame the ignorant but I refuse to accept ignorance, I too refuse to accept this plunder of intellect.
And just a simple appeal of refusal by the poet brought forth a call for his own rebellion. We stood there engrossed in our thoughts, the stranger seemed content with my translation and didn’t find the urge to ask further. Perhaps the message was conveyed and it seemed that noise for him took a form of melody calling upon all of us to think, to question and to dissent. After the poetry recitation, a boy with glasses, slightly miffed, slightly anxious, came to the stage and started with, “I am scared of being here right now.” The stranger and I looked at each other, smiling and nodding in agreement with him. He questioned whether one should be scared to ask questions? He asked questions on the indifference of the administration, access to education and critical thought, and the freedom to express, wondering what lay behind the constant misdirection in the face of such questions. The stranger nudged me, the words uttered by the boy with glasses had brought down his walls of apprehensions and compelled him to express himself thus,
The Stranger: All these questions are good and all but tell me why would anyone put their career on the line and for what? What is the cause? His questions bring forth my own questions and dilemmas. You know once upon a time, this was a different IIT Kanpur. I have been told, and pardon the exaggerations of nostalgia, the restrictions were much less in conflict with us. You know this 12 am to 6 am restriction on hall entry for the opposite gender — I am sure someone will explain it to me as to what kind of sorcery is being prevented by this restriction — this restriction, it did not exist previously. A couple was found having sex in their hostel room, how dare these adults express physical intimacy, some amazing people decided it was a great idea to latch their door and complain to the DoSA. The dean took note of those who complained and reprimanded them as to what business they had in someone else’s room. This was IIT Kanpur. Perhaps you saw the YouTube video where one person said: “Hindustan ek khwab hai” IIT Kanpur is a dream too and to keep this dream alive we will have to keep questioning.
I nodded throughout but my attention was in the event’s unfolding before our eyes. It was evident that the stranger wasn’t the only one whose barriers had been brought down. If the stage was for expression, the platform for people to reach it had been brought down, each had her own reason about what had transpired. To some it was a flutter from a poem’s line, to some it was the call of prose, to some it was seeing their own image in the boy with glasses but to me, it was the placard in the stranger’s hand. I was reminded of Albert Camus’s The Rebel, where he says, “The first progressive step for a mind overwhelmed by the strangeness of things is to realize that this feeling of strangeness is shared with all men and that human reality, in its entirety, suffers from the distance which separates it from the rest of the universe. The malady experienced by a single man becomes a mass plague. In our daily trials, rebellion plays the same role as does the ‘cogito’ in the realm of thought: it is the first piece of evidence. But this evidence lures the individual from his solitude. It founds its first value on the whole human race. I rebel—therefore we exist.” The stranger throughout the discussion spoke in a diverse set of sentiments. A summary is presented below for the benefit of readers with the intent of saving you all from boredom.
The stranger was slightly annoyed by the emphasis on the individual. One after another, each individual recounting from her own personal experience, his irritation, however, reached its culmination when someone recounted the horrors of stalking, followed by the apathy of the security section and the counseling service, and the only plausible explanation was through the lens of homophobia. For him, the incoherent brushstrokes of one’s personal experiences had started forming a painting. Each voice at the center aimed to elaborate on the different manifestations of suppression and alienation coming from within their intimate self. The king is being stripped and the king will soon be naked. The stranger expressed a sense of satisfaction when someone recited a self-written poem called “Laqeer”. The words of the poem resonated with his own. He was back to where he started, the lines and walls all coming together for him, perhaps a fitting conclusion for him and for the discussion.
I pretty much nodded through all the stranger’s mumblings. We both joined for the recitation of “Where the mind is without fear” and maybe at that moment we truly believed the words we recited. However, as the crowd dissipated back into the chaos of our campus, the fear reclaimed its space.
— Shubham Mirg
