Nationalism and Patriotism are a source of identity to a lot of people across cultural landscapes in the world. We all like to associate ourselves with a social group of which we feel extremely proud of. Be it calling oneself a proud Tamizhan or Indian or Socialist or Gandhian. Such an identity gives a sense of direction to our life, meaning, we tend to align life with what this identity demands. The worrisome part about these identities is that we sometimes blindly authorize the action of anybody who is a part of this grouping. The reason being you can't just question a group's action and be apart of the group. That is the level of hypocrisy that even the most liberal of the liberals exhibit in the highly nascent political environment of India. This is also the kind of hypocrisy that we have been seeing off-late in the JNU episode.
To make few things clear, Firstly any action that jeopardizes the national integrity, peace and security shall be treated as a crime. However there needs to be a liberal interpretation while classifying such actions. Whether all such actions amount to sedition is a legal question of constitutional nature. When the state exercises its powers to preserve the national interests larger ideals like humanism and internationalism should take precedence.
In the recent event leading up to the JNU crisis the acts of certain politicians in the name of nationalism is more jingoistic than patriotic. Calling students anti-nationals for mere "alleged sloganeering" is dangerous to the nation. Equally dangerous is the justification of such sloganeering by the student fraternity in the veil of "freedom of expression". Both the parties should understand that while freedom is fundamental it is also qualified and not absolute. The state and the civil society should treat the issue with greater common sense and responsibility.
Coming to the hypocrisy part of it. The swiftness with which the state reacted is a surprise. The state does not act with similar vigor when it comes to right-wing fundamentalism and moreover saffronization has been a part of its agenda. Both fundamentalism and saffronization are equally detrimental to national interest. Also the left liberals don't question the excesses in the garb of freedom of expression or extremism of their ideological forefathers, nor that of their ideological guardians in the north or brothers within India. Except for very few left inclined liberals who have given a balanced critique of the JNU crisis rest have only used the situation to score vital electoral points.
Repeated events of this nature just months ahead of state assembly elections is only bringing to limelight a very dangerous political culture. Who is the culprit ? The ruling dispensation or the United opposition is hard to decipher purely because both parties exhibit hypocrisy of unforgivable dimensions. Media which has to be the watchdog of the political culture has only managed to successfully make the most of this crisis. Common man is as usual the one who is left in peril.
