Gurmehar Kaur and Ramjas College row: As an LSR alumnus, her courage is inspiring but not surprising

I suffer from information overload on a daily basis, I watch funny videos, baby videos, read comics, and still I can never ever detach myself wholly from that what happens around me. Just as well I would love to get up from my seat right now, and go be with all the Delhi University students marching for free speech, and against the saffron-addled ABVP hooliganism. But as an alumnus of Lady Shri Ram College for Women under Delhi University, I can’t just sit still, and be truthful to the nature of what we are taught at LSR – words are your best weapon.

Never aggression, always words.

One of my first classes at Lady Shri Ram College For Women wasn’t really a lecture, but a sit-down introduction in a conference room-like class room. Our teacher, a self-proclaimed, Gandhian-Marxist didn’t believe in dilly-dallying and straight up went for the first question (mind you, we were fresh out of schools, just 17-18 years of age): “What are your political theories?” It was something completely unexpected. Were we as students required to have political theories? Were we as students required to preempt an awareness as high as this and have an answer in mind?

Well, we needed to.

Like a naïve kid, I said, Capitalism. I shuddered as I waited for a flicker of anger from my teacher, but she just moved on to the next kid and so on. That’s when I knew and tasted my first experience of the ‘Magic of LSR.’ Soon, this became a norm, and not just in my journalism class, but in all of the electives we took. We were taught not to exercise projectile information, but to be equipped with faculties that imbibed what was being taught to us, hone the skill to mold it in a way we deemed appropriate. Every class was fraught with expression, discourse, and above all with ingenuity. We were taught propaganda, we were shown Burma VJ, we attended seminars on nuclear treaties, we managed newsletters that had pieces on Naxalism and Haruki Murakami at the same time. There was no path we couldn’t walk on, no stretch we couldn’t explore, no opinion we couldn’t form. The only thing we needed to keep in mind was presence of mind and acknowledge the possibility of consequences and use semantics for dissent not violence.

Never violence.

And thus, Gurmehar is not just a “daughter of martyr” or just a “girl with a polluted and naïve mind” or even a “girl siding with anti-nationals” — she is a girl who has been told to use her mind, her voice, and encourage others to do the same should there be a crisis. She is a girl who has studied not for jobs, or placements, or packages, but a girl who has studied to learn and to possess knowledge so varied and so accommodating in her repertoire, that it will question you, oppose you but never rob you the right of having a belief. It’s appalling to see how someone so sorted, and so forthcoming with her justified opinions is met with an unabashed and absolutely ignorant barrage of trolling. Not just trolling actually, it’s more deep-rooted than that. It’s the natural aversion to understand a girl’s point of view without mansplaining, being patronising or at the most disgusting — “blaming it on her hormones”.

Thanks to my suicidal embrace of information overload, I watched multiple discussions on news channels where ABVP representatives and RSS ideologues called out Gurmehar for cashing in on her father’s martyrdom. And her response wasn’t a rude bout, but a calm acknowledgment to the fact that in the disgusting game of politics and normative nationalism there is no shame, there is no retribution, there is no sense. Seeing her on the television, her bravery, her resilience is such a resounding reminder of how this is natural for her. Being at the forefront of politically charged conversations, and still holding your own ground without losing your cool but debating it with fervor is a quality few have. This is the very quality that is honed to precision at our college.

There is no better way of reinforcing that thought but by pointing out the supportive message sent by the college in complete and unflinching backing of Gurmehar, and a number of other students who believe in reading humanities, in studying theories and literature, in giving not only a space but a platform to voice the most controversial sentiments. Especially women. We as citizens need to applaud these young minds, applaud their nuanced understanding of complex subjects. We don’t want a Kiren Rijiju patronising us, we don’t want our peers being referred to as “Dawood Ibrahim”, we don’t want our sportsmen/sportswomen and our Bollywood figures to question our patriotism. Because the first rule of patriotism is to respect the Constitution, and the essence of constitution lies in freedom of speech and expression.

The fact that a Gurmehar can speak her mind, I can write my mind, the entirety of my college is supporting these thoughts signify our respect for the Constitution and our respect for India because we still believe that this is the largest democracy, that we live in a 2017, that women have their voice — one that should be out in the open, that despite what everyone says, we are a free nation.

The author works for a television channel, she graduated from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Journalism Batch of 2011.