Clean up the Campuses. Now !

Mr Sandeep Balakrishna has been a writer of Indian history, Hindu civilisation and culture for about two decades. He is a former Information Technology professional with a successful career at major multinational corporations.

He is the Founder and Editor of ‘The Dharma Dispatch’, an Online journal dedicated to Indian civilisation and culture.

Commentary on the shocking event at O.P. Jindal University in which a law student, Mukundan M Nair openly instigated students to replace Hindu temples with mosques.

Like you, even I had not heard of Mukundan M Nair, an LLB student at OP Jindal University who has been suspended for an entire semester. In my considered view, suspension is a mere rap on the knuckle for what clearly is a case of unhinged hatred against Sanatana Dharma.

In a viral video, Mukundan is openly instigating students on the university campus to ‘replace all Hindu temples with mosques’. The occasion for his hate speech was an event he himself had organised. The event’s title leaves nothing to the imagination – Ram Mandir : A Farcical Project of Brahmanical Hindutva Fascism.

Mukundan M Nair is an incurably radicalised Far Left extremist. He is the latest posterboy of the long-term success of the Communist project that began a century ago. The fact that he is pursuing a law degree and might some day become a lawyer is chilling. Think about it.

Since Independence, every Leftist terrorist who has been out on bail or has been acquitted has had committed lawyers defending him or her. Or think of the prospect of a Mukundan M Nair sitting on a bench of Judges which is tasked to deliver the verdict on say, the Kashi Visvanath Temple.

Mukundan M Nair is also a symbol of a familiar malaise, an untreated cancer which continues to fester. This cancer is precisely what creates the likes of Mukundan M Nair.

In its broadest sense, it is the comprehensive and calculated destruction of the ideal of Indian education. You only need to destroy the ideal first. Everything woven around it, everything built on its edifice will start to crumble and then bite the dust automatically.

This destruction was accomplished singlehandedly by the Left.

Prof M Hiriyanna memorably declared that ‘the aim of education is not to inform the mind but to form it’. The Left literally overturned this profound philosophy and created an ‘educational’ system that deforms minds.

The ultimate tragedy of this annihilation of education is the fact that it has occurred in Bharatavarsha, the world’s mothership of learning for uncountable centuries.

Of all the cultural losses we have suffered, the devaluation of the natural and time-honoured authority of the Guru or teacher is perhaps the worst and the most tragic.

Among others, cinema has contributed a lion’s share to this devaluation. What began as a parody of teachers on screen quickly descended into crude and vulgar depictions of teachers. They were typically portrayed as lower-middle class losers, helpless and cowardly.

On a parallel track, the ‘new wave’ or ‘art house (sic)’ cinema spat out by the Nation-wrecking Leftist apparatus depicted teachers as Marxist revolutionaries out to create a ‘new equitable society’ by destroying these traditional Gurus, who symbolised regressiveness, superstition and oppression.

Such ‘teachers’ are real. Such teachers create a Gurmehar Kaur, a Kanhaiya Kumar, a Rohit Vemula and now, a Mukundan M Nair. And they teach everything except character, virtue and decency. These teachers are not merely failing the students, they are actively corrupting them and turning them into traitors and cultural pirates.

Universities are their playgrounds.

A study of the evolution of the Indian university system will prove eye-opening to say the least. Only 20 universities and 496 colleges existed throughout India in 1947. Today, that number has exploded to 54 Central and 416 State universities, 125 deemed universities and 361 private universities. This is not counting the 159 Institutes of National importance like IIT, IIM, NIT, etc. Whatever be the reason, this sort of unchecked expansion is unhealthy, to put it mildly.

The aforementioned playground is the common theme uniting both public and private universities. Every university that has a Humanities department is a Far Left theme park.

Be it sociology, anthropology, history, language or law, the theme is the same : Breaking India and dismantling Sanatana Dharma. Both in theory and practice.

The establishment of the Jawaharlal Nehru University was the harbinger of and the tipping point in the recurring onslaughts of on-campus violence against the sovereignty of India. JNU ‘Professors’ brainwashed and tutored in Moscow and Beijing would use their students as cannon fodder in this war against India. And these students in turn would become lecturers and professors and do the same thing. This sick, self-repeating vicious cycle was perpetuated for half a century. Anybody who has lived through that era will testify to the venomous atmosphere prevailing then. Thankfully, this Left-instigated on-campus violence is largely a thing of the past.

The entry of private universities took this dangerous game to a different level. Now, instead of a handful of JNU clones, the Left acquired nationwide playgrounds. Not just that. Some of these private universities had wealthy international patrons who came with their own agendas. Asoka University was the undoubted pioneer in this area. The Far Left’s penetration of this university is a case study in infiltration. When the blueprint for Asoka was first floated, a respected, former NASA scientist and scholar (now deceased) described it as a retirement home for washed-up Nehruvians. Why does this university have condom vending machines on its campus ? And why are we surprised and outraged at what has emerged from the OP Jindal University ?

The ideology that created the Jawaharlal Nehru University still has a solid grip on the academia – private or public. Mukundan M Nair is just the latest proof. Today it is OP Jindal. Tomorrow it could be any other university. But the questions that need to be asked are this : One, how many Mukundan M Nairs are still under the radar, working quietly but persistently to undo India ? Two, why aren’t the faculty members who produce such ‘students’ not held accountable ?

As we have written, appealed, begged and beseeched countless times on ‘The Dharma Dispatch’, education needs a thorough overhaul which should go beyond the NEP. In its foundational structure, framework, and implementation, we are still anchored to Macaulay in essence. In the recent years, we have tinkered with it by adding another imitation – the American university model. A new imagination and generational vision is required to fully break away from this debilitating clutch. We only hope that it happens soon.

But in the interim, the urgent step is to clean up our campuses and save our children.

(Courtesy : dharmadispatch.in, 15^th February 2024)

The Communist Death Vault : A Little Known Anecdote about JNU

A friend and veteran JNU alumnus I recently met narrated some telling experiences of life on campus in the early 1980s.

Almost all academics – faculty and visiting – were card-carrying communists who drove student activism. Violent, breaking-India-type groups like the PSO and RSO too enjoyed relative freedom to carry out their on-campus propaganda.

Students who didn’t toe the line were mercilessly victimized. As a high profile example, my friend narrated how a former president of the JNUSU (JNU Student Union) committed the cardinal sin of not adhering to the party line. He was rusticated and his PhD was delayed by eight years. He later went on to become the Patna resident editor of a prominent newspaper.

However, the most revealing and vivid anecdote from my JNU friend was that of Arun Shourie being invited in 1984 or 85 for an informal, post-dinner address to students at the mess. The topic was ‘Media as the megaphone of the Government’, and the context was twofold.

The first : Around that period, as a laboratory experiment, Mrs Gandhi had gotten the Jagannath Mishra Government in Bihar to introduce the Press Bill to throttle press freedom but had to back down in face of severe opposition.

The second : In 1984, the now-defunct Illustrated Weekly of India carried a four-part series titled ‘The Great Betrayal’ authored by Arun Shourie. That series had exposed the treacherous role the Communists had played in sabotaging the Quit India Movement.

The invitation to Shourie was primarily aimed at cornering him on their own turf – the JNU – during the Q&A session. My JNU friend described how Shourie came armed with cartons of primary evidence, photocopies, and boxfuls of papers, and systematically showed how the USSR had painted Second World War as a ‘People’s War’ thanks to brilliant propaganda, which our comrades back then had dutifully swallowed.

In contrast, the only rebuttal to Shourie’s speech came from an AISF (All India Students’ Federation) member in the form of a question : ‘How much has the CIA paid you ?’ The ensuing exchange, as my friend recounted (paraphrased), is telling :

Arun Shourie (AS) : Are you a student or a teacher ?

Student : I am a student.

AS : For how long ?

Student : 10 years.

AS : I asked this question because I wanted to ensure whether you are contaminated or the one doing the contaminating.

(Courtesy : dharmadispatch.in, 11^th July 2020)

Of all cultural losses we have suffered, the devaluation of the time-honoured authority of the Guru is perhaps the most tragic !