It was February 22, 2017, and it was the time right before my board exams when I switched on the television and saw harrowing pictures of injured women who were attacked by goons from the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).
I was angry and disturbed after looking at the images flashing on the TV screen, but I couldn’t do anything for those students from where I was witnessing this from – my house in Kolkata. I was angry and sad because those students were protesting peacefully against the violence.
The innocent students were lathi-charged and shoved into police vans. Their shirts were torn, they were pelted with stones and verbally abused. It all started with a literary event at Ramjas College where Umar Khalid was invited as a panellist. The event was disrupted by members of the ABVP. They didn’t allow the event to take place and attacked the students attending the conference. Even though the story was clear, and was for everyone to see, I didn’t have the courage to speak against the ABVP. I was afraid of the consequences. I switched off the television and tried to divert my attention.
The next day when I switched the television on to get an update on the ongoing protests, I saw a girl’s image flashing across most channels. This girl was holding a placard that said: “Pakistan did not kill my father, the war killed him.”
I couldn’t get the context in the beginning. I was confused. How could the entire narrative of the ongoing protest in one of the top colleges in Delhi university be shifted to questioning the nationality of a nineteen-year-old girl? It took me a while to figure out that the entire narrative had been twisted to suit the story and sensationalised beyond boundaries that were acceptable.
GurMehar Kaur was declared an anti-national overnight. I googled her, and the only images I found were of her holding the placard and the various debates on patriotism that it had triggered. I saw another picture of her holding a placard that said: “I am a student of Delhi University. I am not afraid of the ABVP. Every student of India is with me. #StudentsAgainstABVP.” Reading this gave me the courage to speak up for violence-free campuses.
Furthermore, I was shocked to see personalities like Kiren Rijiju, Virender Sehwag, Randeep Hooda trolling a nineteen-year-old. On the one hand, hundreds of students had been beaten up, and on the other, a nineteen-year-old student was being threatened with rape and what not because of an old video that resurfaced on social media, all in the name of nationalism.
I had had enough, and I decided to share my opinions on Facebook. My friends started questioning my ideologies and my stand on this entire issue. But I couldn’t just sit and watch the events unfold. I was looking for a platform to express my opinion and put it into words for other people to understand. I am not against debates but I am against the forceful imposition of one’s opinion. I wrote the article and self-published it on Youth Ki Awaaz. I had sent the article to various other platforms before, but nobody published it due to various ‘political’ reasons, but YKA did.
From that day onwards, Youth Ki Awaaz became the platform I chose to express my opinions on without any fear or filter. Since then, I have spoken about various issues about student politics and protest and Youth Ki Awaaz has remained my personal space for that.
I personally encourage more people to speak up and use the platform. I was inspired by GurMehar to speak up that day, share my opinions against a very powerful student body in the country. We ought to become brave citizens of this country who dare to dream differently, who challenge the powerful, and who’re definitely not cowed down by Twitter bullies.