MUMBAI: The incidents that unfolded on the campus of Ramjas College on 22 February are part of a larger trend. The right-wing student movement, led principally by the RSS-affiliated ABVP, has gained greatly in influence owing to both: unfair institutional favor and a dangerous dose of hypernationalism injected into the social fabric by the Parivar. Intolerant muscle-flexing by the ABVP was evident as Bharat Mata Brand nationalism was put to practice in JNU, Hyderabad Central University, etc. Neither left politics nor right politics have escaped the charge of intolerance. The question here though is specific: does the campus accommodate the so-called ‘anti-national’ opinion? The ABVP says an unequivocal no, and its actions speak as loud as its words.
The campus is part of the society, and shall inevitably reflect the dynamics of the world beyond its walls. Further, it is only ideal that on the campus of an educational institution every perspective must find room. If the campus rejects an idea, who will question it?
Today, the problem facing student politics (rather, politics in general) results from disagreements over how the framework governing diversity of opinion should be organized. At the most elementary level, a framework that is meant to govern differences has to be fair. It should be capable of accommodating the will of all. The ABVP has repeatedly disparaged the fairness quotient of the framework. Its conduct smacks of the desire to dictate this framework than function as a part of it, reflecting general contempt towards the principles on which a democratic society is based. The campus not only exists as part of society, but also forms a society in itself. Thus any assault on the democratic framework on the campus is an assault on the democratic nature of society.
A democratic society is founded on the principle of public discussion. A necessary condition for constructive public discussion is the freedom to express ones opinions. There can be no reasoning if freedom of expression is regulated, since expressing one’s mind in spoken or written word, action or art, constitutes the sole way one can communicate her sentiments to the other. This establishes the essentiality of freedom in public discussion. By transitive implication, the essentiality of freedom in a democratic society is established. So long as there is no appeal to violence, expression by one person does not infringe on the liberty of the other. Let us call such liberty ‘maximal’ liberty. There can’t be any reasoning in substantive terms, if expression is free so long as it conforms to one view. Reasoning in this sense takes place not between differing perspectives, but within the bounds of the same perspective. Thus, there is no freedom for those who want to question the perspective itself. This establishes the need of equality in the distribution of ‘maximal’ liberty. Equality, here, is to be understood in the following sense. Those who conform to the dominant idea are given the choice of expressing their opinions. Those who depart from the dominant narrative are denied the choice of expressing theirs. The choice set of the conformists is expanded by virtue of them being conformists, but that of the non-conformists is constrained thanks to their refusal to conform. The just society seeks to end this inequality of freedoms by equally bestowing the freedom to express upon each of its constituent elements. It does not discriminate between those who conform and those who dissent.
The maximal liberty of expression forms the bulwark of the free society. Equality in the allocation of maximal liberty describes the just society. The marriage of the free society and the just society is the democratic society.
The ABVP is dominant among several competing positions in today’s society. It seeks to limit the number of opinions that can exist by defining the acceptable ‘national’ from the unacceptable ‘anti-national’. To check whether such conduct is consistent with the democratic framework, we must check whether it is consistent with its two components that have been defined above. The first is liberty and the second is equality.
To begin with, restricting the expression of ‘anti-national’ opinion denies maximal liberty. Secondly, prohibition of the expression of an opinion is distinct from opposition to that opinion. Opposing an opinion held ‘anti-national’ fits the framework of a free society. Prohibiting it implies that its expression shall be met with consequences. Such consequences can be imposed formally or informally. Any act that penalizes the expression of an opinion physically, institutionally or by extra-legal threat is a denial of free expression. It is tantamount to systematically deleting dissent. Thus smothering the ‘anti-national’ opinion is not consistent with liberty.
The second principle to test for is Equality. When an opinion is formally or informally pressured into silence, the liberty of some to express that opinion is ended. Liberty is denied on the presumption that the freedoms of some can be regulated by the others. In other words, the presumption is that some have exclusive ownership over the liberty of expression and hold the power to regulate who can practice how much of it. The conformist is observed to have two privileges over the dissenter: the privilege of fearless expression and the privilege of silencing the opinion of those who dissent. How can a society be equal when some brandish privileges others do not have?
The conduct of the ABVP thus fails the test of liberty as well as that of equality. Since the conduct in question is that of suppressing ‘anti-national’ opinion, it follows that the democratic framework has to accommodate within its fold the expression of the so-called ‘anti-national’. It cannot conclude that certain people do not have a claim to freedom as a result of their ideological dispensations or radical opinions. This is regardless of the questionable merit in the arguments that label certain positions as ‘anti-national’.
The final argument that the ABVP is left with then, is to ask why we need a democratic framework for the campus anyway.
There cannot be a better justification to the need for a just framework than the idea of justice advanced by the philosopher John Rawls. Rawls argued for equality in terms of ‘primary goods’ and included in this classification basic liberties. He reasoned that a just order should be one that would be agreeable to all of its participants in the primordial ‘original position’. In the Rawlsian original position, participants are ignorant of which group in society they will be part of once they enter it. In the event that members of the ABVP are placed under such a ‘cloak of ignorance’ before they enter the arena of politics, they do not know which side of the ideological divide they would be when they become part of the arena. However, they continue to be the same passionate student politicians in the original position as in reality. Would they agree to a framework that placed a lid on the speech and expression of either of the two sides? They would not, since they aren’t aware which side they will end up belonging to, once the cloak is lifted! This is exactly why societies (and campuses) must prefer the democratic framework which grants maximal liberty to all without discrimination. This is because only that solution shall be truly fair which is agreeable to all stakeholders irrespective of their identity in the society.
Whether the ABVP will ever agree to any of this is debatable, for their Parivar seldom has. But this shouldn’t stop the rest from arguing again and again for the principles that define a democratic campus, and beyond its walls, a democratic society.
(The writer is a First Year student of economics, math and statistics at Ramnarain Ruia College, Mumbai).