Honoring Our Teachers the ABVP Way

I was in a busy market place when my mobile phone beeped to tell me that there was an SMS waiting. I took it out and squinted. It was a news alert from CNN/IBN that a couple of ABVP activists had surrendered in Ujjain in connection with the incident where a Professor had died after being man handled by a student mob while supervising student union elections. As I put the phone back, I wondered at the irony of ABVP activists being the ones involved, including another Professor who professed the same beliefs and ideology as the ABVP. Strange that it was the ABVD, I thought. It could have been the SFI or AISF or NSUI or any other body of students, but to hear that ABVP students should have been involved in assaulting a Professor seemed beyond belief.

Why, one may ask? Because round the year, it is the ABVP and its allies who tell us how to live the Indian way, the Bharatiya way. So we are educated by the ABVP that we should not celebrate Valentine's Day, boycott Deepa Mehta's films like Water or Fire, avoid M.F. Hussain's paintings and lustily sing songs like Vande Mataram. Thanks to them, girls know how to dress - no jeans please, we are Indian, er, Bharatiya.

Thanks to the ABVP and its ilk, one need never worry about how to live and to conduct one self. One could always check out their code of conduct shouted loudly and clearly and just trust and obey. The ABVP knows that ignorance is often cited as the reason for non conformity and so they have ensured that there are enough pronouncements by their "volunteers" who will clarify all doubts. A vandalized art studio or a burnt out and smoking cinema hall will tell you loud and clear which painter's works are sacrilegious to Indian culture and which movie hall is trying to defame Indian ways and customs and which shop stocks vulgar merchandise.

But one's education never ends and so I have just learnt that the Guru Shishya parampara and its modern equivalent, Teachers' Day, can be all junked and the right way to interpret Indian culture and honor one's teachers is to throw mud at them, rough them up, assault them - especially so if they are getting in the way of things and need to be put to pasture. I studied in a school run by the Aurobindo people and there, though they didn't exactly follow the gurukul system, Teachers' Day was observed and though not all teachers were saints in any way, there were some whom I revered. I have always wondered how to repay them, if I ever meet them again. Now I know how. I will just lynch them or organize a bunch of thugs to do so till they pass out. The ABVP has taught me that is the Indian way. All that Teachers' Day stuff is passé!