An open letter to the JNU V-C from an admirer

Dear Jagadesh Kumar Ji,

I must make a full disclosure at the outset that I never had the good fortune to study in JNU. Indeed, those of us who couldn’t or didn’t have the fortune of studying in JNU would often make fun of our friends who did.

During any discussion, we would point to the most voluble and sometimes unintelligible friend, wink and shake our head at the ‘natural gas’ they seemed to produce effortlessly. JNU, we would say under our breath. The campus did it to the poor souls, we would commiserate.

It was so apt, therefore, that you should request the Union Minister for Natural Gas, Dharmendra Pradhan, to help install a decommissioned battle tank in the campus so that your students can feel a surge of patriotism every time they passed it. Natural gas, I mean.

Any doubt that you were actually requesting for a water tank was however dispelled by you within 24 hours when you clarified that JNU was the ‘only university’ in the country that offered short courses to defence personnel and hence the battle tank was meant as a tribute to the sacrifices made by your own alumni.

You may have been persuaded by the realisation that the National Flag fluttering in the campus is not quite enough to instil patriotic thoughts. And how indeed can students grow up as proud, responsible citizens if they do not pause before the battle tank and shout, ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ on their way to the classes or back?

It is also possible that when you were young, you harboured ambition of serving the country by joining the armed forces. But your frail frame and glasses may have come in the way of clearing the physical ability tests. And now that you are the Vice-Chancellor at JNU, you would like to have the pleasure of viewing a tank, possibly with its turret pointing towards your own residential quarter every morning as you sip on your morning tea or coffee.

You may also have been influenced by decommissioned aircraft placed in the Jamia Millia University campus in New Delhi or the Modern School in Delhi. Sainik schools and a few schools in the hills too may have been gifted similar instruments of war. And it is possible that you felt your campus too should have one. While military schools across the world flaunt the instruments, you will agree that it is unusual for universities to do so.

But then you clearly do not believe your students to be patriotic enough. Or you are convinced that they do not ‘admire’ the Indian Army enough. That would explain why you pioneered the celebration of Kargil Vijay Divas in the campus, three days before the rest of the country does so on July 26.

But, sir, are you sure that Kargil is the best example to offer? Wasn’t the misadventure marked by colossal Intelligence failure, lack of preparedness, shortage of ammunition, boots and even coffins? Perhaps, you intended to remind ourselves of the Indian Army’s failures in Kargil every year in the presence of veterans like Major General Bakshi?

Wouldn’t it be better to start celebrating December 16 also as the day when the Indian armed forces secured the surrender of Dhaka? Or some day in September when the Indian Army took on the Patton tanks in the western sector?

Do not be deterred, sir by the ridicule and the scorn. The world may be laughing at you but the brave son of Mother India that you are, you must ignore the barks and continue to serve the ‘community’ with more of your brilliant ideas.

You could install a huge broom, the world’s largest, to remind and inspire students of the ‘Swachh Bharat’ mission. You could also make it mandatory for students to listen to the Prime Minister’s ‘Mann ki Baat’ in which he has already advised how to prepare for examinations and how to deal with stress. As in another central university, BHU, you may start a RSS shakha in JNU, so necessary for building character, in self-defence and in disrupting talks, seminars, events etc in which the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad specialises.

Other vice-chancellors, I hope, will learn from you. They are far less patriotic than you are and obviously far less brilliant. I don’t how you get these ideas. Does the secret lie in Gomutra? For the students’ sake, do please disclose the secret so that the country prospers.

An awestruck admirer

(This is a satire and the views are the author’s own and do not reflect those of National Herald.)