Many summers ago, I remember fellow journalist Ravish Kumar warning parents against a calamity knocking at their doors. Citing examples of how many young boys from the Hindi heart land were “turning into criminals”, he had told parents to be vigilant against the culture of drafting youths into dangerous vigilantism. This vigilantism made these boys empowered and emboldened enough to break laws with impunity.
In the aftermath of BJP’s landslide 2014 victory which brought it back to power in Delhi, many saw it as a stamp on the “majoritarian” rule. Ideally, in a democracy change of governments is par for the course. But in India many, especially the generation born after 2000, mistook Narendra Modi-led decimation of India’s oldest party as a call for societal change. This section saw itself as “viral tools” to bring that long-awaited change in India. Delusion is a dangerous syndrome which kills the ability to remain calm and balanced in the face of provocation. While those who get power often become deluded, the delusion tends to wash off on their camp followers too. Who can deny that the youth brigade count themselves among the most visible camp followers of the politicians.
There is no time better than youth to dream, idealise, aspire and achieve. With a burning desire to go the extra mile and achieve what their parents couldn’t, the youth put heart and mind in their mission.
Cruelly, life does not follow the film-like scripts. Not all dreams get fulfilled. Since the gap between job seekers and jobs in the market is glacial, many dreams remain unfulfilled. Like the immature romance, many dreams too get rocked. Once the dream of joining a good job and starting a meaningful life becomes a chimera, frustration sets in. The frustrated youth desperately look for an alternative career path.
Here comes political patronage as a charming option. It dangles the carrot and many unemployed youth, “cockroaches” in the words of a Supreme Court judge, aim for the carrot forgetting that the carrot always comes with a stick. Politicians dangle those carrots which for the unemployed youth appear too tempting to ignore.
This rather long premise is to help understand characters like Swatantra Bhardwaj, the goon who will now languish in jail for how long we don’t know. He bared his devilish side via a viral podcast. He claimed that he broke the skull of Sanjay Azad, father of student activist Nishu Azad, during the CJP’s Jantar Mantar protest and still remained scot-free because of his political connections. Bhardwaj could have kept quiet and possibly tried to undergo a behavioural change. But he didn’t. He spilled something which mercifully is still considered unpalatable to law-abiding citizens. The law, even if belatedly and at much prodding from a bunch of politicians and activists, finally caught up with this goon. The goon wrongly believed that his powerful “brothers” would always shield him.
The likes of Bhardwaj can be interesting study subjects for students of politics and sociology. Soon after Bhardwaj’s arrest, a video clip of a vlogger from Darbhanga in Bihar went viral. Speaking in chaste Maithili, the vlogger is heard telling parents of a particular caste to be careful while sending their children to Delhi for higher education. Bhardwaj who also comes from Darbhanga apparently joined the caravan of young Bihari students who reached and continue to reach Delhi to prepare for the Civil Services and other exams. We do not know if Bhardwaj ever sat for the UPSC exam. But we know that the boy from Darbhanga whose parents sent him to Delhi to try and become IAS/IPS ended up becoming a communal monster.
The internet is a great liberator. It has created an army of instant influencers, vloggers, commentators, political pundits and citizen journalists. Since Bhardwaj did not have a meaningful job in hand, he became an influencer. With no solid knowledge of Hinduism which keeps tolerance and acceptance among its cardinal principles, Bhardwaj perhaps started learning a lot of rubbish from the ‘WhatsApp university.”
The likes of Bhardwaj are doing a great disservice to his faith. My father, a high school teacher, had many Brahmin friends. He could give a run for the money to many pucca Maithil Brahmins when it came to speaking chaste Maithili. In fact, his closeness to the Brahmins and long association in the school system where Muslim teachers and students were always in a minority, had somehow ingrained a belief that Brahmin children were brilliant by birth. He would often cite examples of his Brahmin friends’ children excelling in studies. “Dekho us Mishraji/Jhaji ke beta ko, kaise top kiya hai aur achchi naukri mein gaya hai (Look at that son of Mishraji/Jhaji and he topped exams and secured a good job”), is how he would encourage us to emulate those “brilliant Brahmin boys.” Alas, much water has flowed down the Ganga, Gandak, Budhi Gandak and Bagmati since the days of my father going gaga over the achievements of many of his friends’ children.
Bhardwaj is a pawn in the dirty game of politics. He might have enjoyed some patronage, got a few crumbs while he walked down a dangerous path but ultimately fell victim to machinations he should have kept himself away from.
As a fellow Bihari and a native of Darbhanga, my heart goes out to the middle class parents who pawn jewellery and mortgage ancestral property to send their ladlas and ladlis (beloved sons and daughters) to a big city like Delhi to study hard and crack the tough UPSC exam but their wards ends up in wrong hands. The parents do not lack in showering love, affection and making sacrifices for their offspring. Where they lacked and continue to lack is what Ravish Kumar had pointed out over a decade ago.
They failed as parents in inculcating the values of love and compassion for fellow human beings. They failed to tell their children that co-existence is not a weakness. They bought and passed on the wrong notion that a multicultural India can be painted in one colour. They should have told their children that this country belongs to every valid citizen and India does not exclusively belong to one caste, community or party.
As the boy from Darbhanga has ruined his future because he mistook his so-called “closeness” to “bhais in politics” as a license to break laws, his case must serve as a lesson to all the parents out there.
Ravish Kumar’s warning still holds true.
(This article has been taken from Mohammed Wajihuddin’ social media post).