Rejoice, heathen! The nation has a new hero!
A superhero, a messiah, a demi-god!
A politician in the making! No wait, he said he was just a student.
You may scratch your head and wonder, student of what, pray?! Just what courses do they offer in that University?
Because you see, on the one hand, he is supposed to be a PhD student, but on the other, he says things like we are fighting to ensure that there is proper utilization of the state’s power and we are fighting against those who are destroying the Constitution.
And then the Left want to make him their poster boy. Students cried out lal salaam when he was released. And the ex-student union president’s name is Lenin.
Get the picture? It’s got red written all over it.
One of course, has to wonder as to how he attained this cult status.
As soon as the Home Minister said that strict action will be taken against antinational elements in the University, I thought uh oh, trouble! Sure enough, the government with its typical knee jerk reaction committed the cardinal sin: they arrested him.
We just don’t seem to realise that arresting/banning anybody/anything just does not solve the problem; in fact, the exact opposite may occur. The arrested/banned person/thing emerges stronger and fitter, with more followers and sympathisers than before. It is like a shot in the arm.
Who knew about him before his arrest?
The lawyers, in all their wisdom, added further ghee into the fire by taking law in their own hands.
Soon after his release, hordes of media persons descended on the scene to get a sound bite. As expected, the man from Headlines Today and the woman from NDTV sprang into action to get his ‘first interview after the release’.
And how well he obliged!
As soon as he was released, his friends made sure he received a hero’s welcome. He regaled them with jokes at the expense of the government, and they goaded him, egged him, cheered him and laughed uproariously at each of his punchlines. For them, it seemed, he was the messiah they were waiting for, all their miserable student lives.
Before you go don’t you guys have any studies to do and theses to submit?; they say naah…our professors have exempted us from such frivolous activities.
Now we also hear there is a bounty on his head. And, as if it were not enough, his movements will be monitored and the University will be watched through CCTVs.
If only…if only the government of the day had paid heed to the numerous complaints raised by observers in the past about the entry of unscrupulous elements in the University campus; all these events could have been forestalled.
Now, the horse has bolted, and we are faced with the ominous possibility of the revival of the red revolution.
But here’s the thing about all these revolutions.
It is easier to protest. It is easier to block roads and railway tracks. It is easier to poke fun at the prime minister of the day. It is easier to condemn the system.
But it is very difficult to govern.
The quality work that has been carried out by the government of the day is being overlooked due to this needless controversy. And that is a crying shame!
These same protestors, if and when they get a chance to run the state are likely to make a hash of it, as one anarchist is finding out the hard way in Delhi.
Anyway, the student messiah may or may not make it as a politician. All this might well turn out to be a flash in the pan.
But he needn’t worry. He can have a successful alternative career.
He can always appear on Kapil Sharma’s new comedy show. Not as a guest, but as one of the characters.
