[This is a response to the recent political developments in the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. On 1nd March, 2013, Mudasir Kamran, a Kashmiri Muslim PhD scholar of the university was taken to the police station by the Proctor and some other professors of the university in pretext of a personal enmity between Mudasir and his erstwhile room-mate, where he was detained throughout the night without any written complaint being filed. Mudasir came back broken, asking why he was treated like a thief and a criminal. On 2nd March, he committed suicide. A section of the students since then has been demanding for the suspension of the Proctor, an apology from the university, and compensation to the family. The university administration dealt with this in a fiercely draconian manner. They refused to meet the students, they enforced police protection, they threatened a null semester, even a total shut-down of the university. They did not issue a single apology, they appeared in front of media and produced false versions of the events hand in glove with the police (that was subsequently refuted by the alleged eye-witnesses), they constituted a faculty-only Fact-Finding Committee without removing the accused from his administrative position. Rumours have been floated about the alleged homosexuality and the mental instability, thus inciting the cultural stereotype of social aberration and criminality. One unofficially Leftist section alleged that the students are spreading rumours and contacting their “Kashmiri friends” to ignite the fire of unrest in Kashmir (although there has been and still is no connection between student’s demand and what is happening in Kashmir). On 8th March, they finally succeeded in coercing the students enough to make them ask for a resumption of normalcy on the campus. The Vice-Chancellor has threatened that any political activity on the campus will result in a null semester. She has ensured that classes will commence under heavy ‘police protection’ on Monday. A section of the teachers who has refused to accept the responsibility for Mudasir’s unfortunate death has demanded for criminal cases to be filed against the protesting students. Since the protesting side has been majorly comprised of dalits, OBCs, minorities, this is an attempt from their side to allegorically (and satirically, in the tradition of Jonathan Swift who once wrote his 'modest proposal' that the British landed aristocracy simply eat Irish children as a way to end the problem of poverty in Ireland) express some of the horrors they have to go through to even stage a basic minimum democratic protest in a so-called elite university.]
[This text has been slightly edited and modified, mainly to allow for easier reading, and to correct a few syntactical slips, but the general tone and style, including capitalization and some archaisms have been maintained so that it is clear that this is a legitimate work of satire, written in the public interest. Kafila]
A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR PREVENTING THE DALITS, MINORITIES, AND IN GENERAL THE POOR AND THE MARGINALIZED FROM BEING A BURDEN ON THE GLORY OF THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY, HYDERABAD AND FOR MAKING THEM BENEFICIAL TO THE UNIVERSITY.
It is a melancholy object to any civilized student of the English and Foreign Languages University who walks through or live in the campus, when they see the streets, hostels, libraries, and eateries crowded with ‘uncivilized’ students, all spawns of reservations, quotas, minorities, spewing broken English that is enough to give a English teacher coronary thrombosis, full of dangerous political slogans and ideas, armed to teeth with primitive instruments such as drums, awfully ignorant of the charms of being wealthy and apolitical, entreating the civilized crowd to indulge in the primitive passions of ‘taking sides’, ‘protestation’, being ‘ethical’, and most seditiously, being ‘political’!
These half-humans, instead of paying for their education, taking it and leaving the premises, contaminate it with political behaviour, try to claim it to be their own, call for the forbidden fruit of ‘justice’. They are a nuisance for the peace and prosperity of the civilized students and teachers who reside and ‘work’ in this campus.
Take the recent death of this student, Mudasir Kamran, for example! We all know he was mentally so unstable that he committed suicide! Why did he do that? He had a very close relationship with another Muslim student (note, they are BOTH Muslims) for years. They shared rooms. If you think they were suspiciously close to each other, you are right! We all know, Muslims have always been homosexuals and pederasts! But unlike this other guy, Mudasir was from Kashmir, hence obviously a terrorist. When this guy, for whatever reasons, stopped interacting with Mudasir, Mudasir beat him ‘to pulp’ to silence him. That is when a few civilized non-Muslim non-Dalit people like Proctor Harish Vijra and Prof Maya Pundit took him to the police station to teach him a lesson in civility. In their shaken disbelief, they went and begged the police to make him human. Police, being the leading light of our civilizational progress, did not err in realizing what (they alleged) Mudasir was: a terrorist, a homosexual, a deranged psychopath, all of which is genetic to Kashmiri-s and other minorities. Even then—and I stress, even then—police did not teach him the lesson, since our state and our Hindu religion strictly forbids us to touch a heathen without bathing immediately, and it was wee hours in the night. Recognizing that his dirty game was over, Mudasir came back to the hostel and committed suicide. What did the uncivilized crowd do? They demanded an apology from the university! Why should the university apologize for trying to force some humanity into such devilish Muslims! They cried for the terrorist! They demanded that the Proctor should be suspended from his post for taking Mudasir to the police station, with the insinuation that going to police custody is in itself a traumatic experience! Why should the Proctor be suspended, when he did such a civilized thing?! Why should someone commit suicide when police takes them in?! We, the civilized people of India, do not commit suicide when police comes to us! We bribe them! Mudasir’s suicide is the ultimate proof that he was unfit to the civilized ambiance of our elite university.
Then the conspiracy went even further. As our learned ex-JNU leftists now residing in EFLU, both professors and students, have informed the government and the administration, the half-human, uncouth, uncivilized protesters who beat a primitively loud drum all day long accompanied by violent songs and slogans in various primitive vernacular languages contacted their fellow criminals in Kashmir and spread the rumor that Mudasir died in the hands of Indian police. Their purpose was explicit, clear, and bloody: to destroy the well-earned peace we, the civilized people of India has constructed in Kashmir and elsewhere, by telling lies! Although by every means our government should exterminate the entire population of that cancerous state, our government, in its glorious mercy, only shot a few, to instill some amount of civility once more into the beasts! Can you believe these ingrates! The money and planning we spent to make their barren hills into the alpine paradise, and they dare to go against our will!!
Thankfully, the English and Foreign Languages University has a group of civilized elites who are determined to run it with the iron grip of a ring-master. They first brought police in to outnumber the protestors; they refused to listen to any of the demands of the protesting animals; they worked day and night to find enough number of docile students and told them how they will close down the university or at least nullify the semester if they did not comply. And of course, we have a large number of well-bred, English-educated, properly upper-caste and high-middle class obedient student base who harbor a healthy scorn for the half-animal ‘political’ crowd. They came out and supported our Mother, our Vice Chancellor, Ms Sunaina Singh, and put an end to all sorts of protest. From Monday onwards, policemen will conduct half of the classes on the university, and teach them further lessons in obedience and patriotism.
As we can see from this narrowly-averted near-disaster, one cannot completely humanize these half-humans. They more one gives them, the more they want. Swayed by a man like that B R Ambedkar, out first government made the biggest mistake of making concessions to them, and we are still counting the bitter fruits of that levity! An once-released animal never comes back to the leash willingly; so, trying to tame them is no longer a solution. Yet to let them be is a terrible affront to our civilized manners, to our caste and class! It is altogether bleak and indeed maddening when one starts hunting for a solution to such a terrible problem.
After years to searching for radical solutions, I have finally found one that is cheap, practical, and efficient. This Mudasir fiasco has helped me to stumble upon the brilliance of it. I HEREBY PROPOSE FOR PUBLIC CONSIDERATION: LET US HARVEST THE TENDER AND YOUNG FLESH OF DALITS, MINORITIES, POORS, TRIBALS AND SUCH FROM THE AGE OF 18 to 30. I ALSO PROPOSE THAT UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES BECOME THE HALLOWED INSTITUTIONS (DESIGNED TO SERVE) THIS END. MAY THE DEEDS OF THE ADMINISTRATION SERVE US AS A GLORIOUS FIRST EXAMPLE.
I have presented this proposal to a renowned professor of this university who brandishes his philosophical wisdom like a proverbial Syed, and I am happy to inform you all that he concurred. He also gave a very interesting suggestion that I feel obliged to present to you. He proposed that since the work of a professor does not allow them the time for physical exertion, the high and laborious game of baiting students to commit suicide should be made a mandatory sport among professors. The professor who will be able to inflict the highest number of suicides shall be anointed ‘Professor of the Year’ and receive a daily ration of student flesh at a discounted rate.
And may it be noted, that, anybody who resists or opposes this proposal in the name of old-fashioned and uncouth ideals like politics and justice will be culled first.
WRITTEN BY A CONCERNED AND CONSCIENTIOUS STUDENT OF THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY, WHO WISHES TO REMAIN ANONYMOUS
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