They Singled Me Out, Taunted and Humiliated Me: How the Revolutionists at SAA shoved their Casteism and Sexism in my face.
This is a long rant about the nature of Brahmanism at SAA, so please be patient while reading it.
So, the Lockdown that SAA so victoriously started, has finally ended, which is a relief to me because my files have been stuck in the office for the last month and I urgently need them. After the locks were declared open around 12:30 am, the conversation given as a screenshot happened. In my half-sleepy and half-relieved state, I went to the School to check if there were any further plans of agitation. I commented after getting back to my hostel and then the targeting started.
The last comment there is specifically meant for me, as my partner Vruttant and I had threatened to open the SIS II lock with a stone because the students there were not listening to any opposing views despite many attempts by various student groups. For those who want to jump in about physical assault here, let me clear that no person was harmed or threatened at SIS. We only asked them to either open the lock or we would break it with a stone. This was also the day when I peacefully told the SAA protestors that I was not in solidarity with them, because I wholly expected them to listen- no arguments or threats there!
Back to tonight, knowing that the last msg was a personal taunt, I went to SAA to talk specifically to two people, Debjyoti and Keertana, as I thought they were getting on the verge of harassment and it just wasn’t right. Little did I know that I was in for another level of harassment!
At SAA, when I tried to talk to those two, the firebrand student leader of SAA, Agnes started asking me what right I had to talk to them individually and I was the one who was stupid enough to not get a “joke”. Of course, for them my stipend is a joke because otherwise they wouldn’t be playing around this way. Another vocal intellect, Sudipto, asked me why I didn’t understand the simple term- with immediate effect. When I told him that I had asked for a clarification and got a confusing answer in return, he laughed it off saying it was my fault again. At this, the crowd around started laughing and clapping. Talk about gender sensitivity, or any sensitivity for that matter. At this point I was feeling quite threatened and, as you may possibly get to see in the videos being taken (if they share them in Lockdown groups or otherwise), my getting angry only got more screams and shouts from people saying it was my fault. This was already humiliating as I was getting mocked and laughed at for “taking them seriously”. Because according to Anubhuti, “which office opens at night?”
At this point there were already few people taking videos and provoking me to talk about what “the big stone” meant or “why are you shouting”, or “who are you to come here and do this” and “you have the energy to come for this but not the Lockdown”. In this bombardment of humiliating and accusatory shouts, Vruttant- who had accompanied me there- got irritated by the jeers of multiple students and aghast at their collective insensitivity, and said “Why are you all ganging up on one person? Sab apna Brahmanvaad dikha rahe ho” and started video recording as defence. A female student even commented, “inko toh Brahmanvaad hi dikhta hai har jagah”.
While I was trying to tell them that what they were doing even now was harassment, I suddenly heard a commotion and saw that Vruttant was surrounded by a group that was pushing him to back off. According to them, he was shoving a camera into Anubhuti’s face when another student, Deepti came to her aid and pushed Vruttant. Vruttant later told me that Anubhuti had snatched his phone and he snatched it back when other women came to attack him, which is when he pushed them aside to get out of their group. I asked Deepti why she thought Anubhuti couldn’t protect herself and she said “I don’t want to discuss it further with you. You should hold him accountable”. Which I did, mind you! But that didn’t explain her actions. Nonetheless, I also asked Vruttant to not interfere as I could see he was getting irritated.
Making this an issue, the mob (which is what it has become now) was getting more accusatory and asking me to “get out of here” and telling me that I was “mentally unstable”. I tried to have a dialogue again and people started suddenly taking offence to the fact that Vruttant was still recording. As a retaliation of sorts, another student came and shoved a camera on my face. I took offence to this because no one came to defend me now, did they? I went and slapped at the shoulder of the guy to reprimand him (because I can’t get myself to slap anyone on the face) and hell broke loose. They started hurling at me for “hitting him” with Agnes constantly shoving me. Three guys even came up to Vruttant, flexed their hands and said “dikhau kya Brahmanvaad kaisa hota hai?” while a group of women stood around encircling the scene. In the meanwhile, when I asked people why no one came to my defence like they did for Anubhuti, whether their gender sensitivity didn’t see me as a woman now, Agnes shouted “you are a useless woman” which I took to be a highly problematic comment and urged her to say the same on my camera (which I then switched on) by tapping on her shoulder. Of course that was understood as a “shove” by her and started to physically attack me, hitting randomly and trying to drop my phone (and my specs, in the process), saying “you think I can’t fight you. How dare you shove me like that. I’ll show you” Thankfully a couple of boys came to separate her from me and Vruttant dragged me away. While doing that, the guy I had hit started shouting in my face “I’ll do it again, what will you do? Who are you to hit me?” As the situation was now turning violent, Vruttant told me to leave now and go back for my papers in the morning because clearly these guys were all acting like a mob against an individual and there was very little I could do.
The reason I just wrote this lengthy account is because I want people to see what these activists are like. For them, the matter of stipend is really a joke and they cannot even try and be sensitive. Not one person from the crowd of almost 15-20 people came and said sorry if the joke offended you. Or even spoke nicely to me for that matter (I will of course give credit to our councillor, Sourodeep, for trying to talk nicely while asking me to take Vruttant away from there, although he was quite feudal in his interaction with Vruttant for not being a student of SAA). Apart from that, most of the students were either just watching or laughing while 6-7 of them continuously humiliated me. For these people, telling them that you do not support them hurts them like its personal and as tonight proved, they don’t mind taking out their personal vendetta on a single person.
As a non-organisational student activist for almost a decade now, I know that being defensive about your politics can get blinding but never have I ever misbehaved with a fellow activist or student, or humiliated them, no matter what spectrum of political ideology they may belong to. It is shameful that the new activists (whether organisational or not) have no respect for differing opinions and underprivileged backgrounds.
As an ending, I would just like to say that the incident today has just reiterated all that I hated about the Left when I left it. It is not that the ideology is faulty or unrelatable, I still respect it. But it is Revolutionists like this who are a shame to the ideology and have failed it in this country. The privileged Bengalis and Malayalis who think they’ve been born with communism in their blood fail to understand ground reality and socialist politics whereby they oppress the Bahujans on a daily basis. To top it off, the eagerness of communists to make a non-issue an issue (eg: “why did you raise your voice”, “who are you?”, “why is she/he in our school when she/he is not a student of this school?” etc.) giving them the feeling of being rebellious is something that I have always loathed. It gives me a satisfaction that I have left this cloak of radicalism to follow a path that will truly emancipate me. In all these years at JNU, this is the first time I have faced a mob and received such sexist, casteist and ableist comments directly to my face, all because I wanted to confront those who were trying to harass me. Even then, I am still a privileged Bahujan who can argue fluently with them and write the account down as soon as it happened. There are so many at my School and University who face such harassment frequently from fellow students but don’t have the courage or confidence to fight back.
As a largely upper caste/class crowd, consideration for a student, especially one from the oppressed classes they claim to be fighting for, seems to be a distant reality. In their heated passion to play out their politics, they forget the hidden patriarchy and casteism which erupts through their behaviour. Their utterly humiliating attitude of singling out a woman, and laughing about not sharing their “privileged” sense of humour presented a very feudal and Brahmanical show of aggression.
With the SC/ST PoA Act being diluted, it seems like they are the first ones to use it to their benefit.
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