What Young India Really Wants?

I do not exactly know how much time Chetan sir took for the research of his book “what young India wants?” but it just took me the past five days to know what the youngsters want. The progress of my surrounding in these days were just too fast to have been noted. With a blink of an eye, everything was and as I should say ‘is’ changing around me. If you are vigilant you can notice it… or otherwise tough-luck!

The first few months in my college was the most amusing days I ever had. Actually hardly did I notice that I was in a college. Because it was no different than a school that I had been to till date. The classes that begin at sharp time, the attendance, the teachers who came on time, the students who came before them, the normal classes and above all the home works without which we would have the privilege to stand outside the class. Nothing had changed and so hadn’t we. As days passed the tables began turning and slowly things took their inevitable course of change.

Students skipped classes often, came after the teachers and amidst these hosh-posh there was, a confused me. Wondering why people skipped classes, why they came late, why they had so little respect for everyone around… and so on went my queries. And the past few days has been evidently disturbing and frightening as well. A female student was molested in the men’s hostel. As I hardly come out of my room it isn’t surprising that I knew it only two days later, yes something that took place few meters away from my hostel was known so late not only by me but also few more cut off students.

Then it began….the blizzard of events what many of us never had seen before. Protests, loud distressing cries of slogans, parades through the once calm roads, media poking their nose as much as they could to dig up more, police (as they claim to make things better) and the authorities who were suddenly shocked and vulnerable all at once. The calm airs of the college vanished, the clean walls got filled with posters and freshers like me went totally into a traumatizing situation. Because our heaven was trampled by monsters and the eyes around us were full of sheer sense of vengeance.

The newspapers tarnished the image of the college as much as they could and came up with new dig-ups every single day, reading which I started receiving phone calls by people who cared, their voice upset and their ears stuck to the phones only to know that all was well.

The college in a whole became an alien place and issues went out of hand and turned into a national one. At last a decision was made…. ‘stopping girls and strangers entering the men’s hostels’.

Few days ago the struggle and strikes were to ensure justice to be delivered to the girl but now it is on the newly made rules that as they say are denying them freedom. “We want freedom, we want gender equality” when the whole of the youngsters is shouting it aloud, why burn heads and think about ‘What young India wants?’

The young and latest India wants freedom… I don’t exactly know what they mean by that but they want it anyhow, by hook or by crook. It is not the kind of freedom that once the father of the nation earned for each and every one of the Indians, but this is the type of freedom that comes by the absence of rules, regulations and any such sort of barriers that may stop these hot blooded creatures from breaking free.

When people get something, they are greedy for more. A universal truth that I and many of us are witnessing right now. People do not know what they are demanding at the rush of the adrenaline flowing abundantly in their bloods. Say no to everything that is told, turn blank faces at everyone who thinks for better and turn deaf ears at people who come forward to correct and prevent blunders as such from happening. Shouting a slogan, calling for people to join and mass parade will not get anyone anywhere unless it is for a good cause. Freedom, now I myself am unsure of what it means, because according to the latest dictionaries written by my own mates it means doing what we please. And a major point that they raise is ‘we are staying in a democratic country where we have rights.’ Yes you have rights a lot of it and also the right to claim it but never at the stake of your own safety and security.

Where am I? I wonder a lot these days… because I have started feeling that I have accidentally stepped into a European nation which got recently located inside my college. People who are thirsty to adopt the western culture and are running madly after it not even sure of what they want in reality. Cultures, practices and the sacred nature of the society is being stamped by the dirty feet of people who feel themselves as Indians no more.

As their new demands are concerned it says that girls must be allowed to enter boy’s hostel and vice-versa. If that is the case there is only a single question I want to raise being a concerned occupant of the hostel which is: “Why to have two different hostels and why not a single mixed one as in an ‘auberge de jeunesse’ in simple French.” That would satisfy all the needs I suppose, freedom, equality and all other stunning demands.  

People have supposedly lost their minds and are totally out of it now, as one side of the students are concerned about their privacy being challenged in open, the other hand is holding up flags and marching towards the goal of equality and the freedom to be free.

When the one side of my college, the foreigners are wearing salwars, sticking bindi on their foreheads and trying to adopt the ethnicity and culture of India while we the natives are running after something that was never ours and won’t be ever. A total alien concept of west that would not suit us however hard we try. Freedom is not breaking away always and equality is not always doing all that the others do

It has its own definitions and boundaries as far as I and my thinking is concerned. And we are not just an individual, our words reflect our bring-up, our actions portray our parents and us as a whole represent the place we come from. It was like this decades ago and would undoubtedly continue to be. The voices raised for justice will have supporters but voices raised solely for personal interest and comfort would not be.

As the cliché college atmosphere has set in in my campus too, all I want is to have that tranquility of the school days I enjoyed in the past or in the initial days in this institution to come back.

Dear youngsters, please look at yourself in the mirror and tell me whether you see blonde hair, blue eyes and pale white colored skin or ebony black hair, wheatish tinted skin and a pair of brown eyes. If you see the former, continue your pursuits and don’t turn back, but in any case you see the latter please stop being someone you are not, stop doing acts that do not belong to you. Years before one man had fought to free India from a colonized state but I am uncertain as to who will fight for the freedom of colonized minds.

Ask yourself simple questions one by one, Who am I? Where am I? and What am I doing?

If you have sound brains, you would surely receive the correct answers. Take time, take a deep breath and do it before we turn into someone else as a community.