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Showing posts from February, 2016

What is Ánti-National'

What happened in JNU a little over a week back, is unprecedented. In independent India, for decades institutions like the JNU have fostered a culture that promoted free thinking and speech, anti-establishment voices, protests and so on. The thought process largely was, that in a true democracy, the voice of dissent must be not only allowed, but encouraged. There are numerous instances in World history, where such strong voices forced the establish to change not only National policy but even political changes at National level. The movement against the US involvement in the Vietnam war, for instance, began among peace activists and leftist intellectuals on college campuses. Later this movement gained national prominence in 1965, after the United States began bombing North Vietnam in earnest. Closer - at home, the Anti-Hindi agitation of 1965 in Tamil Nadu, where the Congress led Government tried to enforce Hindi as a language in Tamil Nadu, ultimately resulted in significant