Fighting back against meddling bullies is the patriotism India needs desperately

• Modern, ideologically oppressive states with pretensions to electoral democracy (imperial Britain, India today) rely on this tendency to douse, subvert and kill civil protest.

• The real issue (the surreptitious planting of five Hindutva-championing political appointees and under-qualified nominees in a teaching institutes governing body) was hijacked and muddled with nonsense (shrill TV debates about only the chairmans appointment; smart-sounding debate on privatisation; cleverly planted data for the data-loving Indian x lakh rupees spent per student, x number of strikes in the past years).

• Luckily, the students have now succeeded in clarifying that this is not just about the proposed chairman, Gajendra Chauhan, (who was reportedly chosen over others on the basis of a two-sentence resume of his acting career) but as much about other members whose credentials need equal scrutiny.

• As other political parties inevitably move in to scavenge in the media glare, the students are being accused of politicising an academic issue and stalling the holy work of education.

• We can all duck under the fuzz storm of elitism, even as Nobel laureate Amartya Sen (who we pony up in our national resume at every opportunity) warns us in vain about the endemic undermining of educational institutions.

Here are some relevant news items:^{credits to u-sr33}

• Fighting back against meddling bullies is the patriotism India needs desperately

• PHOTOS: Five controversial tweets by Ram Gopal Varma

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