ou can walk out of jail, badmouth the PM and be hailed as a crusader: Kanhaiya, this is the glory of India by Bikram Vohra

You can walk out of jail, badmouth the PM and be hailed as a crusader: Kanhaiya, this is the glory of India by Bikram Vohra Mar 4, 2016 12:44 IST On 8 February, 2016 I did not know who Kanhaiya Kumar was and what he was engaged in. He was not even an incoming blip on my radar. On 4 March, 2016, I don’t particularly want to know. Let him go back into anonymity. Do whatever he wishes to without his face being plastered all over the media. I am up to here with that overused set of pictures slamming into my life if I pick up a paper, switch on a TV, go to a website. Enough already! That’s the beauty of, the glory of India… You can come out of jail and badmouth the Prime Minister and rabble rouse hours later and go home for lunch to be garlanded as a crusader. Not even in America. By now the FBI and Homeland Security would have begun tracking you. Not even United Kingdom where MI5 and 6 and 7 would have opened a file on the guy. And we dare talk of freedom being in peril? Not only does he get to slag of the Indian Prime Minister but also now is the guide, mentor and philosopher to the nation. His words are golden and he reaps in mountains of publicity… The media cannot get enough of that scrunched up expression of zeal. Do we need this? An exhausting diet of shrill from a kid who should be in class? Now he can go round the country giving his fiery speeches, appear on talk shows, become rich, for doing absolutely nothing. He is not a celebrity or an icon or someone I particularly want my children or their children to emulate. That he has been thrust into a sort of absurd greatness and been given a major boost is more an exercise in media's morality (or lack of it) where hellions are made into heroes and nobodies are consecrated as symbols of the democratic endeavor. He leaves me stone cold. And the only reason I am prattling upon about it is in the hope that there will be enough folks out there who will say, yes, stop already, bahuth ho gaya. He did not change the world for the better. He did not find a cure for AIDS or cancer. He did not even save anyone from a stormy sea or a burning building, no act of even mini-heroism. He has not enhanced the arts, excelled in sport, made a breakthrough in science or engaged in any travail of value. Not even a commercial enterprise where he got people jobs and created an empire. Absolutely nothing of worth and yet he is the most famous face in the country. Good luck to him if he can exploit the system to his advantage but I don’t want to know anything more about his thoughts or his leanings or his opinion on anything. He is just not that important and it is time we stopped anointing him as some sort of a messiah. I am not interested in his philosophy or his leftist leanings or whether or not he has signed a pledge to be a good boy. I don’t want to see that face every morning. Kanhaiya Kumar at JNU after his release on bail. PTI Kanhaiya Kumar at JNU after his release on bail. PTI He is just a student in a liberal university who has yet to start earning a living and paying his bills. A dependent. That his release on bail is being seen as some triumphant victory borders on the absurd and, frankly, I don’t even want to read about that or view it on TV. You want to dance in celebration, go ahead, so did the dervishes and the witches of Macbeth. Our modern media is often slagged off for ignoring a story and down playing it. If ever there was a report worthy of being downplayed (or not played at all) this is it. Send it back to oblivion and let’s get on with life. By that token I don’t give a damn whether he is poor or lives in a castle by the sea, what he ate for dinner or what his experiences in jail were. There are over 400,000 people in Indian jails and 68 percent of them are undertrials so really it is a no-brainer. I can almost visualize this poster child for the student power vote bank being lifted up on high and flung into the higher rungs of political power… More’s the pity. Believe me, somewhere here in this judgement is a kernel of the future of this JNU issue. It has not gone away and there will be another chapter. The grant of bail is merely a breather. Till the next round, the less profile Mr Kumar shows the better for him. No one is your friend, mate. They will use you and abuse you and walk away. Just be sure you do not do the same