STOP THE TANK : A BATTLE TANK, DEVOID OF ALL ITS FITMENTS KEPT AS A SOUVENIR AT JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY

FROM HERE AND THERE…….
Good Evening India….

This was a left hand side write up on the Editorial page of the Indian Express of 25th July which I reproduce below, author un-named. I think the heads, I mean the Intellectual, cognitive capabilities and the psychology of the thinking process of Seema Chisti and her editors requires to be examined. By cognitive I mean Psychological processes involved in acquisition and understanding of knowledge, formation of beliefs and attitudes, and decision making and problem solving. 

I think its time Seema Chisti and her cohorts in the IE, should be required to read Frank Dikötter’s masterpiece of historical investigation and be forever reminded of their complicity in one of the 20th century’s most criminal regimes. Frank Dikötter has helped throw back the shroud on this period of monumental, man-made catastrophe. With both narrative vigour and scholarly rigour, Mao's Great Famine documents how Mao Zedong's impetuosity was the demise of tens of millions of ordinary Chinese who perished unnecessarily in this spasm of revolutionary extremism.' - Orville Schell, former Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.

With the likes of these people at the helm of propaganda, who knows, we may be heading for such brutalities in another guise. It is time the citizens of this country woke up and paid put to these pseudo seculars, government basher pseudo intellectuals who garnish a loin of roast pork with cream and sugar icing and making it an art of shoving it down our throats.

Yes, this is intellectual Debauchery to its extremes.
It's at times good to air one’s views, it gets off your chest once and for all stuff that has come to mind that has a significance with how you think and your views and perceptions of life. It's also subliminally how you are as a person too, and that is probably the part or element of you that materialises in what you say and possibly what you'd rather keep to yourself, even though there's nothing wrong with giving that information out, it's just that it can throw signals about you that could be deemed negative, but that's the way it is.

Facebook and to some extent Twitter and others are the most popular areas of voicing one's opinion publicly, rants can include birthday bashes, general events, personal gripes, world and political comments, views on society at large, our work, or something we feel we can boast about to try and elevate our status somewhat, alternatively we can ramble on about something not so grand and try to solicit sympathy, there are other endless permutations linked to why we do things.

However when it comes to a National news paper of repute (hic!), it becomes more important to be more rational and neutral in the thinking which goes into editorials. After all news papers are read by scores of citizens Nationwide, and one way or the other there is always a subtle conditioning of perceptions, which always must be kept in mind.

Therefore I personally feel news papers should stick to reporting news and not sitting in judgement and moralising on issues.
Today, in our short lived throwaway society of cheap morals, high levels of mental health problems and instability, all avenues are open which we may take because it gives us some kudos or pleasure (and the type of pleasure is subjective here) in stating our case, it’s usually because we can and it's available and more open than being cloistered in a closed loop of internal congregants. However news papers like the likes of the IE and their Chief Editors like the Communistic government bashing Seema Chisti, take this Intellectual Debauchery to ridiculous extents.

If you read this statement below
“The university ought to be a safe haven for the freedom of thought where nothing except knowledge is sacred, and where questions are far more important than easy answers. The tank would be a conversation-stopper”. Further goes on to state, “That's serious stopping power, especially in a context in which public debate is already being conditioned by a pervasive militarisation, which romanticises symbols like flags and uniforms and demonises the critical faculty as anti-national”.
Nothing can be more Moronic.

There are nut cases galore in the domain of paid news but this takes the cake.

I reproduce the editorial from the IE.

QUOTE....

STOP THE TANK

JNU's VC peddles a dangerous idea. University must not
succumb to pervasive militarisation that threatens debate

M JAGADESH KUMAR, VICE-CHANCELLOR of Jawaharlal Nehru University,
has sought the help of General V.K. Singh to have an army tank parked on campus, to remind students of the sacrifices soldiers make. Would he like the tank to be armed with live ammunition to give the reminder additional force? Per formative, self-congratulatory patriotism remains the last refuge of the discredited, but the VC may well discover that a tank is poor armour against the objections of those who still remember that a university campus is an inappropriate venue for the valorisation of militarism.

Of course, the men and women in uniform deserve our respect and gratitude. But this should not be symbolically expressed at institutions of learning. Commemorative military hardware is displayed at institutions and in prominent places in several Indian cities, to remind citizens of the role of the military. That is where the tank belongs, in public spaces, not on campus, where it can only be a minatory presence attenuating debate.

Not so long ago, JNU was the epicentre of the battle over nationalism, and it would now seem that having run out of arguments, the VC wants to trundle in a tank as the last word. 

That's serious stopping power, especially in a context in which public debate is already being conditioned by a pervasive militarisation, which romanticises symbols like flags and uniforms and demonises the critical faculty as anti-national. Kumar asked for his tank at the first ever celebration of Kargil Vijay Diwas at JNU, which was attended by two NDA ministers. Two of the speakers at the function spoke in self-congratulatory tones on the "capture" of JNU, and looked forward to similar occupations of Jadhavpur University and Hyderabad Central University. These institutions, where the question of nationalism was debated energetically, stand on Indian Territory. The notion of occupying or capturing them is simply bizarre.

It is also sobering. The last time heavy armour figured prominently in campus life in South Asia was in East Pakistan on the night of March 25, 1971. General Yahya Khan's tanks rolled into Dhaka University as part of Operation Searchlight, beginning a massacre of intellectuals. Speaking of tanks on campus naturally recalls that terrible memory. The installation of a tank on an Indian campus would not snuff out the freedom to think quite as suddenly, but it would have an unhealthy effect on academic thought. Armour and academia just don't belong together.

UNQUOTE.....
Amen…..