Selective outrage: of, by and for people like us

Let me begin with a few necessary disclaimers. A Bengali born and raised in Calcutta, I am not naturally given to anti-intellectualism, or even anti-elitism. I have never claimed that my crassness must enjoy as much social entitlement as somebody else’s refinement. I consider the Presidency College, where I had failed to get admission, a heritage institution worth every bit of fawning. And I have written several pieces considered critical of Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee in the last two years. Now that these facts are out of our way, let me cut to the chase: As long as our outrage remains selective, we will only keep getting outraged. Does not make sense? Let me try again.

On January 6, 2012, a group of alleged Trinamool Congress student wing members assaulted the principal and some professors inside Raiganj government college campus in Bengal’s Uttar Dinajpur district. The assailants, who carried Trinamool flags, pushed the principal down the stairs and ransacked his office. Later, his colleagues took out a procession to condemn the
attack.

The same month, the principal of Rampurhat College in Bengal’s Birbhum district had to be hospitalised when he fainted after members of Trinamool and Congress student unions gheraoed him for several hours. While the Trinamool leadership suggested that the principal “fake-fainted”, Banerjee’s cabinet colleague Firhad Hakim went on record to advise college principals to behave because “respect cannot be demanded but earned”.

A few weeks on, the principal of Majdia College in Bengal’s Nadia district was manhandled by members of Student Federation of India. On September 23, 2012, the principal of Jhargram Raj College in Bengal’s Paschim Medinipur district was beaten up by students who allegedly belonged to the student wing of the TMC. He ended up in hospital with serious eye injuries.

On face value, each of these incidents is far more damaging than the attack on Presidency College that left a few broken glass panes and fewer injured students. Yet, few, if any, outside Bengal remember these incidents because none of these made front page headlines in the national media and no national channel beamed live the teachers’ march from Raiganj.

Were these district colleges too remote for the national press? What was the media’s excuse when two Trinamool councillors led a violent mob into Jadavpur Vidyapith — a south Calcutta school next door to the university by the same name where Professor Malabika Sarkar, vice-chancellor of Presidency College, taught Paradise Lost until recently — and beat up the headmaster following a dispute over admissions? Evidently, none of these institutes compare with Presidency College — one of the few surviving symbols of Bengal’s intellectual pride — in history and eminence.

Those broken glass panes belonged to the historic Baker laboratory where Bengali scientists broke new ground more than five decades ago.

The fact that the national media is generously represented by Bengali editors also helped the outburst of national outrage. After all, could an alumnus of one of those district colleges hog the TV cameras during the silent march and ask chief minister Banerjee how dare outsiders barge into a college where they would not qualify for a chowkidar’s job?

Not that the attack on Presidency College was unprecedented. After all, among the grey-headed CPM protesters who denounced the Trinamool vandals were those who led a similar invasion at the same hallowed venue in 1966 at the height of the Naxalite movement. The Leftist “activists” led by Biman Bose, now chairman of the Left Front, set fire to the chemistry laboratory and vandalized university property.

 It is nobody’s case to undermine or ridicule the strong sentiments the latest attack on one of Calcutta’s most eminent institutions generated. Every bit of condemnation, however rhetorical, is justified. But should the identity of the victim (or the venue) and not the nature of assault determine the degree of our outrage?

Granted, that something so brazen could happen at Presidency College reflects the extent of lawlessness in lesser institutes, particularly outside Calcutta. Also, belated outrage in the national media at the growing violence in Bengal’s student politics is better than no outrage at all.

If only it could as proficiently hide our real concerns.

Remember the brutal Delhi bus gang rape that outraged the nation like probably nothing else in recent years? The on-camera protests that followed in Delhi and many other cities and towns underlined the insecurity of mostly the urban middle class.

Forget lakhs of women raped and assaulted across the hinterland, did we ever bother about the underclass in our big, bad cities? The domestic helps who routinely turn up battered; the vegetable vendors who are forced to pay hafta in ways only women can; or the homeless who are picked up in the night by cops and ruffians alike?

No, it took a middle class victim in a middle class situation at a middle class hour to shake us up. We were outraged because we realised it could happen to us also.

Our reaction to the Presidency College incident is no different. We were outraged that such anarchy could touch the college where our boys and girls study. Our shock would not be any less if, say, St Xaviers College, another prominent upper middle class Calcutta institute, was similarly targeted.

But just like our callousness to invisible and unreported rapes outside our class cocoons creates a culture of rape that eventually emboldens criminals to break class barriers, ignoring lawlessness in distant district colleges where our children would never study only invites the menace closer home and eventually to the institute we consider our very best. The more indifferent we are to violations that do not directly affect us, the more frequently the criminals hit us where it hurts.

It may be too late by the time it all begins to make sense.

The writer is an independent journalist based in Delhi.

Views expressed are personal.