The Baba Ramdev-JNU episode – Some Notes on Politics and Education

Here’s a quick observation on the Times Now Newshour Debate on barring Baba Ramdev from speaking at a conference at JNU.

Shehla Rashid, JNUSU vice president and AISA activist said that she and her comrades would not have physically stopped Ramdev and that this was a “civil way of protest” by writing a letter of opposition to the JNU administrators; that this was a case of “principled opposition” – i.e. the main reason for barring him from speaking at the conference was because of Ramdev’s regressive views and because they saw it as an attempt to thrust right leaning elements down the throats of JNU students.

The argument by Prasenjit Bose (ex-JNU, economist) went like this: it is an academic keynote address – you cant question a person who delivers such a lecture because they are supposed to have impeccable academic record (like “Nobel laureates”, in his words), so naturally the question of rebutting Ramdev’s views at the conference does not arise, thereby him being barred was legitimate. This is a very dangerous mindset – how can someone be considered beyond question, no matter how decorated their academic record may be? This culture of defining “scholarship” by degrees or how many papers they have presented in famous institutions or published in celebrated journals or how many awards they may have bagged is deplorable. There are so many of these scholars who can speak unimaginable bullshit, devoid of any factual or logical consistency. Surely all of us who were unfortunate enough to sit through these painstaking academic sessions must have experienced that. Most of us may be too conformist to admit that.