Distracted and disturbed by various debates on social media, I am reminded of a time when I was another undergraduate in Jadavpur University (yes yes Department of English!) and had similar interactions and conflicts in real life. We had Orkut and FB then, but those were not the days of timelines and public posts. I am horrified to see how young students of Presidency University and JU defend their casteist, classist and other prejudices publicly and instead of a healthy debate quickly turn around and abuse/block opposing voices. This horror made me think for a moment that we had no prejudice in our time, which is of course (again) bullshit. Now the fact is because we did not use social media to show exactly how pathetic we can be, we aired our prejudices privately. Hence, people who are prominent activists today turned up their noses at students from moffusils, and there was a clear division between tnyash and the non-tnyash. It took some people more than five years to reach a state of being that was not entirely exclusivist. Feminists would (out of hearing) call their friends from the North East racist slurs and then say this was done affectionately. I will not even go into how many people were outright homophobic. The reinvention of many such individuals as socially and politically conscious people who speak of human rights and human dignity and so on is interesting. Bengal is very interesting. I have never seen prejudice camouflaged so successfully in any other part of the world. Im glad social media is around because now people play their politics through innocuous statements in public view, as opposed to the baithak-khanas, chandimandaps and ledges of yore.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 15:20:59 +0000
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