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Thought watching Tejasvi Surya's pomp and bluster on Nidhi Razdan's show was bad. Till I saw dudebros on my feed saying "Dekho Surya ne ghar mein ghus ke maara" and terming what was essentially shrill and uninformed screaming a surgical strike 🤦(1/7)
I found the panel terribly informative. Demonstrates how to capture space and vitiate the atmosphere of civil debate&how to get away with anything by resorting to whataboutery. While this was true of more than one panelist, Surya stood out for a specific reason (2/7)
He argues that Young India calls a spade a spade unapologetically. This is why they call people presstitudes and urban naxals. The virulence that underlies this statement is awful, contemptible and also scary (3/7)
Basically if you're critical of the govt, its policies or even if you're critical of dogmatic and sometimes idiotic statements of the Indian right, you're deserving of verbal and physical threats and violence. "They will teach you in a language you understand". (4/7)
You're no holds barred, free for all to attack. I want to say he's off the mark and this is not true. But the resonance this view has is scary. To use the trite phrase, the josh is high. (5/7)
To me, it seems that this is likely to persist irrespective of the results of this election. Arguably there will be a difference in the degree of institutional support for this posn. But the process of repair and healing is likely to be long (6/7)
Thus, it has never been more important to protect our spaces for discussion, for informed, well-reasoned and more importantly respectful critique. Irrespective of whether this is at home, on social media or in university spaces. (7/7)
