Of protests and principles

Illustration/Uday Mohite

On Thursday, I googled "US campus protests." Google Search decided to issue a gentle warning, sorry mera matlab hai reminder. It showed me search results under the headline: April 2024 Israel-Hamas war protests.

Where's the surprise? Western governments, media and corporates have brought their full force to uphold the figmentary narrative of do-you-condemn Hamas or are you an anti-Semite? Disallowing any mention of Palestine. It is the myth the New York Times sought to protect by circulating a memo to restrict the use of the terms "genocide", "occupied territory", "ethnic cleansing" and even "refugee camps" because they're "emotional". The Objectivity Myth is the Invisibility Cloak of unjust power. Emotion is as much about how you don't say something, as how you do.

Eventually, such power undermines itself with too much pretence. Outside this circle of bad reason, thousands of Palestinian social media posts have educated people on history and reality on the ground, agitated emotions of anger, pain and deep compassion and organised students on nearly 100 US campuses into protest encampments. What a sight, to see young people of varied backgrounds come together in passionate and compassionate protest. Like with India's anti-CAA protests and farmer's protests earlier, we see here too a life-affirming heterogeneity where political articulation co-exists with poetic articulations of dance, prayer, friendship, singing and poetry and as importantly, where there is movement happens - the facts, emotion and ideas of the online space overflow into the offline space, coalescing and collectivising into political meaning.

The disproportionate use of armed police against peaceful student protests, violent arrests and draconian barring of students from campus for as much as a year is hardly surprising from the system which has funded a genocidal war in the billions of dollars. If you can support the killing of 13,000 children in Palestine, why wouldn't you oppress a few thousand of your own? We see the same repression of students here too. Many, like Umar Khalid and Gulshifa Fatima, are still in jail. Accha, so that's what it means, to be a global leader.

It was tremendously moving to watch the interview (since viral) of Lazaro Aguero, whose daughter was part of the protests at USC. He had come to support her because "I am against genocide. My family is against genocide. It does concern me… but if she was arrested fighting for Palestine, I will be the happiest daddy because she's doing the right thing."

Sorry not to sound like a national daily gent, but eventually it boils down to something that simple, doesn't it? Standing for what's right? The vortex of so-called pragmatism, convinces us that unjust power is the only thing of value. We become filled with doubt and self-doubt about the worth of principles and idealism. Now we confront what that untrammelled march of power and cynicism means for humanity - our humanity. The fight back is about insisting hope and transformation and goodness are indeed possible. The ways may be difficult, flawed, messy but that does not equal to doomed.

In our own elections we have seen the INC manifesto become a point of discussion, yaniki, an actual political debate, not mean-minded taunts and point-scoring. People are quick to dismiss such things as irrelevant to winning and losing. Why the hurry bro?.

Anyway. On Saturday morning I googled "US campus protests". Google returned the results to me with a different headline: April 2024 pro-Palestinian protests across US campuses.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com