Estefania

See how quickly shit settles.

The anger and resentment of the past several weeks over a proposal to accord 60 per cent quota-based “reservations” at St Stephen’s College, for decades among India’s best and more enlightened institutions of higher learning, has ebbed. But this is the nature of news, and the nature of India.

As is now well known, anguished debates erupted in Indian media and Internet newsgroups, with several people accusing the acting head of “Mission College”, Valson Thampu—backed by the dons at Church of North India—of pulling a cheap trick to ramp up admission quotas for Christian students at Stephen’s.

Unaccountably, lower marks would be admissible for these students, and for many, lower marks still, as “Dalit” Christians—whatever that is—are evidently more welcome than non-Christian Dalits. Merit, screamed columns, is being sacrificed for blatant play of religion. Well-regarded writers and media professionals, among them historian Ramachandra Guha and NDTV’s managing editor Barkha Dutt, both alumni, wrote impassioned yet reasonable articles bemoaning the death of ideals at Stephen’s, about how it mustn’t be permitted to go the way of Aligarh Muslim University and Banaras Hindu University. It wasn’t just about Stephen’s, they and others argued, but about freethinking, encompassing institutions that are continually under attack by forces of religion and politics.

I agree entirely.

But who gives a shit?

I read History at Stephen’s and loved it. I also developed deep friendships, a love for arguments, greater love of books and the arts, a love for freedom of expression, low tolerance for imbecile teachers and self-righteous indignation, and abiding love for politically correct India—distinct from soothing phraseology that often masquerades as correctness. It’s entirely possible I would have loved history at another institution and developed similar attitudes at another institution. There are several such places not run by religion-coteries across India. But the point of Stephen’s was to exist, as so many alumni have recently written and voiced, in secular, cosmopolitan India even as we walked the main building with a cross on top.

Many of you will know what this meant. It meant writing “None” or “non-practicing” in the column marked “religion”. It meant knowing several people from caste-riddled Bihar proudly dropping their “caste names”—high and low—and taking on caste neutral names like Ajay Kumar and in one notable instance, Bharat Raxak. It meant meeting people from all parts of India practicing every imaginable religion; including nasally chanting to Gautam Buddha in Japanese, a practice that promised untold success and wealth; imbibing narcotic leaf, a practice that brought untold dreams; and none of the above.

Largely, the religion was Stephen’s, an egalitarian—not elitist—religion that frowned on flash and dressiness and naked display of political power, accepted without murmur in so many colleges in Delhi University. I, a non-practicing Hindu with a “Brahmin” name, met my eventual wife, a non-practicing Christian (who later married a Muslim), at Stephen’s, while acting in a play written by Woody Allen. We had both gained admission to Stephen’s on account of having done relatively well at school. We had both been grilled at our interviews by a forbidding panel comprising a Christian (William Rajpal, the principal), a Muslim (Mohammad Amin, who taught me medieval Indian history) and a Hindu (PS Dwivedi, who taught me Ancient Indian history and to smoke vile beedis). In my third year, I co-directed and performed in an avant-garde nativity play at the college chapel. I still have the cast-photo taken in the front of the chapel, with Valson Thampu in the middle of a bunch of multi-denominational (and yes, “multi-caste”) actors, sound-and-light folks, and an outstanding harpsichord player who handled the score.

We tried to be one, even Valson, who was by then gaining quite a reputation for sneaking around the residences, as “hostels” are called at Stephen’s, and gently extracting confessions of misdemenour from students and passing it on to higher authority—not god.

But as I said, we tried to be one. If this is elitism, so be it.

(In my case, the fact that Rajiv Gandhi had just become prime minister also had something to do with it: a brave new world would dawn, and the muck of history and mire of religion would be swept away in liberal-democratic flourish. Fat chance.)

As we knew before Stephen’s, at Stephen’s, and have known since Stephen’s, India isn’t marching to our tune. Many of us defied the reality of India even as we lived in it, either physically in India, or abroad—India of the mind. Our India.

As we also now know too well, flourishing GDP is not a guarantee for instant eradication of poverty and corruption. Too, it isn’t a guarantee for instant liberal thought, and banishment of notions of caste, which I’m sure many of you would agree, is the single greatest curse in India.

I now live in Goa, where I routinely see Roman Catholics-only matrimonial advertisements for “RC Brahmin” bachelors and spinsters. Elsewhere, a friend of mine, a cultured Muslim gentleman, was denied a match by fellow Muslims as his surname suggested he belonged to the “butcher” caste. In Chennai, I’m often asked what my “cost” is by Hindu ladies and gentlemen of both “high” and “low” caste. In Punjab last year, a Sikh gentleman called Bant Singh lost his limbs—all his limbs—because he protested his daughter’s rape by “upper caste Sikh” farmers. Mr Singh’s caste was “lower” than other Mr Singhs, and he is today a beacon for Dalit anger and Maoist planning in the Punjab. I’ll spare you the daily details in newspapers, newscasts and on the Internet.

So some of us are equally outraged by spiritually and politically venal creatures like Valson Thampu and his backers, and their blatant attempt to be pied pipers of empowerment, doing an expedient “VP Singh” at Stephen’s. It might fetch Valson—whom I recall as being a shifty-eyed person more taken with the cleanliness of the cassock than of the heart—the principal-ship at Stephen’s. It might cement for his patrons in the church establishment even greater political power, perhaps an eventual seat in the Rajya Sabha. Craven intellect never prevented the realisation of ambition.

We will continue to be outraged because people like Valson attack our belief in an India that ought to be, because they with impunity play games of religion cloaking these in notions of secularism and liberal thought. (See Valson’s article in The Times of India here.) People like Valson even brazen out public criticism of their policy from others of their ilk--though admittedly from the other side of the aisle, as it were--such as the principals of St Xavier's Colleges in Mumbai and Kolkata who have on network news said what a bad idea it is to trash both good education and good reputation.

People like Valson don’t give a shit.

They—and brokers like these of any religion—will do what they want within bounds of law-is-an-ass that is dictated by religion, underwritten by government, and permitted by society and politics. The curse at St Stephen’s is the curse of India.

But it was so good to dream. It still is.

That’s why being on the losing side is still the right side. And that’s why we must ensure the Valsons of the world have no place to hide.