Protest

 Noam Chomsky! Indeed a great name in the field of linguistics! In fact, it could be said that his generative-transformational approach changed multiple fields, from linguistics to cognitive psychology/ philosophy, and beyond.

I enjoy hugely his critique of America. In great works such as "Manufacturing Consent", "Responsibility of Intellectuals", he tears open the mask of American international goodwill, and shows the underlying capitalist greed for power, often couched in trenchant criticism (and terrible treatment) of other less(er) (powerful) countries, and thus he exposes the American grandstanding despite its essential (underlying) bullying. 

  Well, I can go on and on. In fact, when he had come to Hyderabad during my Ph.D. days, I had literally  satellited his itinerary for two days. Well, the reason for such remembrance of him today is the protest movement in the U.S.

With his very own Columbia State University in the lead, across university campuses in the U.S., the "encampment" movement is so strong that many universities had to cancel graduation fetes. Of course, many so-called liberal-democratic intellectuals hereabouts did not understand the long list of universities with encampments. Of course, in Indian universities, even if  the  chalk were to grate a little harsher on the now non-existing blackboards, these greats would have created a huge hangama!

That is not the tale today. Anyways, it never is worth it. The blog today is referring to the pro-Palestine, anti-Israel protests on American University campuses, especially because the entire chain of events and the western media response to it are indeed interesting and educative.

In Columbia, for example, like everywhere else, the mighty America sent its anti-riot, fully fitted squads to control the peacefully picketing students! Students have been imprisoned, thrown out of universities (surely at least out of campuses) for exercising their right to protest!

How is Chomsky related to it? Here I do not have the (scholarly) space required to state his position on Palestine. What I find interesting in this context is his attack on American doublespeak. The American intellectual/academic circles (though not as 'dumb' as here) as well as media are either downplaying the quite brutal police action, or even justifying it! 

Now! Remember the  "Bharat, tere tukade" type campus sit-in's in the JNU and other such supposedly intellectual campuses? Remember the reporting of the agitations by women players, the farmers, the 'dadis' in Shaheen Baug?

This very American media, like most of its European/the Western counterpart, was tearing apart the Indian treatment of the sit-in's even when they were literally causing inconveniences to millions. Nothing mattered actually, as these protests were a huge long stick to beat, nay, bludgeon India with, for especially the American, and in general, the Western, media. 

The fun is that now the great Western, especially American, media is stating that there exists some foreign interference behind the student unrest! Poor India! How (and how much) we were lambasted then, literally for months on end! We dared not mention then the 'invisible' foreign hand either! Hence my remembrance of Chomsky who so very brilliantly exposed the American doublespeak, browbeating the powerless, thus manufacturing consent! 

Pratima@"I have become tired of hypocrisy, stupidity, gross arbitrariness, and of our bowing, and scraping, dodging, and hair-splitting over words," says Karl Marx, whose birth anniversary was on May 5.