Gen Z fights to save the nation from darkness

In a challenging environment, the struggle for education shines as a beacon of hope for the entire nation.

What will we leave for the coming generations?

The entire childhood was spent reading Panchatantra stories and imbibing the values they tried to teach us.

Warned against foolishness, like the story of the swan and the turtle. Intelligence prevails over strength, like the story of the lion and the rabbit. A false image built on lies is not permanent, like the story of the blue jackal. Indian knowledge tradition has always taught to question, not to fear questions. Even if you have to disobey your guru to support the truth, do not hesitate. Do not fear anyone for the truth—not the guru, not the mantra, not the people, not even the Vedas. Do not abandon the truth just because someone powerful tells you to. When I read this in Hazari Prasad Dwivedi's novel 'Banabhatta Ki Atmakatha', I wondered when we started discarding criticism and knowledge from our tradition and began blind devotion?

Who taught us to fear and not question? The more you bow, the further you go? How did Indian society continuously descend into the deep well of lies, false images, and ignorance? If the answer is not in India's education system, then where is it?

Have you seen the video of people drinking water from air conditioners thinking it's nectar? Or have you seen the claims that cow urine cures cancer? Have you watched reels of people asking ridiculous questions in the sermons of babas and receiving equally absurd answers from the baba? Have you heard the argument from other devotees that it was a blessing for those who died in the stampede at the babas' court?

How did the people of my country become so helpless and powerless? Has their faith in education completely vanished? Is it that they feel education is a difficult path that cannot provide a decent livelihood, social security, healthcare, and safe, clean food and air? Have we Indians become so disillusioned with our system that we have surrendered, crushed our citizenship and pride, and started making choices that only reflect anger and helplessness? As if nothing can be done, nothing can change, as if everything is in the hands of the stars, and the stars are in turmoil. In a famous play by Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Cassius says to Brutus, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.’

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

We were angry with ourselves, we burned our entire house, we made choices that reinforced a sense of helplessness within us.

Faith and devotion are in the DNA of Indian society; no one can remove them. But the helplessness and despair given to us by our choices have gradually turned a large section into blind devotees and superstitious people. As a result, those whose lives should have been made easier by education and social security have lost faith in education. A large number of government schools are closing, higher education is becoming more expensive, papers are leaking, recruitments are not being announced, results are not coming, vacancies are not being filled, there are no permanent jobs, there is no sense of security in jobs, a soldier has been made helpless by being turned into an Agniveer.

Everything that could raise the standard of living has been swallowed by widespread corruption.

We are seeing big posters, while a bridge is collapsing over there.

We are seeing statues, while a train is derailing over there.

We are seeing temples, while the doors of the temples of education are closing for the common man.

In the past decade, we have seen the education system fail as a system that could instill hope in everyone for a better life. If a student cannot stand in a university and demand accountability for timely exams, timely results, and arbitrary fee hikes, let alone demand clean water, what hope will remain for them?

You might have something to lose. A position, a job, an opportunity, a favour, a name in 'their' good books, a Rajya Sabha seat, the possibility of a judge's chair, the hope of a big position after leaving the judge's chair. This young generation has nothing to lose.

Those who are now 12, 15, or 17 years old, you have already taken away their history. What do they care about the forced cockfights of historical figures? Their textbooks have been tampered with as much as your WhatsApp groups have tampered with their parents.

Now these children only have their present in their hands. The more vigorously and promptly they fight for education in their present, the brighter the future of this country will be. We probably did not want to leave them a legacy of foolishness, but our complete surrender to foolishness has brought them to the brink where there is no path left but struggle. They are returning to Gandhi's Satyagraha, walking with Ahimsa, to awaken unethical powers. They have nothing to lose. They have to break the Chakravyuh created by our generation.