I can't forget that day. Seven VIKRAM Tempos, Two Jeeps, and more than two thousand cycles with students riding, who belonged to eight different academic institutions, assembled at Moti Jheel, near the DM's Office. We didn't have funds to make a stage, but we did manage to arrange for a mic and speaker. We had banners, posters, templates to show our protest. Amidst that crowd of about two-three thousand people, I climbed to the roof of the Tempo that had the mic, in order to address the crowd. I don't remember what I said, but I do remember that major newspapers like TOI, Dainik Jagaran and Asian Age quoted me to having said the youth is on fire and that it's high time that engineers and doctors should move into active politics.
I was highly enthralled by the success of the protest. We handed a letter addressed to the PM, to the DM, Kanpur and came back satiated. I hardly realized that this agitation would spring up so much fire.
Five days later, I was out with close friends for dinner, when I started getting calls from NDTV, TOI, Dainik Jagaran and Sahara News about the next move of the Kanpur students. I said, nothing has been planned. To my utter surprise they asked me my comments on the announced Hunger Strike at IIT Kanpur to be commenced next day. I was taken aback. This wasn't the right time for a hunger strike. I could very well foresee that the protests are going to become aggressive and losing direction. With almost no political support and an opportunist media backing us, there was no future of this struggle. But then, I didn't have any alternative also. I didn't stop the hunger strike from happening. But I stepped down from the protest.
A new group of students had already formed an organized union against reservation. I was happy with the development, but a little unsure about the future. I preferred to be an onlooker. It was then that I started interacting with all those who supported the protest. To my utter dismay, I found that most of them belonged to upper castes, including me, and the protest wasn't against the policy of reservation but against the rise of the underdogs. I felt so ashamed of myself for leading a huge crowd which shamelessly blamed all the backward classes to have maligned the standards of education and jobs. I could very well see the scornful statement underlying all these comments, "Don't let these backwards rise....they'll eat up our space..."
Oh god !!! How could I not understand the motives of all those who were supporting me. And today when the Supreme Court puts a stay order on the implementation of the reservation thing, I find some relief in the fact that at least, SC has the same logic that I professed. That reservation is not the right way to uplift the backward classes. We need to try better means.
I wish some general class people do realize that the backward classes need an upliftment, and if we don't provide them alternative ways of upliftment, we stand no right to protest against reservation.
