“Humiliation is not merely an event; it is an experience that shapes the very structure of selfhood for the oppressed.” – Gopal Guru, Cracked Mirror
My life is a spectacle that only begins and it ends only in imagination but in reality it is never lived as if I am a ghost of Sisyphus condemned to only begin and never finish.
Beginning anything that is emancipatory for any society is no easy task and as I fight to reclaim dignity for myself and my people, it's not so easy to decide where to begin my story. As a young boy studying in a jesuit institution, my schooling was quite extraordinary from that of a large section of Indians. I was privileged to have been a part of this institution. Yet I lacked the social and cultural capital to make the best use of it. My father, a migrant to Delhi in a nearby village was first generation learner to pursue higher education and that too in Hindi and taking all the pain and hardship in his meagre income he chose to give me the best education possible, he took out a loan and bought for me a Intel Pentium 4 Personal Computer. During that time Wikipedia was newly launched and I was quick to explore it as a fifth grader. Once my English teacher gave my class an assignment for an English elocution competition and asked us to choose an English poem on our own, which was then to be recited in front of the whole class. At the time, I knew little about literature and its nuances, but my curiosity while browsing the internet led me to discover Sir Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott, which deeply fascinated me. A lyrical 19th Century ballad that tells the tragic story of Elaine of Astolat, a young noblewoman stranded in a tower up the river from Camelot. But I didn't know that I will be humiliated in from of the whole class by my teacher for choosing such a poem at such a young age without knowing the nuances of literature (How, I would have know all this being the son of a migrant from Hindi speaking belt of India is beyond my comprehension).
It was only later that I would come to know about Literary theory and Literature's role in class domination and its potential as a vehicle of resistance. I later taught myself Roland Barthes, Pierre Macherey along with institutional help from St Xaviers College Autonomous Mumbai.
It was there that I turned my humiliation into a radical rage and wrote a poem Listen Mr Xavier's Don based on the inspiration I sought from John Agard's poem Listen Mr. Oxford Don. It was really fascinating to witness myself turning my pain inside out into expressions of rage and articulation while also suffering from the melancholy of an artist’s fate since my childhood. I always had it difficult for me to make sense of this condition of my mind which made me wander a lot and I realised my fate lies in submitting myself to the study of society and its evils committed on people like me and I dedicated myself to studying Sociology but that melancholy of a wandering artists mind made me suffer more and my intellectual gift turned into an existential curse which I was too young to have understood. I battled it nonetheless and cleared Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Master’s Program in Sociology twice and left it midway because of reasons which were beyond my capacity to conquer.
Later I realised my calling is sociology and it not only helps me become a better person, it eases my existential pain stemming out from my Intellectual curiosity as a person of an oppressed identity. As the Society and State chose to ‘Discipline’ and ‘Punish’ me in a Foucauldian sense.
I was first selected in CSSS MA Sociology in 2020 COVID year and being at home without any laptop made my life worse. At that time I didn't even have a separate room to attend my classes without distractions especially when in a pandemic everyone was forced to be at home. That was a tough time and I battled through it but my existential curse didn't let me finish it. At the same time I was also awarded an admission in MA Social Anthropology at SOAS but without any funding. My deepest desire to engage with Sociology through global exposure was shattered. After that I spent my time wandering again, aimlessly, as if everything was futile. Then with debilitating energy I once again applied to JNU CSSS in 2023 and I tried once again to ease my existential pain but all I got in return from the campus was ridicule, isolation and boycott. At that time around I was also writing on my blog notsomeritorios.com and my writing invited a lot of backlash especially from the left intelligentsia of the campus. I was always a target because I was working all alone, that is to say I was not affiliated with any political party working in the campus. And this was a statement I was making because I had seen very closely all these parties and they had nothing meaningful to offer for a person like me who believes in the praxis of epistemic warfare. My personal troubles only accentuated my addiction which made things worse for me. One important reason behind my aggression and abusive tongue, I can't share publically due to various reasons that led me into decay and I missed my exams due to the strange state of mind I was in. So much for the mental health support conferences and liberal charades at campus. Post-Spivak incident, despite everyone knowing me on the campus, no one – especially the faculty – ever reached out to me while I was being attacked by the ganglords of leftist academia. From being called misogynist to Islamophobic no one let me defend my case. My agency to define myself was robbed off me and I was epistemically silenced while many people in academia used me to further their career writing articles and papers in journals, no one reached out to me and I was left all alone to be fended for by my family. Even my class (CSSS 2023-25) was against me because I was critical of the agency Feminism uses to demonize the lower castes and debilitate them both academically and psychologically.
One of my classmates, a SFI CC member, even exhorted everyone to file a complaint against me and that she will help them in any manner possible to hunt me down. This was what the Left is saying right now about ABVP, isolate, boycott and defeat in plain action.
Even BAPSA never extended full public support to me, and when I asked why, they responded, “Since you weren’t a member of BAPSA, we can’t support you.” This is what BAPSA’s politics has become. Let me be very straight that this same BAPSA would have made career out of me had I committed suicide.
What can be said about DSF, whose president attends Coldplay’s concert worth ₹20,000 ticket and then demands donations from the JNU populace in the name of political activism against BJP.
In short, I have been socially boycotted in JNU campus for a long time and the mental toll it takes me is beyond my capacity to process and I am having a tough time.
Humiliation is not merely an event; it is an experience that shapes the very structure of selfhood for the oppressed.