Desensitisation of the average Indian student with the Palestinians’ occupation directly points at disconnect and overall systematic erasure towards our own history and struggle against colonialism.
The world has, as time has passed, seen multiple phases of fascism. Despite these phases, all fascists around the world have had common structure, common fundamentals, and common aesthetics of politics that they follow. The messaging, symbolism, myths, and now even memes, to manipulate emotions, shape political obedience, and instil some mindless belief into people’s heads, has been the ‘trick’ for a while. The right-wing parties have also, historically, just been better at spreading their propaganda and having it reach the grassroots than the left. The message from the Palestinian land and its people has been broken, distorted, presented as a religious war, a terror attempt: all logic and all history as if erased from the minds of people. Diplomatic world views and neutral stances are taken seriously even as Gazans bring us the footage of the genocide waged on them. The world is a witness to this all: the killing of innocent kids, shooting people looking for aid, the spread of starvation and disease, a whole second Nakba live-streamed to the world. The propaganda and myths run so deep that, since the last two years, Palestinians have struggled to breach normality.
The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was the means through which British Imperialism could approve of a Zionist colonial project of establishing Jewish people’s ‘homeland’ in Palestine. Israel is not a country but a colonial settlement based on the displacement of Palestinians by Western imperialists. On 7 October 2023, the prisoners of the concentration camp in Gaza carried out a violent revolt against the Israelis, which was labelled as an act of terror, one that Israelis have been ‘defending themselves’ from over the last two years. If a parallel were to be drawn to India in 1925, 100 years from now, when the country and its citizens were living under colonialism, their land seized, labourers receiving crumbs, no job security, and extreme oppression from their landlords and the British, we would recall that, during that period, members of the HRA planned and executed the Kakori Train Robbery. Young revolutionaries like Chandra Shekhar Azad, Ram Prasad Bismil, Asfaqulla Khan participated in this and inspired others like Bhagat Singh to join HSRA as well. Bhagat Singh went on to assassinate a police officer and throw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly. These were our revolutionaries, who violently resisted the colonisers for our liberation. Can using violence to fight for the freedom of one’s own country, and against violence, humiliation, and blockade by imperialists, be termed terrorism? Because if yes, then our revolutionaries would also be deemed terrorists.
Outside the Kiran Nadar Museum of Arts in Delhi, a few months back, a blackboard was set up, inspired by the art exhibit in the museum. I sat there for a while and watched the guard in the mall erase all graffiti of “Free Palestine”, all symbols of resistance, off this board. On asking why he would do that, he simply replied, saying that he cannot support terrorist nations, and it is his personal responsibility to clean the board in this case.
Why are we, as Indians, so desensitised to the sufferings of Palestinians? How is it that, to us, the happenings of 7 October 2023 are a greater act of terrorism than eight whole decades of violent oppression by the colonial settlement of Israel on Palestinians? This doesn’t just show our gradual disconnect with the world and humanity, but also with our own history and struggle.
The reason for unempathetic responses to struggles that were once ours is also systematic erasure of revolutionary and leftist history in our universities: saffronisation of syllabi starting with kids as young as fourteen, and growing communalism in university spaces, society, and even our own families. Not just this, but also erasure of critical thinking and nuance, discouragement of subjectivity even in entrance exams, makes people pursuing higher studies gradually less thoughtful or interested in actually learning about and making such connections.
We cannot ignore that a huge part of Indian youth’s coldness towards cruelties faced by Palestinians is due to their religion. Even though there are Christian Palestinians as well, the fact that Muslims are in majority in the country makes the average Indian student, who is daily being taught to be more communal, easily neglect their genocide. We are daily being taught to practise our religious beliefs over our humanity, which once again goes against our own history and past, where the fight for liberation came through intersectionalities and class uprisings and struggles.
Students peacefully protesting for Palestine in India are beaten up and detained. DU’s debate and MUN circuits, with their need to be ‘politically correct’, often choose to talk about Palestine diplomatically, praising India for having a neutral take. The truth is that there is nothing neutral about Palestine: years of occupation, and two years of genocide. Our history and legacy tell us about our own freedom struggle under the British Empire – blood shed by our ancestors, families broken, labourers exploited, revolutionaries hanged. It is important that we connect the dots to Palestine instead of pretending to be apolitical.
Image Captions: Activists beaten and detained for demanding freedom for Palestine, and yet, silence continues.
Image Source @indians_with_palestine on Instagram
Gaurika Bahl
