 They fake it until they make it. In the past three months, from August 2019, the Jamia Millia Islamia administration has seized around 

, which were used or rather misused by outsiders to enter the university campus. 

 said that, checking for invalid ID cards has always been a practice in the university, however with the appointment of the new Vice-Chancellor, the administration had to implement strict measures to curb the intrusion and review the surveillance in and around the university as well. Outsiders from nearby areas enter the campus using either fake or expired identity cards to commit theft, harass students, engage in substance abuse or to simply create nuisance in the university premises.

“Students from other universities also tried to enter in order to create unrest and create political space”





as reported by the Jamia Millia Islamia Administration.

Ex-students in order to access the university library and other resources used old or expired identity cards, and can been seen hanging out in the parks and canteens.

Security at Gate No. 7, Bab-e-Maulana Abul Kalam Azad

“The intruders have a different behaviour. They try to hide the photograph on the ID card, or just show the backside of the card, or cover the hologram when asked for the identity card”

The university administration also claims of being responsible for the security of the students, especially the hostel residents who are located in close proximity of the campus. Hence, an increase in the security checking has been observed. The security guards follow simple cues to identify outsiders.

The ID card is the only proof for students to enter the university and the checking at every gate is just terrifying

“



as quoted by Hiba Khan, a student of the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia

While the administration talks of an increased presence of outsiders and invalid ID cards, newly admitted students of the university, complained about the delay in getting their ID cards. First year students have to wait for months in order to get their cards. Meanwhile, they make use of fee slips or photocopies of fee slip to enter the university premises and in this process, some students even lose their original fee slip. The student identity card is also used as a library card. Due to the delay, first year students have not been able to issue or borrow books from the library either.

The process for getting duplicate ID cards still remains hectic and exhorting and in such cases ID card becomes a prized possession for every student of the university.

Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia

The ID Card Menace at Jamia

Be it the mooney soundtrack, the beautiful bucolic

landscape, the slow pace or the 41-minutes of sex scenes in 12 episodes, in many ways

is anything but normal. Yet, part of its normality comes from what it can teach us about love, life and trauma.

‘s infamous novel of the same name, is quite the rage. It is a bildungsroman that takes us in bite-sized episodes of 30 minutes through the lives of 

 as they move in- and-out of a relationship. 

 who comes from a wealthy family is an outcast, self-deprecating and bracingly honest. On the flip side, is 

 who is handsome, athletic, popular but reticent. Contrary to teen romcoms like 

 which have fed us the formula of rich kid is equal to popular kid and poor kid is equal to alienated kid 

As the show steers clear from clichés, the table gets turned when 

 finds intelligent, sardonic people and soon becomes popular, while 

‘s late father used to abuse her mother when she was a child, later on her brother 

 abuses her while her mother remains nonchalant; contributing to her trauma. The childhood trauma gets manifested in the form of her inclination towards masochism, which she believes she deserves. While 

 deals with her own share of issues in the show, it is 

 who slowly slips into severe depression and later seeks therapy. At school, he is popular but also suffers from social anxiety. However, it is when he enters college and hears of his friend 

s suicide that he gets crippled with depression. Tasks that would normally seem easy become extremely difficult to complete and a lot of time we see him lying on the floor doing nothing. Unlike movies like 

 that usually have an extremely dramatic reason to explain mental health issues there is no dramatic spin explaining 

‘s depression. He does give a set of explanations during his therapy session in the tenth episode but those had been brewing under the surface since the start of the show.

Through its depiction of love and pleasure, the show yet again subverts expectations. 

‘s love is complex, intense, incomprehensible, at times even exasperating but not easy. The lack of communication between the couple, the miscommunication and the misunderstandings stemming from it will make you cringe. You may even want to shake them out of it, to make them talk for once what they actually feet only to realize that you have been in their place. There are also no kneeling-down moments or a scene where the guy gives the girl a bouquet of roses. Be it the close-up on 

 playing or the slight side-eye glance, emotions especially love as 

looks, glances, breaths or half-finished sentences

“. The show does not neatly resolve this traumatic love affair in fact there is no ‘

and then they lived together happily ever after

‘ moment or one character realizing that they always loved this person. There is also the annihilating influence of low self-esteem on 

‘s relationship. Their poor self-image leads them into making some wrong decisions such as keeping the relationship hidden to escape the ridicule of peers. No one understands or knows them like they know each other, in fact, while talking to the therapist 

 Yet, the lack of self-acceptance creates some serious roadblock in their paths.

The talks over politics, literature, dreaminess, lingering melancholic tone, ups and downs of their relationship can make it emotionally wrecking yet refreshing at the same time. 

 come together, then fall apart, only to reconcile again. One moment a scene will flare up and glow up the screen only to wane into nothingness the next moment, as if nothing happened. The overarching theme throughout the show being that people make mistakes, grow older and life goes on.

Normal People: A lesson on Love, Life & Trauma

has brought the whirring wheels of human life to a screeching halt. Cities like

, which never sleep are eerily sleeping. In this time of crisis, when everyone is dogged with uncertainty, social media just cannot get enough of the hustle culture.

 discovered gravity during quarantine. All of us must have come across posts or videos telling us to write a novel, or take up a new hobby, learn to code, or any another small hustle. Such posts guilting us to be productive garner thousands of likes and retweets. One such tweet on 

was quarantined because of the plague, he wrote 

The above tweet was retweeted 52,000 times, got 245,000 likes and 3000 replies. It is important to ask why such posts become so popular among people. It maybe because of our desperate desire for normalcy and stability in a time where we have been uprooted from our normal routines to a land of uncertainty where we do not know what may happen next. In an article titled “

Why are young people pretending to love work?

Never once at the start of my workweek – not in my morning coffee shop line; not in my crowded subway commute; not as I began my bottomless inbox slog – have I paused, looked to the heavens and whispered #ThankGodIt’sMonday.

The extra time in our hands is a silver lining during a time of utter chaos and apprehension. However, writing a novel in 21 days is not a realistic way to deal with this. Those who sell this idea of making the most of this free time forget or choose to ignore the fact that although the 

 attacks our physical health, the corona-pandemic induced quarantine can take a toll on one’s mental well-being. Locked in our homes, with nothing much to do, social media seems to be our only refuge. While scrolling through your 

 feed, it is very likely that you will come across an “inspirational” quote if not begging then condescending you for staying in bed and watching 

. You end up falling into this loop of guilt for not being productive and letting time slip by. Well, quit social media for some time to escape this barrage, social detox as they call it. However, the question is, “

” Social media is currently the only way to interact with friends and families. Hence, quitting social media is a hard bargain, which we cannot afford.

In a country, where mental health disorders are a stigma, the hustle culture makes matters worse. Especially for those suffering with clinical disorders such as anxiety, depression, PTSD and the likes. In a time, when even a neurotypical person finds himself grappling with anxiety, we can only think how it must be for someone clinically diagnosed with anxiety. The hustle culture, which has been there before the pandemic started, has managed to show its head even in an 

…the alternative between capitalism and socialism is false – not because neither exists anywhere in its pure state anyhow, but because we have here twins, each wearing a different hat.

 Nonetheless, what we do for a living forms a significant part of our self, so much so that we do not know how to do nothing. However, that does not mean we should spend the whole day in our beds.

If you find some time to be productive, that’s awesome! Just don’t compare yourself to Shakespeare.

” These trying times demand that we take care of our health – both physical and emotional. The extra time can be used to do pending tasks and pursue a hobby for which you never had time. At the same time, it is okay, to feel anxious and despondent. It is important to acknowledge your emotions or mental state during that time and take a day off instead of slogging hard, just because some one on internet thought you should do so.

Hush the Hustle Culture during Quarantine

The makers of our constitution knew that in spite of the democratic structure democratic republics descend into oligarchy as demagogues install themselves as tyrants. They contemplated the history of other democracies and their own past and established a system of checks and balances. We may be tempted to think that the checks and balances provided in our Constitution would protect us from such threats. However, as history has shown rulers circumvent the law for their own benefit, or usurp power to establish tyranny. History does not just tell; it also instructs. Now may be a good time to learn from other people’s mistakes.

George Orwell in his essay Politics and the English language says, “The half−conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes…if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better.” From Hitler to Britishers in India, language has been used as a tool to reject legitimate opposition. Today, in India, anyone who dares to say a word against the Modi government is immediately labelled an ‘anti-national’, while the word ‘liberal’ is used as a cuss word. The people who make treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary to taint a dissident forget that the state and nation are two different entities.

Authoritarianism is not simply an all-power state. Authoritarians blur the lines between public and private space. Back in 2017, a nine-bench judge of the Supreme Court in a historic judgement ruled privacy a fundamental right following a decision over the contentious Aadhaar Card scheme. In 2019, again we debate the Personal Data Protection Bill and the draft Intermediary (amendment) Rules 2018, which give arbitrary power to the government over our data that is prone to misuse. Again, the attempt to pierce the privacy of individuals is not something new and as we lose our privacy, we become devoid of control over not just what we read but also how we act.

The institutions-court, a law, the constitution, newspaper are there to protect us. The assumption that these institutions will protect themselves in the face of threats is misguided. These institutions enable rulers to come to power but the same rulers can destroy or alter the very same institutions. The ongoing youth-led, cross- section protests against the triumvirate CAA-NRC-NPR subvert the present government’s idea of a homogenous society or a ‘Hindu Rashtra’.

Victor Klemperer observed that truth dies in four modes. First is the presentation of lies as if they were facts. The Prime Minister consistently resorts to lies and distorts history in his speeches, conveniently faltering dates, and sequences of events. The second mode is shamanistic incantation. The Modi-Shah duo have systematically used nicknames such as ‘Tukde-Tukde Gang’ and even ‘Chowkidaar’ to transform individuals into stereotypes. The third mode is use of

contradiction. The recent biggest contradiction has been Modi and Shah’s statements on CAA-NRC. The final mode is people-worship or misplaced faith. This misplaced faith is on display when Venkaiah Naidu before taking the post of Vice-President said, “Modi is God’s gift to India”. Or when a reporter asks, “The GDP is falling. Do you still support BJP?” and the Pavlovian response, stemming from a morass of indifference is, “Modi humare bhagwaan hai” (Modi is our God), no space is left for truth.

In 1993, when the Nazi Party came to power the Nazis organised a boycott of Jewish shops by marking one as ‘Jewish’ the other as ‘Aryan’. The present government since it came to power sought out rewriting history by renaming streets, cities and other places. The Ministry of External Affairs, printed new passports with the lotus symbol on the pretext of enhanced security feature to identify fake passports. While, it is true that lotus is a national symbol, it cannot be forgotten that it is also the election symbol of Bhartiya Janata Party.

Authoritarians’ rejected reason in the face of myth, made self-deifying claims, propagated symbols of hate, attacked institutions, exploited free speech and the privacy of individuals to establish themselves as tyrants. The antidote was and is to establish a private life, believe in truth, remove the symbols of hate, protect the institutions that protect us, pay attention to the use of certain words and phrases.

An Authoritarian’s Old Tricks of Trade

At the turn of 20th century, Facebook was born and so were the many first-time student protestors lining up the streets today to protest against the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Registration of Indian Citizens (NRIC). While, student protestors of Jamia Millia Islamia University took to the streets to raise their concerns, another group of students worked tirelessly behind the curtains. The latter group ensured that there was a steady flow of posts and information regarding the ongoing protests. Courtesy to Instagram, Whatsapp, and Facebook likeminded people and dissidents were able to organise and take collective action, which Turkish sociologist Zeynep Tufekci calls the ‘information cascade’.

The formidability of social media came to light when on 15th December, within a matter of a few hours post the brutality and barbarism of Delhi Police on the students of Jamia, a huge crowd gathered in front of the headquarters of Delhi Police at ITO demanding the release of detained students. These were not just students of Jamia Millia Islamia University but also students of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi University, IP University and the locals. Probably, three decades back, this level of collectivisation of people and spread of information in such a short span of time would not have been possible. The spine chilling event of 15th December in which one student lost his eye, innocent students who were not even protesting were mercilessly beaten, and subjected to psychological and verbal assault acted as a ‘tipping point’. The police brutality could not drown the voice of the protesting students. The undeterred students rose stronger, more determined to fight against the unconstitutional and discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act.
Social media has played an important role since the fateful day of 15th December with posts not only spreading information about the schedule of protests but also criticising mute onlookers until their conscience screams at them. Born in 2004, Facebook was created to serve a coterie of elite students but now social media platforms have become mainstream. Whatsapp alone has 400 million users in India, which once again reiterates its formidability and fragility. In the era of information, where data is the new oil, the question arises that whether social media needs a watchdog. People have figured out ways to doctor videos and manipulate information thereby giving the narrative a 360-degree spin.

Many fake posts, doctored videos have been circulating, which are not only misleading but also incendiary depict how powerful and dangerous social media can be. A fake post, which includes 4 pictures of one of the student protestors, Ayesha Renna, claimed that she has been protesting in different cities. All the photographs in the post were taken in New Delhi hence debunking the post as fake. Another post with a photograph of policemen with head injuries went viral on social media claiming that anti-CAA protestors have caused it. This claim is also false as the image has been in circulation since 2018. In the midst of fake news and rumours, a student at Jamia Millia Islamia University recorded a video depicting how easy it is to spread fake news and tamper with someone’s Facebook posts.

In the online world, social media sits on the thin line between private and public space. Fake news, tampered videos, rumours make one ponder whether we need a watchdog for social media. However, as one question leads to another, we may ask how will it be ensured that the watchdog will not become a moral policing agency? In the digital space, as it is said, “Nothing gets deleted completely and everyone is naked” who will ensure that the Right to Privacy of citizens is not violated? In addition, with the Citizenship Amendment Act and the newly tabled Data Protection Bill is the Indian State becoming Orwellian?
We may not have found satisfactory answers to such questions but we need to realize what we can do as individuals and politically active citizens of this country to curb the spread of fake news.

Articles by Maryam Ahmed

The ID Card Menace at Jamia

Normal People: A lesson on Love, Life & Trauma

Hush the Hustle Culture during Quarantine

An Authoritarian’s Old Tricks of Trade

SOCIAL MEDIA- A DOUBLE EDGED SWORD

The ID Card Menace at Jamia

Normal People: A lesson on Love, Life & Trauma

Hush the Hustle Culture during Quarantine

An Authoritarian’s Old Tricks of Trade

SOCIAL MEDIA- A DOUBLE EDGED SWORD