Nothing Was Wasted : Lessons from an Uncertain Journey

There were two periods in my working life that I found particularly difficult: my years in call centres and my time assisting Members of Parliament. Both opportunities attracted me at first. Yet, once I began working, I often felt that I was spending my time and energy on work that was taking me away from the life I wanted. I was restless, impatient and sometimes deeply disappointed. Looking back today, however, I feel grateful for both experiences. The work that once seemed to delay my progress helped me support my family, continue my education and understand people whose struggles were very different from my own.

As I approached the end of my graduation at Fergusson College in Pune, I wanted to join an international call centre. There was some excitement attached to the idea of speaking with customers in the United Kingdom and the United States. But there were also pressing responsibilities behind that ambition. I am the eldest of my siblings, and I wanted to help arrange the marriage of the eldest among my sisters. In the circumstances in which we had grown up, girls were generally married young. She was around twenty, and further studies did not appear to be the path she wished to pursue. I had assured my father that I would work and save enough for her marriage. I also wanted to put aside money for my education. Since Class XII, I had hoped to prepare for the civil services examination.

Getting a job in an international call centre proved much harder than I had expected. My English was reasonably good, but I had studied in Marathi-medium government schools, and my speech carried a strong influence of my mother tongue. Employers expected a level of spoken English that I had not yet developed. My typing was slow, and I had very little knowledge of computers. I was also appearing for my final-year examinations and did not yet have a graduation certificate. Some back-office positions required graduates, while certain voice processes accepted undergraduates who met their communication standards. I particularly wanted a voice process because speaking directly with customers abroad, I believed, would help me become more fluent and confident.

I must have appeared for close to a hundred interviews during that search. Each rejection reminded me of something I still needed to improve. After a while, the repeated disappointments became exhausting. I eventually accepted a position with Tata SerWizSol in Kalyani Nagar, Pune, working in customer care for Tata Sky. I stayed for about three and a half months before leaving without serving the required notice period. Looking back, I recognise that I should have fulfilled that obligation. My impatience does not excuse it. At the time, however, I was determined to enter an international process, attracted by better pay, transport facilities and the opportunity to speak regularly with customers overseas.

The interviews began again. After further disappointments, I secured a position with Zensar Technologies in Pune. Before beginning the work, I underwent two months of extensive voice and accent training. I had to listen carefully, practise unfamiliar sounds and learn to make myself understood more clearly. The assignment itself, however, left me dissatisfied. It was a blended process for an American dental-equipment company, combining different kinds of customer support rather than offering continuous telephone conversations. My responsibilities included following up on overdue accounts and asking customers to clear their pending payments. The salary was also lower than what some other call centres offered.

I had never intended to make a long career in that industry. My purpose was to earn, fulfil my family responsibilities and save enough to begin serious preparation for the civil services examination. That made me impatient with anything that seemed to slow me down. After completing six months at Zensar, I served my notice period, collected my experience certificate and moved on. At Mphasis, then an EDS company, I finally entered a full voice process. I worked with customers of Abbey, the British bank that was part of Spain’s Santander group. By then, training and practice had made me much more comfortable speaking with people abroad. I remained there for about a year and a half before moving to other, better-paying opportunities.

My work with the British bank included the difficult year of 2008, when the financial crisis was unsettling lives across the world. Sitting in Pune with a headset, I encountered some of its consequences through the people who called us. Their worries entered our working day through conversations about account balances, overdrafts, unpaid dues and bank charges. A financial crisis could appear distant when described through markets and large institutions. On the telephone, it had the voice of someone who had lost a job or did not know how to meet the next household expense.

There was also resentment about jobs being handled from India while people in Britain were themselves struggling to find employment. Many customers directed their anger at us. Some used abusive language, and as customer-support employees, we were expected to remain composed and continue the conversation. Being insulted while trying to do one’s job was painful. Yet I gradually understood that some callers were speaking from fear, frustration and a sense of helplessness. Their circumstances did not make the abuse acceptable, but they helped me understand why an ordinary conversation about a bank account could become so bitter.

Some of the hardest calls concerned overdrafts and the charges that followed when customers could not make payments on time. In certain accounts, incoming money would be absorbed by outstanding dues and accumulated charges. From the bank’s side, these were amounts to be recovered. From the customer’s side, that money might have been needed immediately for food, household expenses or the care of a child. As an employee, I had to explain the account and work within the rules given to me. I had little authority to change the situation, even when I could hear how much distress it was causing.

I particularly remember young single mothers who cried while speaking with us. They described trying to care for their children with the limited support or benefits they received. When money entered their accounts and was taken towards outstanding charges, they feared being left with too little for their children’s needs. Listening to them was difficult. I could explain a transaction, but an explanation could not relieve their worry. There were moments when the person on the other end needed patience and understanding as much as information, while the working system required us to move quickly towards completing the call.

Those conversations stayed with me. I was a young man from a forest village in India, working to meet my own family’s needs, listening to people in Britain who were struggling to meet theirs. Our circumstances were different, but I could recognise the anxiety of having responsibilities greater than the money available. Until then, life in a wealthy country had seemed far removed from the insecurities I knew. The calls showed me how unemployment, debt and the fear of being unable to care for one’s family could unsettle people there too. I was learning about human vulnerability through voices I would never be able to put faces to.

Meanwhile, my own life was passing through a painful period. I lost my father, and the responsibilities I had hoped to share with him became heavier in his absence. My sister’s marriage took place in a simple ceremony in Pune, but even that required me to borrow money from friends. Once the marriage was over, I had to repay those debts while continuing to save for my studies. I remain deeply grateful to the people who stood beside me. Deepak Sir and Lata Tai became like family. My friends Mangesh Dhawan and Sandip Pol helped me financially when I needed support. Their kindness gave me room to manage responsibilities that would otherwise have been much harder to carry.

The work itself was demanding. In one assignment, we were expected to maintain an average handling time of about 247 seconds per call. Within those few minutes, we had to understand the customer’s concern, respond appropriately and complete the necessary work. Taking longer could affect our performance figures. Repeated difficulties could bring sharp criticism from team leaders and floor managers, and continued failure to meet expectations could put the job at risk. The pressure was especially hard to bear when a distressed customer needed more time. I struggled with these demands and somehow continued, but I often felt that while I was meeting targets at work, my educational ambitions were standing still.

To earn more, I also taught in coaching classes during my weekly days off and sometimes on working days. Teaching brought me closer to something I enjoyed, but fitting it around my employment required considerable effort. The call-centre shifts were irregular. At times I worked during the day; at other times, through the night. Changes in working hours disturbed my sleep and affected both my physical and mental well-being. There were days when life seemed to consist almost entirely of work, travel, tiredness and calculations about money. I worried that the years in which I should have been studying were slipping away.

Eventually, I earned enough to repay my debts and save something for my education. I left the call-centre industry, joined coaching for the civil services examination and returned to my preparation. My journey later brought me to Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. The four years I spent there, two pursuing my M.A. and two my M. Phil., gave me something I had missed for a long time: space to read, think and spend time on my intellectual development. There were still concerns about the future, but my days were no longer measured by the length of a customer call. I could give sustained attention to a book, a classroom discussion or a question that interested me.

It was at JNU that I began to recognise more fully what the call-centre years had given me. I could speak with classmates from far more privileged educational and social backgrounds without feeling overwhelmed. Years of listening to unfamiliar accents, explaining matters clearly and responding to people I had never met had strengthened my spoken English and confidence. The work had enabled me to help my family and finance the next stage of my education. What I had experienced mainly as a delay had prepared me to make better use of the opportunities that followed.

My studies in international relations also gave me a language for understanding the human stories I had heard. When I encountered the idea of human security, I could connect it with those telephone conversations. Security included the ability to earn a livelihood, provide food, care for children and face the future without constant fear. I remembered callers whose lives had become uncertain because they had lost employment or become trapped in debt. Concepts discussed in the classroom became easier to understand because I had listened to people experiencing those insecurities. Without realising it at the time, I had carried part of my education into the university with me.

After completing my M.Phil., I began assisting Members of Parliament. Once again, the opportunity excited me. Entering Parliament and helping an elected representative with correspondence, parliamentary work and constituency matters seemed meaningful. I hoped that my education in international relations and political science would find a useful place in that environment. I had completed two higher degrees at JNU and cleared the National Eligibility Test for being an Assistant Professor. I wanted to contribute and become financially secure. Instead, I found myself earning roughly what I had earned in call centres about five years earlier, and sometimes even less.

That difference troubled me deeply. After further years of study and two additional degrees, I was struggling to earn as much as I had earned as a graduate. Delhi was expensive, and my responsibilities had not become lighter. Two of my younger sisters were pursuing their Master of Social Work degrees in Nagpur, and I needed to support their education. I repeatedly asked myself what my qualifications had changed. I valued my education, but that did not make the financial strain easier. The distance between what I had hoped for and what I was experiencing became a source of considerable distress.

There was also the question of dignity at work. Some of the parliamentarians I encountered did not treat their private secretaries with the respect that any working person deserves. The proximity to public office could appear impressive from outside, while the daily experience could be discouraging. I had entered the work hoping to use my abilities, but there were times when I felt undervalued and uncertain about my future. Those roughly three years tested my patience. I continued because there were bills to pay, family members to support and no clear alternative immediately before me.

The opportunity to teach at Shyam Lal College changed the direction of my life. I remain grateful to Principal Prof. Rabi Narayan Kar Sir, whose trust gave me the chance to serve as an ad hoc Assistant Professor. Teaching offered me a sense of purpose that I had struggled to find in my earlier employment. My education became part of my everyday work, and the classroom gave me opportunities to learn while helping students learn. Principal Sir, our IQAC Director, Prof. Kusha Tiwari Ma’am and my senior colleagues treated me with care and affection. Their encouragement helped me grow within the institution. In 2023, I secured a permanent appointment, bringing a measure of stability for which I had worked and waited for many years.

With greater stability came the ability to look back more calmly. I began to see that my parliamentary work, too, had given me something valuable. I had entered Parliament regularly and observed its functioning from close quarters. I had assisted with concerns that constituents brought to their elected representatives. I visited ministries and government offices, including the Prime Minister’s Office, to follow up on matters connected with the constituencies of the Members of Parliament I served. These experiences helped me understand the practical work around institutions I had previously studied mainly through books.

I also saw how much effort can lie between raising a concern and securing a response. A letter had to be drafted carefully, a matter explained clearly and a request followed up. I became more familiar with policy discussions and administrative processes. Somewhere during those years, I made a promise to myself that I would one day contribute meaningfully to public policy in Bharat. At the time, I was too troubled by my immediate circumstances to appreciate everything I was learning. Today, as a teacher of political science, I recognise the value of having observed those institutions at work.

The call-centre and parliamentary experiences now seem connected in ways I could not see then. In one, I listened to people struggling with the consequences of economic insecurity. In the other, I saw citizens’ concerns enter the offices of elected representatives and government departments. Both brought me closer to the difficulties people face when they need an institution to respond. They also showed me how much depends on whether the person handling a concern listens carefully, explains honestly and treats another human being with respect.

I do not wish to make those years appear easier than they were. The exhaustion was real. So were the financial worries, the disappointment and the fear that I was falling behind. I sometimes felt that I had lost too much of my youth while trying to meet responsibilities that could not be postponed. Looking back with gratitude does not erase those feelings. It allows me to understand that a period can be painful and still leave us with something useful. I can acknowledge the pressures of those jobs while remaining thankful that they helped me move forward.

Both experiences also remind me that my journey was never mine alone. My father’s hopes stayed with me after his passing. My family’s needs gave urgency to my efforts. Friends lent money and offered reassurance when my own resources were insufficient. Later, mentors and colleagues gave me opportunities and treated me with dignity. Whatever I have been able to do rests partly on that support. Remembering the difficult years brings their kindness into clearer view.

As I bring these reflections together, I see a connection between the young man searching for a call-centre job, the student finding his place at JNU, the private secretary walking through government offices and the teacher standing before a classroom. While living through those stages, I often saw only the distance between where I was and where I wanted to be. I now understand how one experience helped me enter the next. Telephone conversations strengthened my confidence and widened my understanding of human hardship. Parliamentary work brought me closer to public institutions. Teaching has allowed me to draw upon both.

I still have much to learn and much that I hope to contribute. But I am less willing now to dismiss a difficult chapter of life as worthless merely because its purpose was unclear to me at the time. Some experiences reveal their value slowly. We understand them better after we have moved beyond them and discover that something we learned there is helping us in the present.

The two kinds of work I once disliked most have become part of the foundation on which I stand. They helped me care for my family, return to education and find confidence in unfamiliar surroundings. They also left me with the memory of people whose voices carried worry, anger and hope. I would not choose every hardship again, but I can honour the effort it took to pass through those years, and the people who helped me along the way.

What I once thought was wasted time has become part of the life I am grateful to have lived.

Dr Dwarkanath Kotnis: Humanity Beyond Borders

 

The year was 1938. The world was embroiled in the unending war, fighting along the fault lines of national greed, violent imperialist ambitions, and catastrophic warfare. In the Far East, the Second Sino-Japanese War raged with unimaginable brutality. Blood ran through the rivers of China, towns were turned to ash, and thousands of wounded soldiers lay dying in makeshift ditches, crying out for help that never came. Far away, in the quiet, dusty town of Solapur, Maharashtra, a young Indian physician named Dr. Dwarkanath Shantaram Kotnis listened to those distant cries.

When the communist General Zhu De reached out to Jawaharlal Nehru requesting medical aid, the Indian National Congress, under Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, assembled a five-member volunteer team known as the Indian Medical Mission Team. Dwarkanath, just 28 years old, had his entire life ahead of him. He could have chosen a comfortable, lucrative practice in India. Instead, he packed his bags, looked at his weeping mother, and stepped into the tempest of war. He did not see geopolitical chessboards or foreign strangers; he saw suffering human beings who needed a healer.

Upon arriving in the isolated, rugged revolutionary base of Yan'an in early 1939, the Indian team was greeted with immense warmth but staggering challenges. The harsh winter bit through their thin clothes, and the sheer volume of casualties was overwhelming. Dr. Kotnis quickly realized that a doctor cannot truly heal a patient if he cannot speak to their heart. He dedicated his rare, precious hours of rest to studying Mandarin Chinese. Within a short time, he could not only speak the language fluently but could also read and write Chinese characters.

Moved by his absolute humility, the local people gave him a Chinese name: ‘Ke Dihua’. Ke stood for the sound of Kotnis, Di meant to guide, and Hua stood for China. He was no longer an expatriate doing a duty; he had become one of their own. As the months rolled by, the dangerous realities of the frontline intensified. While the other four Indian doctors eventually had to return home due to health issues or logistical shifts, Dr. Kotnis refused to leave. He chose to move deeper into the anti-Japanese base areas of North China, operating under constant enemy bombardment with the Eighth Route Army.

In 1940, a devastating piece of news reached the battlefront: Dr. Kotnis’s father had passed away unexpectedly back in India. The grief struck him like a physical blow. By tradition and familial duty, he belonged at home, performing the final funeral rites for his father. He stood at a painful crossroads, looking south toward India, torn between his family and his patients.

Ultimately, his profound sense of global humanity won over his personal sorrow. Looking around at the hundreds of critically injured young soldiers filling the corridors of the Eighth Route Army General Hospital, he knew that leaving meant signing their death warrants. He wept in private, chose to stay, and channeled his overwhelming grief into his surgical instruments.

His commitment was superhuman. During a prolonged battle in 1940, Dr. Kotnis operated continuously for 72 hours without a single moment of sleep, treating over 800 wounded soldiers in less than two weeks. The makeshift operating tables were often just wooden planks balanced on rocks inside dark caves, illuminated only by dim oil lamps. The sounds of exploding mortar shells echoed outside, shaking dust onto his sterile sheets, but his hands never trembled. The soldiers affectionately started calling him "Dr. Thoughtful" and the "Black Mother" because of the tender, fierce protection he provided to every soul under his watch.

Even in the darkest, blood-soaked soil of war, the fragile flower of love found a way to bloom. While working at the front lines, Dr. Kotnis met a young, dedicated Chinese nurse named Guo Qinglan. They shared the same exhausting hours, the same horror of losing patients, and the same unshakeable belief in saving lives. Bound by a shared language of compassion, they fell deeply in love and were married in December 1941.

Their joy multiplied in August 1942 when Guo gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. They named him Yinhua, a combination of the characters for India (Yin) and China (Hua). Yinhua was a living bridge between two ancient civilizations, a tiny beacon of hope born amidst the ashes of global carnage.

Following the passing of the famous Canadian humanitarian Dr. Norman Bethune, Dr. Kotnis was appointed the first President of the Bethune International Peace Hospital. In addition to performing relentless surgeries, he began lecturing at the local hygiene school, trying desperately to train the next generation of Chinese doctors so that his mission of mercy would survive long after him.

Human flesh, however, has its limits, even if the spirit is invincible. The years of living in damp caves, eating meager rations, enduring freezing temperatures, and working up to twenty hours a day began to take an irreversible toll on his young body. Just three months after the birth of his beloved son Yinhua, Dr. Kotnis was struck by severe, violent epileptic seizures brought on by sheer physical exhaustion and neurological stress. On December 9, 1942, at the tragic age of just 32, Dr. Dwarkanath Kotnis closed his eyes for the final time in Paoting, China.

The news of his death cast a dark shroud of mourning over the entire region. Rough, battle-hardened soldiers broke down and wept openly in the trenches. Chairman Mao Zedong, deeply moved by the loss of this foreign brother, picked up his calligraphy brush and wrote an emotional tribute that remains etched in history:

"The army has lost a helping hand, the nation has lost a friend. Let us always bear in mind his internationalist spirit."

Dr. Kotnis was buried in the Heroes Courtyard in Nanquan Village. Decades have passed, political borders have shifted, and diplomatic relations between nations have thawed and frozen repeatedly, but the memory of Ke Dihua remains untouched by the passage of time.

Today, in the Shijiazhuang Martyrs' Memorial Park in Hebei province, a massive granite statue of Dr. Kotnis stands tall beneath the open sky. Every year during the Qingming Festival (Tomb-Sweeping Day), generations of Chinese citizens gather at his memorial to clear the leaves and pay homage to the young doctor from India who gave his life for them.

Dr. Dwarkanath Kotnis's life is a reminder that the human soul is not bound by the passports we carry or the trenches we dig. Amidst the terrifying tempests of war, he showed that a single candle of selfless love can shatter the darkness of an entire era. His story remains an immortal monument to the truth that our ultimate identity is not our nationality, but our humanity.

The Day He Became My Kaka

My life has been shaped by many people. Whatever I have achieved has not come only through my own efforts, but also through the kindness, encouragement and help of others. When I look back at my journey, from a poor family in a remote village of Bhamragad tahsil in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district to teaching at the University of Delhi, I remember the people who helped me move forward when my family’s means were limited.

One of those people is Shri Sunil Khobragade, whom I lovingly call Kaka. We are not related by blood. Yet he welcomed me into his life so naturally that, over time, I became part of his family. He worked as a conductor with Maharashtra State Transport. His work involved long journeys, collecting fares and issuing tickets to passengers. Amid those everyday duties, he noticed a young boy who needed help and chose to do something for him.

I first met him while travelling by an S.T. bus from Bhamragad towards my village, Kukkameta. There was no bus that went directly to our village. I had to get down at Mallampodur crossing and walk about three kilometres along a narrow path through the dense forest. This was a familiar journey for me. Travelling home meant a bus ride followed by a walk, carrying whatever belongings I had.

A police personnel who knew me was also on that bus. During the journey, he spoke to the conductor about me. He told him that I belonged to his community and came from a very poor family. He also said that, with some help, I could go far in life. I did not know what Shri Sunil Khobragade thought when he heard those words. He said little. When we reached Mallampodur crossing, I got down and continued towards home. At that time, I had no idea that the conversation would stay with him.

After the summer holidays, I returned to Gadchiroli for school. If I remember correctly, it was around 1998, and I was in the ninth standard. The journey from our area to the district headquarters took roughly six or seven hours. By chance, I travelled on the bus on which he was serving as conductor.

He gave me a ticket but did not take the fare from me. It was about one hundred rupees—a considerable amount for me then. I believe he paid it himself. I was happy that I could save that money for my educational expenses. I accepted his kindness without knowing that there was more to come.

When we reached Gadchiroli and I got down, he asked me to wait. I had a small tin box containing my books and two sets of school clothes. That box held what I needed for my life away from home. After completing his duty and handing over the fares he had collected, he asked me to come with him.

I picked up my box and followed. I did not know where we were going. He had not given me a long explanation, and I did not ask many questions. We walked until we reached his home.

His wife, whom I now call Kaku, welcomed us. She asked me to freshen up and gave me a meal. After the long journey, I ate to my heart’s content. Her welcome was simple and warm. I had arrived as a schoolboy whom her husband had brought home, but I was made comfortable without any fuss.

While speaking to him, I repeatedly addressed him as “Sir.” He was an adult who had helped me, and that seemed the proper way to show respect. After a while, he lovingly told me that he would not speak to me if I kept calling him Sir.

“Call me Kaka,” he said.

I began calling him Kaka, and that is who he has remained ever since.

It was a small change in how I addressed him, but it made a difference to how I felt. I could speak to him with less hesitation. He was offering me a place in his life, and I was beginning to understand that I could turn to him when I needed help.

Kaka asked about my studies and the difficulties I was facing. I told him that I had enrolled in a semi-English medium school. Until then, I had studied in Marathi medium at a small school in Bhamragad. Now, Science and Mathematics were taught in English, alongside English as a compulsory subject.

The change was difficult for me. I wanted to study well, but I was trying to learn subjects through a language in which I was not yet comfortable. Understanding the lesson and understanding the language became two tasks that I had to manage together. I knew I needed help, but paying for extra classes was difficult.

Kaka listened and asked how I could cope better. I told him that tuition outside school might help me understand the subjects. He did not immediately make a promise. Instead, he asked me to keep visiting his home, particularly on Sundays, when he would have a day off.

The next Sunday, I went to see him. After lunch, he told me that I could join tuition classes of my choice. He would pay the fees.

For a student with limited means, those words brought great relief. I could now seek the help I needed. I joined tuition, and his support made a considerable difference to my studies.

As a boy, I understood this mainly as help with fees. Today, I also understand the effort behind it. Kaka had his own household and family responsibilities. The money he offered came from his earnings. He had listened to a difficulty, considered what he could do and made room for my education within his own responsibilities.

He also continued to take an interest in my progress. As he came to know me better, he felt that I had the ability to pursue further studies. He introduced me to other people from our community and encouraged them to help. Some offered assistance, and some promises did not lead to much. But what I remember most is that Kaka was willing to speak for me. He wanted others to see possibilities in a boy whose circumstances might otherwise have gone unnoticed.

At that age, I did not fully appreciate how valuable such support could be. I was concerned with classes, books, examinations and the next expense. Looking back, I see that he helped make those worries manageable. He gave me practical assistance, but he also gave me the confidence to ask for help without feeling ashamed.

His home became a place I could visit with ease. Kaku’s care and Kaka’s interest in my studies made me feel that I belonged there. What began during a bus journey grew into a family relationship. I was no longer merely a passenger whose fare he had paid. I was a boy whose future mattered to him.

Over the years, my education took me far from those early journeys. I studied in Pune and later at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. I went on to work in the national capital and eventually became a teacher at the University of Delhi. At each stage, my own effort mattered. So did the help that had made it possible for me to reach the next stage.

When I think of those beginnings, I remember the small tin box, the long bus journey and the hundred rupees he helped me save. I remember following him to a house where I was given a full meal. Above all, I remember his words asking me to call him Kaka.

His kindness has shaped my understanding of social responsibility. Education, position and influence can give a person greater means to help others. But the willingness to help does not automatically come with them. Kaka was a working man who recognised a need and responded within his means. He did not wait until he had more money or a higher position.

Our shared community background helped bring us together. The police personnel’s words drew his attention to me. What followed, however, required a personal choice. Kaka could have listened and forgotten. Instead, he remembered, welcomed me home and supported my studies. Through those actions, he turned an acquaintance into a lasting bond.

I feel fortunate that I met him when I did. A young person may have hopes and ability, yet still need someone to help with the next practical step. For me, one of those steps was learning to cope with a change in the language of instruction. Kaka understood that difficulty and helped me through it.

I have been part of his family since those school days, and my gratitude has only deepened with time. The young boy who entered his home could not have imagined all the places life would take him. But he had found someone he could rely upon.

Whenever I look back at my journey, I return to that day in Gadchiroli. Kaka finished his duty, asked me to pick up my tin box and took me home. I thought I was going with a kind conductor who had helped me during a bus journey. By the time I left his house, I had a Kaka.

Sir and Ma'am: The Two Beautiful Souls Who Became My Second Parents

 

Some people enter our lives without announcement. They do not arrive knowing that they will change us, nor do we realise, when we first meet them, how important they will eventually become. Years later, when we look back at the long journey of life, we discover that their presence quietly altered its course. Sir and Ma'am are two such people in my life.

"Sir and Ma'am"—that is how I have always addressed them. I cannot remember ever thinking of them differently. To the world, they may be professionals who have excelled in their respective fields. To many, they may be mentors, friends or acquaintances. But somewhere along the journey of my life, they became something much more to me. I began looking up to them with the affection and reverence with which a child looks towards his parents.

I first met them when I was studying in Class IX. At that age, one hardly understands the significance of the people one encounters. We do not know which conversations will be forgotten and which will remain with us for a lifetime. Looking back today, however, I consider that meeting one of the most fortunate accidents of my life.

They nurtured me, cared for me, guided me and, above all, believed in me.

That last part mattered enormously.

There was a period when I was doing badly in my studies. In the world of a school-going child, marks can acquire a disproportionate importance. A report card can suddenly become a measure not merely of one's academic performance but, unfortunately, of one's worth. When you repeatedly fail to meet expectations, you slowly begin to internalise other people's assessment of you. The world starts calling you average, and eventually you begin calling yourself average too.

Sir and Ma'am refused to do that to me.

When the evidence available on my report cards perhaps gave them every reason to lower their expectations, they did exactly the opposite. They continued to repose an almost unreasonable amount of faith in me. They seemed to see possibilities in that struggling schoolboy which the boy himself could not see.

Their patience carried me through those years.

I particularly remember the letters Ma'am used to write to me when I was away. Whenever I felt low, defeated or unsure of myself, I would return to those letters. Long before motivational messages began arriving every morning on mobile phones, I had my own handwritten source of encouragement.

One sentence from one of those letters has remained with me all these years:

"You are not an average student and should never consider yourself as one. We both want to see you stretch your wings and fly as high as you can. We are there with you."

I do not know whether Ma'am remembers writing those words. For her, perhaps, they were words of encouragement written naturally to a child she cared about. For me, they became something else altogether.

They became a refuge.

There are moments in life when borrowed confidence keeps us alive until we can develop confidence of our own. Someone believes in us so persistently that, eventually, we begin to wonder whether perhaps they are right. Their faith becomes a bridge between the person we are and the person we might someday become.

Ma'am's words did precisely that for me.

Over the years, however, I learnt from Sir and Ma'am not merely through what they told me but also by watching the lives they themselves lived.

Ma'am's journey has always fascinated me. She completed her M.Sc. in Microbiology and could have chosen the comfort and predictability of a conventional career. Instead, she chose to work with an NGO dealing with health issues in Gadchiroli, one of India's remotest districts. It was there that she married her colleague—Sir.

Together they built their family and raised two daughters, Sampada and Sanchita, both of whom excelled in their studies and went on to pursue exceptional careers of their own.

In time, Sir and Ma'am established a pathological laboratory. For most people, that would have represented arrival—a profession, a family, a stable livelihood and a respectable place in society. One could have comfortably settled there.

Ma'am did not.

She went back to studying. She studied law, entered legal practice and established herself as a prominent lawyer in the Sessions Court at Gadchiroli. Even that achievement did not become her final destination. At a stage when she was already doing remarkably well in her legal profession, she once again chose uncertainty over comfort.

She prepared for the judicial examination, succeeded and entered the judiciary.

Today, she serves as a Principal District Judge. Along the way, she has held several important judicial responsibilities and, from everything I have witnessed and known of her, has attempted to do justice to every responsibility entrusted to her.

Her journey has had a profound influence on me because I watched much of it unfold while I myself was growing up. I saw someone refusing to allow an earlier achievement to become an excuse for intellectual stagnation.

From Ma'am, therefore, I learnt the meaning of those famous words associated with Steve Jobs: stay hungry, stay foolish.

For me, they do not mean perpetual dissatisfaction. They mean retaining the courage to remain a student of life. They mean refusing to believe that one's possibilities have been exhausted merely because one has achieved a degree of professional success. Ma'am taught me that there can always be another book to read, another examination to attempt, another road to explore and another version of oneself waiting to be discovered.

Sir taught me something equally valuable, but very different.

If Ma'am taught me aspiration, Sir taught me equilibrium.

He has always seemed to possess a certain groundedness—a belief in stability, simplicity and the ability to remain content without becoming complacent. Through him I gradually understood that not every ambition in life will be fulfilled, and that an unfulfilled ambition need not become a lifelong source of bitterness.

Life is not a race in which we must constantly look at the person ahead of us and lament the distance between them and us. There will always be people who have travelled farther. There will also be many who, for reasons of circumstance, opportunity or fate, have remained behind. Neither comparison should determine the worth of our own journey.

There is dignity in aspiration, but there is wisdom in contentment.

Sir embodies that balance for me.

He has now closed the pathological laboratory that he ran for years. These days, much of his happiness comes from the farm he lovingly nurtures. He has his own poetic vision for it. He dreams of developing it into a farmhouse where, after retirement, friends can come and stay with him—away from the noise and hurry of ordinary life, amidst green fields and trees, waking to the sound of birds.

There is something deeply beautiful about that dream.

We spend so much of our younger lives imagining success in terms of titles, positions, money and recognition. Perhaps with age we slowly discover that success can also mean having a patch of earth you love, a few trees whose growth you have watched, friends with whom silence is comfortable, and enough time to listen to birds in the morning.

In that sense, Sir and Ma'am have taught me two seemingly opposite but ultimately complementary lessons: never stop dreaming, and never postpone living.

Behind Ma'am's extraordinary professional journey, I have also watched Sir's quiet support. He never needed to occupy the centre stage. As she moved from microbiology to social work, from the pathological laboratory to law, and from advocacy to the judiciary, he stood beside her. Sometimes the most consequential contribution a person makes to another's success cannot be written on a résumé. It consists simply of saying: Go ahead. I am here.

Perhaps that is what companionship at its finest means.

As I look back today, I increasingly realise that human beings are never entirely self-made.

We often like the expression "self-made" because it celebrates effort, perseverance and individual agency. Those things certainly matter. But none of us is constructed out of our efforts alone. We are also made by the affection we receive, the opportunities someone creates for us, the teacher who refuses to give up on us, the friend who stays during difficult times, the stranger who opens a door, the parent who sacrifices silently, and sometimes by a handwritten letter telling a struggling child that he is capable of flying.

Our lives are made as much by encounters as by endeavours.

Perhaps that is why I think of Sir and Ma'am as one of the most beautiful accidents of my life.

They did not know, when they met a Class IX boy, what course his life would eventually take. Neither did I. They simply chose to care. They chose to encourage. They chose to remain patient when patience was needed most. And somewhere in that process, without consciously setting out to do so, they helped build a human being.

Years have passed. The schoolboy grew up. Life took him through many places, institutions, successes, disappointments and responsibilities. But some things remained.

Even today, speaking to Sir and Ma'am does something peculiar to me. Their words can still awaken the confidence of that teenager who once needed someone to tell him that his present difficulties did not define his future.

And Ma'am's old words remain with me:

"Stretch your wings and fly as high as you can. We are there with you."

Perhaps I have spent much of my life trying to live up to that faith.

Whatever little I have been able to achieve, whatever confidence I have gathered along the way, and whatever dreams I still dare to pursue contain, somewhere within them, a little of Sir and Ma'am.

Life teaches us that some debts cannot—and perhaps should not—be repaid. To repay a debt is to close an account. But how does one close an account of affection? How does one calculate the value of confidence given to a child when he had very little of his own?

Such debts are not repaid.

They are carried forward.

Perhaps the best way of honouring those who believed in us is to believe in someone else when their own faith is failing—to tell another struggling young person, with the same conviction with which Ma'am once told me:

You are capable of more than you presently imagine.

Sir and Ma'am entered my life as an accident.

They stayed as a blessing.

And if there is one thing I wish they always knew, it is simply this: the faith they placed in a struggling schoolboy was not lost. It travelled with him. It still does.

Shri Pravin More: The Police Officer Who Inspired Me

Shri Pravin More holds a special place in my memories and in my life. When I first met him, he was a young, handsome police officer, probably in his mid-twenties, if my memory serves me well. I was a village boy, curious about the world but unfamiliar with much of it. He had come to our village on official duty. What began as a brief conversation became a relationship of encouragement and affection that has lasted through many changes in our lives.

I grew up in Kukkameta, a small village near the dense forests of Abujhmarh, on the Maharashtra side of the border with what was then Madhya Pradesh and is now Chhattisgarh. The forest was part of our everyday life. It gave us fruits, familiar paths, places to play and a world to explore. But alongside those happy childhood memories, I also remember the presence of armed men and women. Naxalite activities affected our village and the surrounding areas, shaping village life in ways that we children could feel without fully understanding.

We called them Naxalwadis in those days. The name “Maoists” became more common in later conversations, particularly after the People’s War Group and the Maoist Communist Centre of India merged in September 2004 to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist). Their Maoist ideology, of course, existed before that merger. As a child, I knew little about these organisational names. I knew the people who came to our village, the guns they carried and the songs they sang. 

Only much later did I understand the strategic importance of the forests in which we lived. Under Kondapalli Seetharamaiah, the People’s War leadership sought to establish a rear base in the wider Dandakaranya region. The idea was to have forest areas where armed squads could take shelter, recover from pressure elsewhere and build their organisation. Accounts of the movement describe squads entering this region in 1980 as part of that strategy. Our village belonged to the wider forest belt into which this movement spread. What was home to us was, for an armed organisation, also a place of strategic value. 

During my childhood, however, none of this appeared to us as a strategy drawn up by distant leaders. It appeared as people walking into the village with weapons, calling meetings and speaking to our elders. Police presence was less extensive than it became in later years. In my memory, the Naxalites often moved through our surroundings with considerable confidence. Their arrival was something villagers recognised and responded to, sometimes with familiarity and sometimes with fear.

The men were commonly addressed as Dadas and the women as Akkas. These were familiar forms of address in our local surroundings. They made the visitors sound like people connected with village life. As children, we did not always feel the same immediate fear of them that we felt when policemen arrived. The Naxalites came repeatedly, spoke to people and sometimes interacted warmly with children. Familiarity affected the way we saw them, even though we knew they carried guns.

I have a memory of sitting and playing on the laps of some of the Naxalite women. It remains a strange and deeply personal part of my childhood. I did not know their histories or understand the choices that had brought them into an armed movement. I was simply a child receiving attention from an adult. Today, I can remember that moment of warmth while also understanding the violence and coercion associated with the organisation they served.

I also remember hearing adults speak about the difficulty of having children while living that underground life. Whether those conversations described particular women or a wider practice, I could not have known. What reached me was the idea that their lives allowed little room for an ordinary family. We heard accounts of squads travelling long distances through forests after encounters with the police, moving through the night to avoid another confrontation. To a child, these stories were both frightening and difficult to imagine.

There were also local people known as Sangam members. They acted as links between the Naxalites and villagers, carrying messages and helping maintain contact. Some acquired considerable influence through this role. In my recollection, certain people used it to intimidate others. They became local dadas in another sense—people whose displeasure villagers wished to avoid. Their authority did not come from any responsibility to the village as a whole, but from their association with armed men and women.

The Naxalites also used songs to attract attention and communicate their ideas. I remember gatherings where they sang about the red flag, exploitation and the conduct of officials. We children listened, sometimes remembering the tune more clearly than the words. The songs made their message easier to follow than a long political speech. They could be repeated, discussed and carried into everyday conversations.

One line has stayed faintly in my memory: “Yerra jhenda keyanta ro Madiya Dada.” I cannot now guarantee the exact wording or pronunciation. As I understood it then, the red flag was calling the Madiya people to come together. In later years, I connected its message with the familiar communist appeal for workers to unite. At the time, however, it was simply a song we heard in our village, addressed to people whose language and surroundings we knew.

Another song, which I remember as being in Telugu, sounded something like: “Sale tum, sale male tum … i polisalu maku cheptava, mamen timtava…” The remaining words are unclear in my memory. We understood its message to be that policemen abused villagers while also taking food or receiving hospitality from them. I offer this as a childhood recollection of its meaning, rather than an exact translation. What mattered locally was the accusation it carried: those who came with official authority could depend on villagers and still treat them badly.

I believe such songs found an audience partly because some people had experienced unnecessary interference by police or forest officials. An encounter that left a villager feeling humiliated could make the next speech against the state sound convincing. The Naxalites used those grievances to gain attention and support. They also urged people to oppose development activities, describing them as “jhute vikas karyakram”—false programmes of development. Looking back, I can see how actual grievances could be drawn into a political campaign that also discouraged opportunities villagers needed.

This was the atmosphere in which I met Shri Pravin More. We were afraid of the police, yet fascinated by their khaki uniforms, vehicles and weapons. Whenever policemen entered the village, we boys gathered at a little distance to watch. We wanted to see their guns closely, but their stern manner made us cautious. Our curiosity kept us nearby; our fear kept us from going too close.

He had come to investigate an incident in which one villager had attacked another with an axe. Fortunately, the injury had not been fatal. A group of us stood watching in our worn clothes. He noticed me and called me closer. I cannot say what caught his attention. Perhaps it was my curiosity, or perhaps the way I responded when he spoke.

In a firm voice, he asked which class I was studying in. I told him that I had appeared for my seventh-standard examination and planned to go to Gadchiroli, our district headquarters, for high school. I must have sounded confident despite my nervousness. He listened and asked me to meet him at the police station in Laheri, a somewhat larger village about six kilometres from Kukkameta.

I felt happy about that invitation. An officer whom I admired had taken an interest in my studies. I had heard that he was good to villagers and strict in dealing with Naxalites and their supporters. His personality left an immediate impression on me. I wanted to meet him again, although I did not yet understand what that simple wish might mean in the circumstances of our village.

Soon afterwards, I secured admission to the government boys’ hostel in Gadchiroli. Before leaving, I wanted to visit him. My father and other villagers advised me against it. They feared that the Naxalites might interpret a visit to the police station as evidence that I was an informer. Their concern was real. In an area affected by armed conflict, even an innocent meeting could create suspicion.

For me, however, the visit was about school, encouragement and a person I wanted to know better. I could not forget his invitation. Eventually, I went to Laheri and met him at the police station. I arrived with some hesitation, but he welcomed me warmly. The officer whose voice had first made me nervous was pleasant, cordial and caring.

He spoke about my education and several other matters, some of which I understood only partly. I was impressed by his manner. He gave me time and treated my hopes seriously. Before I left, he asked me to write to him regularly. I began doing so, and he replied to every letter I wrote.

Those replies meant more to me than I could have explained then. I was a boy studying away from home, trying to adjust to a different place. His letters assured me that someone remembered me and wanted me to do well. He had difficult responsibilities, yet he found time to respond. His encouragement became a steady presence in my school life.

In the eighth standard, I learned about the National Defence Academy at Khadakwasla, Pune. I became interested in preparing for its entrance examination and wrote to him about it. He replied with encouragement. He wanted to help me continue my education in Pune and prepare for that ambition. During Diwali and summer holidays, whenever I returned home, I made a point of meeting him. He was always welcoming, and I came away feeling more confident.

Then I appeared for my tenth-standard examination. I had promised him that I would score above ninety per cent, but I obtained around seventy per cent. Today, I would not describe those marks as a failure. At that age, however, the difference between my promise and my result weighed heavily on me. I felt embarrassed and thought that I had disappointed him.

Instead of writing honestly about what had happened, I stopped writing altogether. He had never made his care dependent on a percentage. That condition existed in my own mind. I was too young to understand that the people who encourage us often want to hear from us most when things have not gone according to plan.

Around that time, he was transferred, and I lost track of his posting. Through others, I heard that he was deeply involved in anti-Naxalite operations. Our contact ended, but my regard for him remained. Whenever I remembered the people who had encouraged me in my early years, I thought of the officer at Laheri who had answered my letters.

Much later, I found him through Facebook. By then, I had completed my M.A. and M.Phil. at Jawaharlal Nehru University and was working as a Private Secretary to a Member of Parliament. My life had taken me from a small forest village to the national capital. When we spoke again, he was happy to learn about my journey.

His warmth had not changed. There was no sense that I had to earn my place again after the long silence. But he did ask why I had not remained in touch. He told me that he could have helped me. Hearing that, I thought of the schoolboy who had hidden his result and stopped writing. I wished that boy had understood how much kindness was still available to him.

I was even more moved to discover that his family knew about me. His brothers, sisters and members of his extended family had heard of me during the years when we were out of contact. I had continued to think about him, but I had not realised that he also continued to remember and speak about me.

Meanwhile, his career had taken him into further responsibilities, including service with the United Nations and work as an Assistant Commissioner of Police in Maharashtra’s Anti-Corruption Bureau. I felt proud to learn of his service. Yet the qualities I admired most were already familiar: his confidence, his goodwill and his ability to make another person feel valued.

Today, I feel like a member of his family. When I look back at my childhood, I remember forests, friends, songs and the uneasiness of living amid armed conflict. Within those memories, his presence remains especially clear. He showed me a form of authority that could be firm and still be caring.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if he had not called me out of that group of boys. Perhaps he saw the conversation as a small gesture. For me, it became a lasting source of encouragement. Shri Pravin More noticed a village child, listened to his hopes and asked him to write. Years later, when that child returned as a grown man, he welcomed him with the same affection.

The Republic Must Never Retreat : Kashmir, the Pandit Exodus and the Imperative of National Resolve

A nation reveals its character through the people it protects, and those it leaves unprotected. Its strength is tested when a citizen is threatened, when an armed organisation challenges its authority, and when political convenience competes with the duty to act. Kashmir’s recent history confronts Bharat with this test. The persecution and displacement of Kashmiri Pandits exposed a grievous failure of protection. The decades that followed exposed an equally troubling failure to deliver justice.

The renewed prosecution concerning Sarla Bhat, a young Kashmiri Pandit nurse murdered in Srinagar in April 1990, has reopened these wounds. On 29 June 2026, Jammu and Kashmir’s State Investigation Agency filed a chargesheet naming Yasin Malik and four other alleged Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front operatives in her abduction and killing. Thirty-six years separate the crime from this development. That interval should trouble the conscience of the Republic. For me, the issue reaches beyond one case. It concerns the relationship between national power and human dignity. A State that cannot secure a citizen’s right to remain in her home, practise her profession and live without intimidation has failed in a foundational responsibility. No vocabulary of political accommodation can make that failure acceptable.

The nurse who remained

Sarla Bhat worked at the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences—SKIMS. She was twenty-seven. At an age when life should have opened before her, she became a victim of the violence consuming the Valley. Her vocation required care for others; the State owed her protection. The prosecution reportedly names Mohammad Yasin Malik, Abdul Hameed Sheikh, Ghulam Mohammad Taploo, Mohammad Yousuf Sofi and Khursheed Ahmad Chalkoo. Three of the other accused are dead, while Chalkoo is reported to be absconding. Responsibility for this particular crime must be determined through trial. Malik’s existing conviction in another terrorism-related case does not itself establish his guilt in Sarla Bhat’s murder.

This legal distinction should sharpen our insistence on prosecution. Justice requires evidence, witnesses, competent investigation and a reasoned judgment. It requires the State to do the difficult work of establishing responsibility. Allowing a case to remain unresolved for decades is an abdication of that duty. Time does not heal such injustice automatically. It can destroy evidence, silence witnesses and permit perpetrators to die without answering for their actions. For families, the unanswered question survives every anniversary: why did the institutions responsible for justice take so long? Sarla Bhat’s name must therefore stand for both remembrance and accountability. Her life deserves more than periodic outrage.

Terror sought to change Kashmir’s society

The targeting of Kashmiri Pandits was an assault upon their continued presence in their ancestral homeland. Its consequences were demographic, cultural and psychological. Individual killings communicated a threat to a much larger community: ordinary life could no longer be assumed to be safe. Advocate and BJP leader Tika Lal Taploo was murdered on 14 September 1989. Retired Sessions Judge Neelkanth Ganjoo was killed on 4 November that year. Doordarshan official Lassa Kaul was murdered in February 1990. These attacks struck people engaged in law, public life and communication, professions through which a community participates in society.

The writer and social worker Sarwanand Koul Premi and his son Virender Koul were abducted and murdered in 1990. Investigative action in their case has also gathered renewed attention in 2026. Their deaths remind us that scholarship, cultural contribution and goodwill offered no reliable protection against the gun. I reject attempts to reduce these events to an unfortunate disturbance accompanying a political movement. The murder of civilians cannot acquire legitimacy through a political objective. A demand advanced through intimidation must be judged by the coercion it imposes upon those who do not consent. The Pandit tragedy belongs at the centre of our understanding of Kashmir. Any account that treats it as peripheral presents an incomplete history of the conflict.

Refugees within their own country

The expression “exodus” is familiar enough to conceal its human meaning. It describes families leaving houses built by their ancestors, abandoning livelihoods and travelling towards an uncertain future. It describes children whose education was disrupted and elderly people who lost the surroundings that gave their lives continuity. A home is more than property. It holds language, memory, relationships and belonging. Displacement breaks these connections together. Even when material recovery becomes possible, the loss of a lived world remains.

The Ministry of Home Affairs’ Annual Report 2021–22 records that militancy in 1989–90 drove large numbers of people, predominantly Kashmiri Hindus and Pandits, alongside smaller numbers of Sikh and Muslim families, from their ancestral residences. It records 44,684 migrant families comprising 154,712 individuals registered with the Jammu relief authorities, and another 21,333 migrant families settled elsewhere in the country. These administrative figures illustrate the scale of displacement; they are not a complete census of the historical Pandit exodus. Citizens driven from their homes within their own country suffered the collapse of a promise implicit in citizenship: that the Republic would defend their right to belong where they had always belonged. Their subsequent achievements cannot excuse that collapse. Families rebuilt their lives through education, enterprise and extraordinary endurance. Their resilience deserves admiration. It does not absolve institutions of responsibility for the circumstances that made such endurance necessary.

The moral failure of selective remembrance

I have little patience with a public discourse that becomes evasive when Kashmiri Pandits demand acknowledgment. Secularism should require equal concern for victims. When the religious identity of the victim determines the willingness to recognise suffering, secularism becomes a political convenience. The persecution of a Hindu minority in Kashmir deserves unequivocal condemnation. Its recognition requires no preliminary apology and no permission from those concerned about its political implications. The dignity of victims cannot be subordinated to the reputation of an ideology.

Terror also killed Muslims who stood in its way. National Conference leader Mohammad Yousuf Halwai was murdered in August 1989. Mirwaiz Mohammad Farooq was assassinated on 21 May 1990; police announced the arrest of two accused, Javaid Ahmad Bhat and Zahoor Ahmad Bhat, in 2023. Their alleged roles remain matters for judicial determination. These deaths reveal the wider reach of intimidation. Recognising them reinforces the case against terrorism. It demonstrates how armed organisations sought power over Kashmir’s people, including those they claimed to represent. A nationalist response must defend every loyal and peaceful citizen while identifying the organised violence that threatened them. Responsibility belongs to perpetrators and their support networks. It must be pursued precisely and relentlessly.

December 1989 and the price of capitulation

The kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed was a decisive demonstration of terrorist leverage. The daughter of Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, she was undertaking medical internship training when abducted on 8 December 1989. She was released on 13 December after the release of five imprisoned militants. My assessment of that concession is severe. It showed armed organisations that kidnapping could compel the government to surrender something they could not obtain through lawful means. A State confronting terrorism must understand the consequences of the incentives it creates.

The abducted woman’s life was precious. Precisely because lives are precious, the government had to consider the future citizens who might be endangered by a successful coercive precedent. The immediate crisis demanded urgency; the strategic consequences demanded foresight. That decision alone did not produce Kashmir’s insurgency. But it exposed weakness at a moment when terrorist organisations were testing the State’s resolve. In such circumstances, perceptions of retreat can become operational opportunities. Governments must prepare for hostage crises before they occur. Intelligence, response capabilities and clear decision-making are essential. Improvisation under pressure is an expensive substitute for preparedness.

Strong government is a national requirement

My study of International Relations and International Organizations at JNU strengthened my interest in institutions, diplomacy and international norms. Kashmir strengthened my conviction that these must rest upon effective power. I identify with a realist understanding of national security. Kautilya’s concern with statecraft and Machiavelli’s attention to the consequences of political weakness speak to a reality that democratic governments cannot evade: authority that cannot protect becomes authority without sufficient meaning.

For Bharat, a strong government must be able to make decisions, sustain them and accept responsibility for their consequences. It must prevent electoral calculations from paralysing security policy. It must ensure that intelligence reaches decision-makers and that operational agencies possess the resources and direction to act. Coalition government is not inherently incapable of this. Nor does a majority automatically produce courage. My objection is to political dependence that turns every necessary decision into bargaining among elites while citizens remain exposed. The essential question is whether national security commands priority. Parliamentary arrangements must serve the Republic’s responsibilities. Those responsibilities cannot wait until every political participant finds action convenient.

Political access must never displace justice

For years, separatist leaders received attention and access within efforts to negotiate a settlement. Yasin Malik met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2006 as part of that engagement. Governments considered dialogue a means of reducing conflict. The enduring question is whether sufficient attention was paid to accountability. Engagement must have conditions and consequences. A claim to have renounced violence requires examination through conduct. Political access must never become a substitute for investigating unresolved crimes.

Malik was sentenced to life imprisonment by a special NIA court on 25 May 2022 in a case concerning terrorism and secession-related activities in 2016–17. This established criminal accountability in that case. Proceedings concerning other allegations must follow their own evidentiary course. I welcome a State prepared to pursue such accountability. The families of victims should not have to watch influential figures occupy public platforms indefinitely while their own cases gather dust. Dialogue is one instrument of statecraft. Prosecution is another responsibility altogether. A competent government can negotiate where necessary while ensuring that political prominence offers no shelter from law.

Article 370: the importance of a decision

I support the Modi government’s 2019 decision to end Jammu and Kashmir’s special constitutional status under Article 370. It demonstrated political resolve on a question that successive governments had treated as exceptionally difficult to address. Jammu and Kashmir already belonged to India. The decision changed constitutional arrangements within the Union and sought a fuller common framework of governance. Its significance lay in the willingness to act despite predictions that the consequences would be unmanageable.

The Supreme Court upheld the abrogation in December 2023. The judgment also addressed representative government and the restoration of statehood. Constitutional integration must produce institutions through which citizens participate confidently in national and local life. Nation-building demands sustained work. It includes constitutional decisions, administrative reform, infrastructure, security and public participation. A government cannot permit the threat of violence to become a permanent veto over its constitutional authority. I give the Modi government credit for exercising that authority. The responsibility now is to consolidate the gains and address the vulnerabilities that remain.

Resolve must be measured through results

The security record provides grounds for recognising substantial improvement. A July 2024 parliamentary reply reported that terrorist-initiated incidents fell from 228 in 2018 to 46 in 2023. Civilian deaths fell from 55 to 14, while security-force deaths declined from 91 to 30. These reductions matter. They represent fewer lives destroyed and a diminished space for organised violence. They support the case for sustained security operations, intelligence coordination and action against terrorist financing and support structures. The 2024 Assembly elections, with a turnout of 63.88 per cent, demonstrated substantial participation in representative politics. A secure democratic arena gives citizens the opportunity to shape their future through institutions rather than intimidation.

But realism demands vigilance. The April 2025 Pahalgam attack killed twenty-six people. The NIA subsequently chargesheeted Lashkar-e-Taiba/The Resistance Front and identified the alleged attackers as Faisal Jatt alias Suleman Shah, Habeeb Tahir alias Jibran and Hamza Afghani. These are the agency’s findings and allegations in the case. Pahalgam demonstrates why improved security must never become complacency. Terrorist networks seek opportunities even after losing territory, cadres or public influence. One successful atrocity can devastate families and threaten confidence built over years. The answer is persistence: preventing infiltration, strengthening intelligence, disrupting financing and pursuing those who organise and facilitate attacks.

Power must protect ordinary life

My interactions with officials in Bharat’s security establishment have deepened my appreciation of the demands placed upon those responsible for protection. Their work requires judgment, endurance and cooperation across institutions. These conversations inform my perspective; public evidence remains the basis for the factual claims made here. Security personnel require clear political backing and the authority to respond effectively to armed threats. Operational freedom must function within law and professional discipline. That is how a democratic State maintains both effectiveness and legitimacy.

I do not seek a Republic that merely displays strength. I seek one whose strength can be experienced by its citizens: a nurse reaching her workplace safely, a teacher entering a classroom without fear and a family remaining in its ancestral home. For displaced Pandits, rehabilitation must mean credible choices concerning return, livelihood, property and security. Return cannot be demanded as a symbolic demonstration of normalcy. The State must create conditions that make it sustainable. Justice must also become systematic. Old cases require dedicated investigation, witness support and competent prosecution. Remembrance belongs in scholarship, public institutions and education, so that the tragedy survives beyond political occasions.

The lesson of Kashmir is uncompromising. When the State retreats, organised violence advances and vulnerable citizens pay. National resolve is therefore a duty owed to human life. Sarla Bhat, Tika Lal Taploo, Neelkanth Ganjoo, Lassa Kaul, Sarwanand Koul Premi and countless others must remain within our national memory. Their names demand more than sympathy. They demand a Republic determined to protect the living and pursue justice for the dead. That is the nationalism I believe in: confident in Bharat’s sovereignty, firm against terrorism and unwilling to abandon a citizen because protection has become politically difficult. The Republic must never retreat from that responsibility.

The Distance Between a Right and Its Realisation

There is a considerable distance between possessing a right and being able to exercise it. A constitutional provision may establish an entitlement, a government order may prescribe a procedure, and an institution may announce its commitment to equality. Yet, for the individual standing outside its gates, the decisive question remains: will these promises make a difference to my life?

I often return to this question when discussions about reservation and social justice become heated. As a teacher at the University of Delhi, and as someone whose roots lie in a village near the Abujhmarh region, I encounter these issues through both academic debate and lived proximity to tribal society. My own community is non-tribal, but generations of association with the Madiya people have shaped my understanding of their world. That proximity does not authorise me to speak for every tribal person. It does, however, make it difficult to view their aspirations as an abstract policy question.

The debate surrounding the University Grants Commission’s equity regulations has brought these concerns into sharper focus. Behind arguments about definitions, institutional authority and possible misuse lies a larger question: how far has our society travelled towards making equal citizenship a practical reality?

My answer is that we have travelled a meaningful distance, but the journey remains unfinished.

Progress and its uneven reach

The achievements of independent Bharat deserve recognition. Education and affirmative action have opened opportunities that earlier generations could scarcely imagine. The emergence of teachers, administrators, professionals and public representatives from historically disadvantaged communities is an important achievement of our constitutional democracy.

But the success of some individuals cannot become the measure of an entire community’s circumstances. A family’s first graduate may represent extraordinary progress while neighbouring families remain far from completing school. A tribal scholar appointed to a university does not demonstrate that every student from a remote settlement now competes under comparable conditions.

Official figures illustrate this unevenness. According to the Ministry of Education’s AISHE 2021–22 findings, the higher education Gross Enrolment Ratio for Scheduled Tribes rose from 13.5 in 2014–15 to 21.2 in 2021–22. This improvement deserves appreciation. Yet the overall ratio stood at 28.4, leaving a substantial gap. The figures establish neither the cause of every disadvantage nor the experience of every student. They nevertheless challenge the assumption that educational equality has already been achieved.

The public debate often moves too quickly from acknowledging progress to questioning the continued need for support. I find this troubling. If measures intended to expand opportunity have helped people advance, their success should encourage a careful assessment of what remains to be done. It should not automatically become an argument for withdrawing them.

What a student carries into the classroom

Teachers know that students arrive with different preparations, resources and expectations. Some have attended well-equipped schools, received private coaching and grown up in households familiar with university life. Others have negotiated interrupted schooling, financial uncertainty and the absence of anyone who could guide them through an application form.

For a student from a remote tribal settlement, the university may involve several transitions at once: geographical, linguistic, academic and social. A language spoken confidently at home may find little space in the classroom. A student accustomed to a different educational environment may hesitate to ask a question, even when the capacity to understand is present.

Such hesitation can easily be mistaken for lack of ability. Silence can become an informal judgment about merit.

I believe teachers must be alert to this possibility without assuming that every tribal student has the same needs. Communities are internally diverse, and individuals possess different strengths. What matters is whether an institution can identify a student’s actual difficulties and respond constructively.

Admission, therefore, is only the beginning. A delayed scholarship, unaffordable accommodation or lack of academic guidance can undermine an opportunity already secured. Equality must be examined throughout the educational journey, including the ability to remain, succeed and progress.

The constitutional understanding of equality

Our Constitution anticipated that equal treatment alone would not erase inherited disadvantage. Articles 15(4) and 15(5) enable special provisions for the advancement of socially and educationally backward classes and Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Article 16(4) provides a constitutional basis for reservation in public employment for backward classes inadequately represented in state services.

Article 46 places a further responsibility upon the State: promoting the educational and economic interests of weaker sections, particularly Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and protecting them from social injustice and exploitation. As a Directive Principle, it guides public policy rather than functioning in the same manner as an individually enforceable fundamental right. Together, these provisions demonstrate that the constitutional understanding of equality includes purposeful efforts to address disadvantage.

I regard affirmative action within this framework. It requires competent implementation, scrutiny and periodic assessment. Its benefits must reach those for whom they are intended. However, the discussion should begin with the circumstances that made such measures necessary, rather than with impatience towards their beneficiaries.

Param Pujaniya Sarsanghchalak Dr. Mohan Bhagwat ji has stressed sensitivity in approaching this subject. The RSS’s official account of his August 2025 interaction reiterated his support for constitutionally valid reservation and his assurance of standing with beneficiaries for as long as they felt its need. I find the emphasis on listening particularly significant. Those who experience disadvantage must have a meaningful place in discussions about whether it has ended.

Rights beyond the university

My association with Akhil Bharatiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram has reinforced my belief that tribal development and the protection of rights belong together. Education, livelihoods, community institutions and dignity influence one another.

A household facing insecurity over its livelihood may struggle to sustain a child’s education. A community with little effective influence over local decisions may find its priorities repeatedly overlooked. These connections explain why laws concerning self-governance and forest rights matter within a broader discussion of opportunity.

The Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, commonly known as PESA, provides safeguards for local governance in Scheduled Areas. The Forest Rights Act, 2006, recognises specified individual and community forest rights of eligible forest-dwelling Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers. Their practical effectiveness matters deeply to community security and participation.

Kalyan Ashram’s September 2015 resolution called for effective implementation of PESA, restoration of powers intended for Gram Sabhas and coordinated implementation of PESA and the Forest Rights Act. This documented position reflects an understanding that development requires communities to exercise rights, rather than merely receive assistance.

For me, the principle extends naturally to education. Tribal youth must be able to participate in institutions that shape knowledge, policy and public life.

An administrative decision with social consequences

The controversy over the 13-point faculty reservation roster offered a revealing example of how procedure affects opportunity. To someone unfamiliar with university recruitment, the difference between a department-based roster and a university-based roster might appear technical. For communities seeking representation, the choice of unit was consequential.

I recall with satisfaction that it was in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, that I brought the implications of the 13-point faculty reservation roster to the attention of senior functionaries of Akhil Bharatiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram. They immediately recognised the seriousness of the matter, particularly its consequences for tribal candidates aspiring to appointments as Assistant Professors. A delegation was constituted, of which I was a member, and in February 2019 we met the Union Ministers responsible for Education, Tribal Affairs and Home Affairs, seeking an ordinance to address the issue.

Parliament subsequently passed legislation restoring the university or college, rather than the department or subject, as the unit for reservation in covered Central Educational Institutions, thereby reinstating the earlier system based on the 200-point roster. For me, this experience demonstrated how timely engagement and collective effort could help protect constitutional safeguards and the aspirations of tribal youth.

The episode further strengthened my conviction that policies must be judged through their operation. A commitment expressed in an advertisement can lose much of its meaning if the procedure governing appointments does not provide effective opportunities.

This is why attention to apparently technical matters is indispensable. The structure of a roster, the treatment of vacancies and the criteria used in assessment can shape careers and representation over many years.

Understanding the UGC debate

The University Grants Commission (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026, notified on 13 January 2026, sought to establish institutional arrangements against discrimination, including Equal Opportunity Centres, complaint procedures and appeals.

A major point of contention concerned their definitions. The specific definition of caste-based discrimination referred to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes, while the broader definition of discrimination extended more generally to stakeholders. The relationship between these provisions became central to the controversy.

On 29 January 2026, the Supreme Court directed that the regulations be kept in abeyance and that the 2012 equity regulations continue until further orders. The Court identified ambiguities and questions requiring detailed examination. Its intervention was an interim order, not a final determination of constitutional validity. In August, the Centre informed the Court that the regulations were being reconsidered.

I believe this legal context requires a considered response. Supporting protection against discrimination does not oblige us to defend every formulation in a regulation. Equally, identifying weaknesses in a formulation does not establish that institutional safeguards are unnecessary.

We should seek a clear, fair and effective framework. Every person deserves protection from discrimination, while the framework must remain attentive to the particular disadvantages experienced by historically marginalised communities.

The question of misuse

Concerns about misuse should be examined when evidence supports them. No responsible institution should disregard deliberately fabricated allegations. Yet allegations against individuals cannot justify suspicion towards an entire community.

A fair complaint mechanism must protect both the complainant and the respondent. It should provide confidentiality, impartial inquiry, an opportunity to answer allegations, reasoned findings and an effective appeal. Protection from retaliation is equally necessary if people are to report wrongdoing without fear.

An unsubstantiated complaint is not automatically a malicious one. Evidence may be insufficient, unavailable or difficult to establish. Deliberate falsification requires its own fair determination.

Conversely, an adverse academic judgment or an ordinary disagreement should not automatically be treated as discrimination. Context and evidence matter. Clear procedures can help distinguish these situations while preserving confidence in the institution.

I see fairness as essential to the durability of protective measures. People are more likely to trust safeguards when they know that complaints will be taken seriously and decisions reached impartially.

When “unsuitable” needs an explanation

Faculty recruitment presents another challenge. Universities need professional discretion to assess candidates. Minimum eligibility cannot, by itself, guarantee appointment. Nevertheless, discretion should be exercised through criteria that are consistent, recorded and open to appropriate review.

Official figures presented to Parliament showed that, as on 30 June 2025, Central Universities had 704 sanctioned Scheduled Tribe Assistant Professor posts, of which 595 were filled. At Professor level, 24 of 144 sanctioned ST posts were filled. The same response stated that figures for candidates declared “Not Found Suitable”, or NFS, were not maintained centrally.

These numbers require examination. They do not establish that every vacancy resulted from discrimination, nor do they explain every recruitment outcome. But they make it reasonable to ask whether institutions adequately understand the barriers to representation.

Where eligible candidates repeatedly appear before committees and reserved posts repeatedly remain vacant, a recorded explanation becomes important. Published assessment criteria, documented evaluations, category-wise recruitment information and scrutiny of recurring NFS outcomes would strengthen accountability.

Academic excellence benefits from credible selection. Qualified candidates should know that their work will receive fair consideration, and institutions should be able to explain how they reached their decisions.

The responsibility that remains

As a teacher, I believe our responsibility includes examining the judgments we make about students and colleagues. Accent, confidence, social familiarity or access to influential networks should not become substitutes for assessing knowledge and potential.

As someone concerned with tribal advancement, I also believe we must listen carefully. Communities need opportunities to articulate their priorities, assess institutional performance and participate in policy decisions. Their dignity requires recognition of their agency.

Affirmative action should be accompanied by scholarships delivered on time, affordable accommodation, mentoring, language assistance and transparent recruitment. Each addresses a different stage at which an opportunity can become inaccessible.

The debate should ultimately bring us closer to institutions worthy of public trust. We need safeguards strong enough to confront injustice, procedures fair enough to protect everyone and evidence reliable enough to guide improvement.

I remain convinced that withdrawing protections prematurely would disregard the distance many people still have to travel. Our task is to reduce that distance through sustained and accountable work.

A constitutional right acquires its fullest meaning when the person entitled to it can exercise it with confidence. For the tribal student entering a university, the scholar seeking an appointment and the community seeking a voice in its future, that confidence remains a measure of how well we have fulfilled our democratic promise.