Student protests offer hope in India: Rajan

Bloomberg

Raghuram Rajan, former head of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and an outspoken critic of several of prime minister Narendra Modi’s economic and social policies, said student-led protests in the country show that the ideals of the secular nation are still valued by the youth.
“It is they, who never marched to win freedom, but today march to preserve it, who give us hope,” Rajan wrote in a post on LinkedIn, ahead of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the republic following independence from British rule. Rajan is currently a professor at the Chicago Booth School of Business.
During his time at India’s central bank, while Rajan raised the country’s profile by speaking out regularly against unconventional monetary policy in the US and elsewhere, it was his forays on social ills that made him a political threat to Modi’s Hindu nationalist government. Rajan lambasted “venal politicians” in speeches and called for religious tolerance at a time when Modi faced criticism for his silence after a Muslim man was murdered for allegedly eating beef.
Tensions have escalated in India after masked assailants, allegedly affiliated with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, attacked hostels in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi with rods and batons, injuring dozens of students and some professors. The BJP’s student union has blamed leftist students’ unions for the attack.
Protests have continued in India over the controversial citizenship law, resulting in 23 deaths. “When young people of diverse faiths march together, Hindus and Muslims arm-in-arm behind our national flag, rejecting artificial divides stoked by political leaders for their own gain, they show that the spirit of our constitution still burns brightly,” Rajan wrote. “One has to be truly cynical to not be moved.”
In his latest post, Rajan said the public bears responsibility in a democracy. “After all, it was the citizenry that put our leaders into office and acquiesced in their divisive manifesto, which they have taken as their marching orders,” he said.