"Listen to me! If you are defending what they are doing,
you will face consequences"
"Have I said that I am defending them?"
"What you are expressing, tells that you are defending
them?"
"Am I not entitled to express my opinion? Do I not have
the freedom to speak what I believe? Do I need to ask for a permission to
present my views?"
"What they are doing will not benefit to our union,
it will set negative impression among students. You should not be supporting
them"
"So when you speak it is the union's decree and when I speak,
I'd be cracking a joke? Is my opinion not an opinion at all? I also have faith
in the same union as you do"
My dear friend went away, babbling curse words [probably
against me] meanwhile I stood where I was telling myself that the person
whom I just had an argument with, who identifies himself as a student leader
might someday reach an authoritative position [probably through political
appointment] just because 'he knows some people' and behave with other people
in just the way he did with me some moments ago. The level of intolerance and
insecurity in my friend extended to the level where he felt a prospective
program that was to be organized by a dozen of undergraduate students from my
college posed a threat to 'status quo of his union'. Later I came to know that
him along with some other friends of mine had a meeting [over tea] to prevent
the said prospective program from being organized.
Instances like these worries me, it makes me delusional and
get visions of future where we Nepalese are ruled by a bunch of folks who do
not have the faintest idea that the citizenry who they [might] rule also might
have an opinion of themselves and that opinion might not corroborate with
theirs; such a system which would be more horrific than the state of Oceania
from George Orwell's 1984 which would have more strict LEA than the 'thought
police' and scarier intelligence collection method than the 'telescreen', meant
solely for the purpose of monitoring and penalizing 'differences in opinion'.
My friend and I both having been law students did not make
him have a soft spot for the opinion I had which was not similar to that of
his. Law students like ourselves who have the knowledge of rights, freedom and
liberty seem not to be sculpted in the manner as to what we have learnt, we
have no respect for each other's opinion. This makes me question, where is the
problem? Is it in the model of education that we are the part of? Or is it in
ourselves for we cannot be tolerant enough to recognize ideas which are not
identical to that of ours?
