Expressing my opinions

"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?