As students and citizens protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) across India, eminent cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle showcased his support for the country’s youth saying the government needs to listen to them.
“Winning elections isn’t a good enough reason for highlighting differences between us. My naive view of the world tells me that creating opportunities through liberalisation and openness and togetherness could win more elections,” Bhogle wrote in a Facebook post.
“This is a great time to be a benevolent government; to think of education, of infrastructure, of technology; to remove barriers, to embrace openness, to free this beautiful generation to take India beyond where we think it can be,” he added.
Bhogle also turned the clock back to his early 30s and reminisced about two 'quiet' leaders, former Prime Ministers Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh, who brought about a revolution in the nation.
“I was in my early 30s when two quiet gentlemen brought about a revolution. Maybe Narasimha Rao was forced into opening up India by the calamity that would have befallen us otherwise. Maybe Manmohan Singh had no choice but to deliver the budgets he did. But they saw the writing on the wall and they acted,” he explained.
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After the CAA was passed during the winter session of Parliament, thousands of citizens poured onto the streets in protest against the new law. “I think young India is speaking to us. It is telling us what it wants to be; and that it doesn’t want to be what we are telling it to be,” Bhogle wrote about the current scenario.
The IIM-A alumnus appealed to leaders and older citizens not to burden the next generation with talk of war and cultural differences.
“We have played a very nice innings. We have been lucky to be Indians for the last twenty-five years. Let us not burden the next generation with talk of war and cultural differences. They are going to be better than we were. Let them be. In a happy, open, secular, liberal world, they can become the best in the world,” he said.