Meet Kannan Gopinathan, the officer who quit IAS over Centre's Kashmir move

Who: On August 21, Kannan Gopinathan, an officer of the Indian Administrative Service, submitted his resignation to the powers that be at the Home Ministry. His resignation letter only asked he be relieved of his service. The resignation may not have kicked up a storm if the media hadn’t asked him why he was leaving. But his answers, in the many interviews that have since followed, have polarised people with debates on whether his actions were justified. Gopinathan resigned in solidarity with the people of Jammu and Kashmir, and to reclaim his freedom of expression, he explained later.

Gopinathan is from Kottayam, Kerala. His name first made headlines when it was revealed that he had been working on the ground anonymously during the flood relief operations in Kerala last year. His bureaucratic position was unknown for eight days, until a fellow officer recognised him.

What: The ongoing clampdown in Jammu and Kashmir is a part of the process where the government revoked the special status granted to the state under Article 370. The state continues to be in shutdown mode for three weeks and counting. Since he could not express his personal opinion on the issue as an officer in the government’s service, the 33-year-old of the 2012 batch of the AGMUT cadre decided to step down and take a stand in his individual capacity.

“Locking up people and telling them it’s for their own good is difficult to justify,” he said in an interview while drawing parallels with the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. When a news anchor asked him why he’d take such a drastic step when the events in Kashmir didn’t affect him directly (he is posted in Silvassa, Dadra and Nagar Haveli), he said that the foundation of a democracy is in its people having the right to react. The events in India’s northernmost state, he said, “should affect all of us. The lack of concern, and the lack of institutional and individual response to it (curbing of freedom of expression) is what affected me the most.”

We live in strange times. There are stories, tales as old as time, hammered into the minds of every generation that instruct one not to quit. Yet, quitting in today’s date and age, especially from an envied appointment that hasn’t come easily (the civil service exams are notoriously tough to crack), is nothing short of heroic. But this hasn’t been an easy pill for many to swallow.

How: Some on the internet are calling him brave. Others say he is the new Kanhaiya Kumar, a Shah Faesal in the making: they say this not to flatter him, but to designate him as “anti-national”. Gopinathan’s actions, feel his critics, are driven by a desire to be in the limelight and indicate political ambitions. (But would that be so bad? Even when employed in the private sector in Noida, Gopinathan reportedly coached children from weaker economical backgrounds in his spare time.) But his is a story that’s still unfolding.

Where: On August 27, a note was pasted on Gopinathan’s door in his residence in Silvassa, instructing him to rejoin work until his resignation was accepted.

His actions have brought up an old moral dilemma, of what a private citizen can do when his conscience doesn’t support the people who employ him. Gopinathan has chosen to be answerable to his own conscience. One does not know if he is familiar with Dylan Thomas’ famous poem, “Do not go gentle into that good night,” extolling people to live lives that burn bright, to “rage against the dying of the light”. But it is evident he holds those principles close.