Fear and the Beings We Learn to Despise: A Professor’s Open Letter to Students
‘For All the Students with Fear’
By Aashita Dawer
November 21, 2025
This piece is not an academic or a journalistic write-up; it is my heartfelt narrative for all the students who have internalised fear. I write this not because I want to preach, but because I feel responsible for giving you a kind and better world. It is challenging for me to recount a small (or rather, huge) incident from my life, and that too publicly, but I want all students to read and engage with my lived experience, even if they disagree.
So, here goes my anecdote:
Since childhood, I have had a phobia of lizards. Phobia to the extent that I wouldn’t enter a room if I could spot a lizard even behind a tube-light in a room. I would get nightmares of them, I would run away at the thought of them, and I felt that my life would always be confined and constrained because, well, they are everywhere! I wondered why I have the phobia; was it something in my childhood?
And yes, I can remember an incident when a lizard fell on me, and I felt fear of it immediately. But still, for almost 38 years of my life, I wondered how that one incident could instil a phobia in me so much so that I had repeated nightmares about lizards. But then in the past four years, I was able to get over the phobia, not absolutely over the fear, but definitely over the phobia. Today, I am able to sleep in the same room as the lizard, provided it is in its own space and I am in mine.
It made me retrospectively analyse and reflect on my life journey, that why the phobia existed in the first place, and now why it doesn’t anymore. Perhaps my phobia was not of the lizard itself; maybe it was a projection of the traumas I had experienced, and the lizard became an object of my perception of the threat from those people, incidents, or things. And then, throughout life, certain negative or traumatic experiences probably kept reinforcing the phobia, and each such experience kept feeding the projection onto a ‘being’ I thought I despised.
But then one day, because I was scared, one of my close friends killed a lizard, and that day, I couldn’t stop crying. It shuddered me to the core and made me question every aspect of my existence. That day got registered in my memory as the day that I, or anyone else, does not have the right to inflict injury on any being or species just because I am scared of it. It challenged my conditioning and my understanding of morality, pushing me to reflect on whether it is the lizard or I who is the threat.
Four years of reflection, and here I am today, writing this to all of you and presenting a vulnerable side of myself – that no, it was neither the lizard nor me, but the people, the incidents, the conservative social and political structures, the oppressions, and the traumas that made me perceive the lizard as a threat. I won’t go into the details of those, trusting that you understand this is my reflection on my life.
But you may wonder, why am I narrating this to you?
The answer is simple and yet full of questions for you. Perhaps I want you to reflect on whether it is the dogs, you, or, rather, the people, incidents, and the social and political conditioning that have made you scared of them. You, your friend, or a known person may have been bitten by a dog, and that can be very traumatic. I can empathise completely because I have been bitten thrice. But is it only that experience that has left the fear in you, or are there other reasons as well, and the projection is happening on a particular being? Isn’t it that we have developed conditioned reactions to perceived threats?
If that is true, then maybe, just maybe, the same has happened with the other species. It has been run over, its companions killed, its young snatched, raped and burnt. And by whom, you may ask. Not you, surely, but by those who are anthropocentric and believe that to be the only way the world is and should be. The power structures and institutions meant to ensure co-existence for all beings – whether class-differentiated or oppressed humans, or voiceless species – have probably failed us.
Tragically, the anthropocentric view has led to multiple ecological failures, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, air pollution, and even diseases like malaria, dengue and chikungunya, to name a few. We have ended up giving ourselves a worldview that is headed towards dystopia. But as a teacher, that is not what I want you and future generations to head towards.
Fear is a powerful tool in the hands of oppressors – be aware of this. It can push you towards apathy, even when that’s not who you are. You are kind, you are empathetic. Take a leap of faith, toward other species and toward yourself. Challenge your conditioning by engaging, by reading and by seeking help to face your fears.
To quote the French writer, philosopher and feminist Simone de Beauvoir from “The Ethics of Ambiguity,” “A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom,” i.e., enhancing the freedom of others enhances your own agency and freedom.
Don’t give in! If you do, then you will have to endure an unkind world, which is already facing a genocide, 59 conflicts currently happening worldwide, an impending climate crisis and a mentally depressed world.
I have trust in your kindness, as I have seen it firsthand in multiple instances, show it to the voiceless, and learn to love as I love you!
– A Teacher
[Aashita Dawer is Co-Lead, Climate and Sustainability, IDEAS, and an Associate Professor (Economics), JGLS, O.P. Jindal Global University. Views expressed are personal]
You have just read a News Briefing by Newsreel Asia, written to cut through the noise and present a single story for the day that matters to you. Certain briefings, based on media reports, seek to keep readers informed about events across India, others offer a perspective rooted in humanitarian concerns and some provide our own exclusive reporting. We encourage you to read the News Briefing each day. Our objective is to help you become not just an informed citizen, but an engaged and responsible one.