With the start of new session, the
political environment of the campus is on the rise and the question arises,
what the politics has to do with the educational institutions? This question
has prime importance and therefore Students for Society (SFS) presents here its
views on students’ politics.
The word ‘Politics’ nowadays is
generally recognized only as elections, violent clashes of different groups,
opportunism of vote politics and a power struggle. “Is this the only politics”?
Of course not, but merely one of its aspects. It has another aspect too,
the progressive one. As we look throughout the history, we find that
students and youth had always played an active role to end up all types of
oppressions and exploitations in our society. Shaheed Bhagat Singh is one of
those revolutionary leaders who has lead the youth, organized them under
Naujawan Bharat Sabha and HSRA to end the imperialist plunder of the working
masses of our country by British and their Indian underdogs. Their struggle had
remarkable impact on the whole independence movement. “A good government
cannot be a substitute for self-government.” With this quote in the
manifesto of Naujawan Bharat Sabha, they clearly established the plan for
complete independence rejecting all the compromising ideas prevailing then.
Their contribution is an example of how much impact the students’ has on the
development of society.
The students have always played a
crucial role in every single sphere of social and political affairs. Be it the
struggle for independence, resistance for democratic rights during the period
of emergency, the struggles of Telangana, Kashmir, North-east or the Naxalite
movement, the propelling force has always been the students. Apart from
these, Punjab has a rich history of progressive students’ movement that has
always addressed the social and political problems throughout. However there
has been struggles lead by students, on the international scale opposing the
imperialist aggression of USA and Britain on Iraq and Afghanistan. Whole Europe
has witnessed a strong opposition to fee hikes and the economic policies
adopted during this ongoing economic crisis. So is the case during the uprising
in Egypt and other Arab countries last year. In fact every social
transformation has always seen a strong involvement of youth and students and
their greater energy and enthusiasm always revolutionized the whole process of
development of the society.
The two opposite aspects of
politics: Historically
there has existed two sides of the politics altogether – one is the pro people
and the other being the anti people. The nature of politics will be decided
by whether it is in the interest of common or to serve the ruling class. Talking
of the pro people aspect, comes into the mind the French revolution where the
toiling masses overturned the feudal establishment or talk of the American war
of independence where the American people defeated the colonial British power
or the great Bolshevik Revolution of
Russia or the Vietnam war where the people militia protected their homeland
against the imperialist America. Of the Indian history comes into mind is the
great peasant uprising led by Banda Singh Bahadur in Punjab state or the
guerrilla rebellion of the Marathas under Chhatarpati Sivaji or Gadar and Kooka
movement in North, movement of Birsa Munda and Gundadhar in eastern and central
India during the colonial period.
The majority of the country still live under extreme
poverty despite all the hard work, but a small section of individuals have
flourished by exploiting the labour of those toiling masses. This exploiting
section has been in power and tries to maintain the status quo. Our
governmental policies have been proved catastrophic for the people. The
policies like Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation (LPG) have pushed
further the marginalized and denied them the basic rights. It is serving the
foreign imperialist plunder of the resources and labour of India undermining
the possibility of independent development of the country. These imperialist
forces have been in coalition with the reactionary feudal forces. The opportunist vote politics, oppression on
peoples’ movements, huge corruption, dividing the people on communal lines, the
caste politics and promoting the consumerist trends etc. all serve the
interests of these exploiting sections and represents their brand of politics. So
these opposite aspects of the politics crop up due to different interests of
the sections of society, a manifestation of concrete social realities.
Educational campuses and Politics: We also observe the reflection of this anti-people politics in the
campuses of educational institutions, where there have been a deliberate effort
to ‘de-politicise the students’. The students are advised to stay away
from politics and the student unions are not allowed to exist in most of the
professional colleges and deemed universities.
‘Politics
is only waste of time’, ‘ordinary people have nothing to do with it’, ‘campus
elections are platform of power struggle and violence’ etc. These ideas are
just the reflection of the vulgar parliamentary politics of our country but
being propagated and promoted by a section of media and authorities to build an
anti-student-politics atmosphere. The main driving force behind this nature of
anti-student politics of the ruling classes lies in the ever existing
probability of nurturing a progressive students’ movement that would question
the existing exploitative system and organise the broader masses to change it
as Shaheed Bhagat Singh did.
Whenever, there is a democratic environment
for campus politics, it has been crushed under the name of ‘decriminalisation’
the politics and preventing violence. However there has never been any action
on some elements, which have vulgarised the whole student politics and turned
it into a battleground for clashes of different power groups. Such
goon-politics can be seen as violent clashes, threatening and forcing students
to vote for them etc. These groups generally have support of police and the
administration. The socio-economic reality of our society is such that the
feudal culture, casteism, fascism, patriarchy and self-centredness exist here and
is manifested as vulgar politics inside the campus. The energy of youth is
exploited by glamorising the politics and promoting heroism and consumerism to
create work force for this vulgar politics. All this results in distribution of
alcohol and parties are organised during elections in order to buy the votes
and grab the power at council. Most of organisations, instead of addressing the
issues of students and broader masses, work for the petty interests of some
individuals and the students don’t have any active role in their decision
making. Money and muscle power plays key role in the elections of Panjab
University pushing back all the progressive aspects of the students’ politics. All this is the reflection of cheap mainstream
politics in educational institutes. Authorities too, play their part in
promoting all these things as even after the huge presence of police and
security, the liquor flows freely inside the campus and students are threatened
right under their nose.
In fact the purpose of employing police inside
the campus is not to conduct a free and just election but to terrorize students
so that they will repel this whole democratic process. The media, last year,
has portrayed the elections as a battleground of goon politics. Whatever
happened last year, can be indeed seen as a conscious attempt at ending the
student elections, even the events in the present year when some policemen got
into a spat with members of a student organisation points towards the same. Also,
we can see the same when deliberately holidays are adjusted pending the Election
Day. Identifying the nature of the “Report on A Policy Framework for Reforms
in Education” prepared by Mukesh Ambani and Kumarmanglam Birla, this de-politicization
of educational campuses can be directly seen as a action in direction of
privatization and commercialization of education as it was a perquisite for the
private investment in education sector. Moreover the Lyngdoh Norms for
elections are very much questionable for its role in de-democratizing the
student politics.
Due the constant effort to de-politicise
students’ politics and vulgarisation of it by some reactionary elements, the
students somewhat repel the political activity in educational campuses. This
isn’t a positive sign for the process of development the society. So we must
identify the nature and the prospective of such politics instead of blindly
opposing root existence of students’ unions or students’ politics. We don’t
live on islands that are isolated from whole society but an important part of
it. Being the most energetic section of the society and a product of a social
investment, it is our duty to pay back the society.
In
fact student politics must be recognised as democratic platform on which the
student can understand the concrete realities of the society and organise
themselves to solve the problems existing in it. So each student must
support the democratization and politicization of educational campuses and work
together on the principles of our revolutionary leaders like Shaheed Bhagat
Singh so that the exploitation of nation by nation and man by man will become
impossible.