SFI-AISF Sweeps JNUSU Elections Again

Jyotirmoy Bhattacharya

THE united Left combine of the Students Federation of India (SFI) and All India Students Federation (AISF) has once again swept the elections to the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) this year. The combine’s candidates won in all the four central panel posts and secured 15 out of the 26 councillor posts. The votes polled by different candidates for the central panel posts are given in the table alongside.

 VINDICATION OF STRUGGLES

 This victory is, first and foremost, a vindication of the struggles under the banner of the outgoing Students Union in which the SFI-AISF had a predominant majority. In fact, all the SFI-AISF central panel candidates, whom the students have elected with massive margins this year, had been members of the last union.

 The outgoing union had three major achievements to its credit. Firstly, it had succeeded in foiling the administration’s attempt to implement the policies of saffronisation and privatisation in the JNU by means of the university’s tenth plan proposals. This document, prepared by a clique in the administration and submitted to the UGC, included proposals for starting obscurantist courses like ‘Human Consciousness’ as well as short-term self-financing courses in the university. It took a two semester-long agitation led by the union, involving universitywide strikes and a seven-day hunger strike, to force the administration to concede that the original document as well as any new proposals would be put before the visiting UGC team only if they were supported by academic arguments and cleared a process of rigorous review by the academic community.

 Secondly, in the course of this agitation, the union raised the issue of the inordinate delay in the appointment of a new vice chancellor for JNU. The union alerted the student community to the danger that the delay was an intentional one and that the HRD ministry was waiting for a new incumbent in Rashtrapati Bhavan so that someone from the RSS could be appointed as VC. The process was expedited and the HRD ministry was forced to appoint a non-RSS VC as a result of the massive signature campaign carried out by the union on this issue and the representations that it made to the president of India.

 Most importantly, throughout last year, the union mobilised the students in defence of secularism and communal harmony. Particularly following Godhra, there were attempts by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) to create communal tensions in the campus. They brought out an extremely provocative march, targeting students and faculty members from minority community. In the February-March period, the union led a series of mobilisations in defence of peace and communal harmony, both within the campus and ourside. This culminated in a massive human chain of students, teachers and employees on March 14. Such massive secular mobilisations did deter the ABVP from repeating its provocative act.

 Again, when the RSS organised its gurudakshina programme right within the Administrative Block of the university on August 10 and invited Ashok Singhal as the chief guest, it was the SFI, AISF and their representatives in the union who led the spontaneous student protest. When the RSS-ABVP mob, emerging from the gurudakshina programme, attacked the students who were departing after the democratic protest, targeting girl students and union office bearers, it was the SFI and AISF cadre who bore the brunt of the attack.

 SHIFT IN ABVP STRATEGY

 This resort to organised criminal violence reflected a strategic shift on the ABVP’s part on campus --- a shift that was part of the saffron brigade’s aggressive pursuit of Hindutva agenda that began with the unprecedented state-sponsored carnage in Gujarat. In fact, this shift was also reflected in the ABVP’s panel of candidates for the JNUSU elections. All the four candidates on the ABVP panel had a record of participating in acts of violence; one of them was even rusticated from the university once for having attacked fellow-students. The verdict of this election, in which the ABVP’s votes have fallen to the lowest in the past few years, shows how JNU students have registered complete rejection of the butchers of Gujarat and their junior colleagues among the student community.

 Perhaps the ABVP too had realised the student community’s anger against the RSS-BJP and its inability either to garner any support among the student community for the policies of privatisation and saffronisation or to create communal divisions among the student community in the aftermath of Godhra. In sharp contrast to earlier years, the ABVP’s poll campaign this year played the Hindutva agenda in a very low key. Gone were the pamphlets in praise of cultural nationalism; they were replaced by pamphlets that criticised the BJP government’s economic policies.

 In fact, the ABVP’s claim was that it was the SFI-AISF-led union that had failed to defend the students’ rights and it was the ABVP which could struggle most effectively against the BJP government’s policies! In support of this claim, moreover, the ABVP cited its all-India march to be held on November 26. But the SFI-AISF effectively countered this campaign by exposing how the main goal of the ABVP’s all-India march was to ‘Indianise’ education and not to oppose the policies of privatisation and resource cuts. As for the ABVP itself, it could not desist from raising the ‘Indianisation’ issue during the campaign, and came up with the ingenious argument that ‘rationality’ was a concept introduced into our country by colonialism --- an insult to our ancestors indeed.

 The ABVP’s hypocrisy was further exposed when, in its poll meetings, it invited as guest speakers ministers of the same central government that it was claiming to oppose.

 SIGNIFICANT  ASPECT

 A significant aspect of this year’s election campaign was that the secular opposition chose to make the SFI-AISF rather than the RSS-ABVP the main targets of their attack. It is another matter that they failed to engage in a meaningful debate on the last union’s performance or put forward an alternative agenda of their own.

 The pro-Congress National Students Union of India (NSUI) had pinned its hopes on the funds of its parent party and the patronage of the Congress state government. The state government too obliged it by starting a new bus service to JNU just before the elections. As far as the debates are concerned, the NSUI claimed that the SFI-AISF had compromised with communalism and that this compromise only followed the historic compromise of the ‘Marxists’ with the RSS, starting with the Jan Sangh days. To justify this line, the NSUI went to the extent of claiming that the J P movement was the harbinger of fascism in our country and it was only the Emergency that saved Indian democracy. As could be expected, such a campaign contributed to the NSUI’s complete rout in the elections. It could not secure a single seat in the JNUSU Council this year either. Not only that, its presidential candidate came fifth, trailing behind even an independent candidate.

 In what is a telling commentary on the state of the ultra-left, the All India Students Association (AISA) did have virtually no campaign plank that was separate from that of the NSUI. The AISA also attacked the Left for supporting the Janata Party government in 1977 --- without making it clear whether it too believed that the Emergency should have been allowed to continue. Its only innovation was an attack on the Left Front government of West Bengal --- an attack that was based on fabrications, e g dress codes were being imposed on girl students there or that the government had promulgated POCA.

 MANDATE FOR A POSITIVE AGENDA

 In contrast, in these elections the SFI-AISF sought the students’ support not only on the basis of their record of consistent struggles against communalism, saffronisation and privatisation of education, but also for a positive agenda for the future.

 The demand for institutional mechanisms for providing financial and academic assistance to students from socially, regionally, economically and educationally deprived sections formed the core of this agenda. The JNU’s progressive admission policy and fee structure mean that a significant number of students from these sections may join this university. However, it has been the experience of the student movement that with the cutback in scholarships/fellowships and the economic hardship at home as a result of the policies of liberalisation, many of them cannot continue their studies because of financial constraints.

 To address this problem, the SFI-AISF raised a set of demands. These included post-matriculation scholarships for all SC/ST students, preference to students from deprived sections by the Placement Cell of the university in providing part-time jobs, representation for such students during recruitment for projects being undertaken in the university, and the regularisation of remedial courses.

 Apart from this core demand, the SFI-AISF also raised a number of other demands. These included acquisition of books in the library on the basis of students’ requisitions; formation of cooperative societies to run services like hostel messes which are being run by private contractors as a result of resource cuts; reviving Student Faculty Committees through which students could take part in the academic decision-making process; restarting the faculty recruitment process, etc.

 With its mandate in these elections, the JNU students have expressed their commitment for a progressive vision for the JNU at a time when the university is coming under increasing attacks from the RSS and the education policy of the BJP-led government. Building up the struggles to turn this vision into reality is the challenge that lies ahead for the newly elected Students Union and the progressive student movement of JNU.