Politics | Students spearheading protests — then and now

Representative image

MA Kalam

The largely peaceful and widespread protests currently underway across India against the central government’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) are predominantly led by students. If initially it was restricted to a select few cities and campuses, soon it spread to many, breaking the silos of arts, science, management, etc. These student protests echo the student agitations that took place more than four decades ago.

Almost all student union activities, vibrant or not, were suspended during the Emergency (1975-77). There were no elections in colleges and universities to student unions and other student bodies; cultural and sports activities were curtailed, and; even teachers’ association activities were on hold. This was more pronounced in colleges and universities in Delhi, than probably in far flung areas.

After the Emergency was lifted just before the commencement of the 1977-78 academic year, student and teacher activities were back on the anvil with renewed vigour and fervour. Academics on campuses wanted a roll-back on the truncated or put-off activities. Evidently, the potency of the protests and strikes were quite telling.

The collage known as the Janata Party came to power after unseating the Indira Gandhi-led Congress and it could ill-afford to put down the agitations as most of those occupying high political offices had in fact participated in strikes and demonstrations before the Emergency was declared.

In rare occurrences some of these leaders had protested and demonstrated during the Emergency too.

As elected President of Delhi University’s prestigious Gwyer Hall Union and Convener of the Post Graduate Inter-Hostel Coordination Committee (1977-78) this author was involved in many protests along with a host of day-scholars and hostellers across Delhi University.

Simultaneously, the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and other institutions in Delhi were actively involved in students’ and teachers’ dissidence against university authorities and the State. However, unlike what’s happening now, none of us were ever slapped with sedition charges, nor were we labelled anti-nationals! Given this, how and why are such charges brought about today against peaceful demonstrators? Anyone with a view contrary to the State diktat is today readily labelled an anti-national, anti-Hindu, Pro-Pakistani, or the ultimate —anti-Modi!

In the fight for independence, a certain MK Gandhi and some of his associates were branded seditious and subversive — but those were the ‘anti-establishment’ activities directed against a foreign, high-handed, colonial State. Today, it is difficult to imagine how raising voice in a democratic set up against a State that is elected by these very people can be conceived of as sedition and the act as anti-national.

Then too there were people who did not agree or see eye to eye and did oppose the agitations. These disagreements remained at the debate and discussion level. There was no intimidation nor were there any physical attacks, either by State actors or others. There hardly was professional security around hostels or campuses the way it is today.

BJP leaders such as the late Arun Jaitley, and Vijay Goel, the then student leaders from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), did get extra muscle power during the Janata Party regime as the Bharatiya Jana Sangh was a constituent of the ruling party. One of them even sent a signed personal letter beseeching me to join the ABVP. Yet the brutal and potentially lethal ingress of the kind that happened in JNU recently never occurred anywhere on the campuses.

The ongoing agitation against the CAA has signalled in no uncertain manner that the attempts of the State in polarising the religious communities by excluding the Muslims from the ambit of potential citizenship was not palatable to the various sections across India and the overall civil society. The overwhelming support anti-CAA demonstrations are receiving all over the country proves this.

While the Prime Minister thought that the demonstrators could be identified from their attire, he was clearly off the mark when it actually came to the constitution of the masses of demonstrators. To label such a spontaneous and highly heterogeneous movement as being staged by a single religious or political group flew in his face, and was an insult to any right-thinking person’s intellect. It has shown quite unambiguously that the various religious groups in India can, and indeed do, come together against autocratic promulgations.

The violence that was unleashed in the JNU campus, which many allege had soft support from the powers that be, has reduced State legitimacy to a very low level as it seems in no mood to accept its follies and take recourse to corrective measures. Historically, of course, we know under what circumstances such actions have been adopted and why. Such steps are certainly a no-no and never in democratic setups.

MA Kalam is dean — administration and regulatory affairs, and professor of anthropology, Krea University, Sri City, Andhra Pradesh. Views are personal.