Just ahead of
the JNUSU elections 2013-14, we see the AISA and DSF trading charges at each
other for the failures of the Union led by them. The student community is faced
with serious challenges ranging from the hostel crisis and inadequate MCM to
the restoration of the JNUSU constitution and the fight for a more just and
inclusive admission policy which includes the struggles to end discrimination
in viva voce and to ensure adequate representation to backward minorities in
the light of the Sachar Committee and Ranganath Mishra commission reports. At
the same time, AISA and DSF have been engaging in an ugly post-mortem of each
other’s actions throughout the past one year. They have been claiming that the
divided mandate delivered by the student community last year was the reason for
the non-performance of the Union. This amounts to nothing but eyewash.
Divided Mandate
is Not an Excuse for Non-Performance
The history of
the JNUSU gives ample proof that divided mandates need not mean that student
demands cannot be addressed effectively. In fact even when the mandate was
divided between left organisations and right-wing organisations (such as in
1996-97 when SFI had the Presidents’ post while ABVP had a majority in the
JNUSU Council), the Left ensured that the fight for students rights was not
in jeopardy. Whenever irreconcilable differences of opinion regarding a
particular course of action in a struggle against the administration arose
among the organisations leading the Union, such differences were settled
through school-level general body meetings or University General Body Meetings,
where students came to know clearly about the differences of opinion within the
Union and a gave a clear mandate to the Union to fight against the
administration without harming students unity.
Significantly,
it was in 2006, when the SFI-AISF had three office-bearers (Vice-President,
General Secretary and Joint Secretary) and a majority in the Council while the
AISA had the President’s post that the last successful MCM agitation was
fought. The agitation was led by the office-bearers and councilors from SFI,
and the participation of the JNUSU President from AISA was minimal. But this
was not allowed to harm the struggling unity of the JNUSU, as differences
of opinion were settled in the JNUSU council and the agitation was fought to a
successful completion, with MCM being raised from Rs. 600 to Rs. 1500.
Sectarianism
within JNUSU
The record of
the previous union was so dismal precisely in this regard – the AISA and DSF
fought each other regarding practically every issue concerning the students, to
which the failed agitations of October 2012 and August 2013 stand testimony. As
their recent pamphlets show, there was no united voice against the
administration from the part of these organisations on a number of
important issues, ranging from viva voce weightage, BA/MA delinking, MCMs and
so on. The JNUSU is an instrument of struggle for the student community – it
cannot be the battleground for the kind of petty and sectarian
organisational interests as the AISA and DSF have ended up turning it
into.
The October 2012 agitation had brought out in the open
the sectarian nature of the differences of opinion between the organisations
leading the JNUSU. Instead of sincere attempts to preserve the struggling unity
of the JNUSU, what came out in the open was a fight between the leading
organisations regarding competing demands and priorities, with the student
community remaining largely in the dark.
The office-bearers of the JNUSU quarreled among themselves in public in
the midst of the agitation, thus diminishing the credibility of the Union at a
crucial juncture, and thereby strengthening the hands of the administration.
The recent agitation (August 2013) led by the JNUSU
saw the dropping of many major demands of the October 2012 struggle which had
remained unfulfilled, without informing the student community why all those
demands were dropped. The Union’s admission that the JNUSU leadership was aware
of the administration’s proposal to increase MCM to Rs. 2000 from July 5th
onwards only strengthened the impression among the student community that AISA
and DSF had been deceitful in calling for an agitation on just
one demand (about which crucial information was deliberately hidden from the
student community while not calling for an agitation earlier) at the eleventh
hour, before falling down to an abject surrender to the
administration.
Lessons from
the Past and AISA's Record
The abject
surrender of AISA to the administration has been nothing new, and it is no
wonder that not a single JNUSU office-bearer from AISA has ever been
rusticated while fighting for students’ rights. The record of SFI and
SFI-led Unions provide a stark contrast – the SFI unit secretary was in jail
throughout the Emergency; rustications before and after the sine die of
1983 were directed against JNUSU office-bearers from SFI and the organisational
leadership of SFI; in 1997-98 the move to rusticate JNUSU President Battilal
Bairwa was defeated by the organised resistance by the students with a
historic, 10-day hunger strike by Com. Vijoo Krishnan who was then the JNUSU
Vice-President; the SFI unit secretary had been rusticated for six months
following the struggle for Progressive Admission Policy in 1998-99.
The deceit and
surrender of the AISA-DSF-led Union is nothing but a reflection of the politics
of the AISA and the DSF. It is the sectarianism of AISA which has of late been
succumbing to the bourgeois parliamentarism creeping into their ranks on the
one hand, and DSF’s petty bourgeois formulation of “autonomy” from the larger
left and democratic forces in the country which amounts to stooping to a
non-class position on the other, which has led to the weakening of the JNUSU
vis-à-vis the administration (over hostels, MCM etc) as well as to its
weak-kneed position vis-à-vis the State (with regard to the restoration of the
JNUSU constitution, deprivation points for backward minorities etc.)
The
overwhelming anger of the student community over the absolute
non-performance of the Union expressed in the annual GBMs and in election
GBMs have exposed the efforts of the AISA-DSF to shift the agenda of this
year’s elections to a devious shadow boxing between them and to the ruling
class practice of attacking the organised left by spreading ill-informed
rumours on various issues like the martyrdom of Com. Sudipto Gupta as well as
the brutal murder of T P Chandrasekharan.
SFI appeals to
the student community to participate in today’s UGBM in large numbers and to
expose the anti-student record of the AISA-DSF combine.
Sd/-
Arjun Sengupta,
Convenor, Central Campaign Committee, SFI JNU Unit
Reject the anti-student
AISA-DSF!
Students’ Unity Long
Live!!
