Over the past few days, a
“joint front” comprising a handful of political organizations has been
campaigning towards a referendum asking the students to reject the Lyngdoh
Committee Recommendations (LCR) in toto. While the objective of rejecting LCR
is laudable, the campaign leaves several questions unanswered. But before
getting into those questions, let us briefly review the history of the struggle
against LCR.
Lyngdoh Committee Recommendations – A look-back
The Lyngdoh recommendations had its genesis in the
Sojan Francis case, born out of the attempt by college managements to trample
upon the democratic rights of students. The Kerala High Court which heard the
case filed by Sojan Francis, an SFI activist who had been debarred from sitting
for his examination due to his political activism in St. Thomas College, Pala
(Kottayam, Kerala), had given a verdict which effectively allowed the college
managements to prohibit political activism in campuses. This draconian order
was challenged in the Supreme Court by the Kerala University and the Kerala
University Students’ Union led by SFI, and the Supreme Court issued an order on
12 December 2005 directing the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) to
constitute a committee to “frame guidelines on students’ union elections in
colleges/universities”. The committee thus set up, with J M Lyngdoh as Chair,
submitted its report on 23 May 2006. Notwithstanding the recommendations of the
committee, which upheld the need for students’ union elections in all colleges
and universities in the country, including private colleges and universities,
and its praise for JNU and HCU as “models”, the ultimate effect of the LCR has
been that these very unions which were held up as models were targeted because
the students’ movement in such places have challenged the unbridled march of
neoliberal policies in education and in other spheres.
The objective of the Lyngdoh Committee
Recommendations (LCR), contrary to all pious statements, is to weaken the
students’ movement so as to pave the way for fee hikes, commercialisation,
privatisation and centralisation of higher education — a process that is
already underway. LCR has put in place restrictions that are fundamentally
undemocratic and exclusionary (particularly adversely affecting students from
deprived sections). For instance, the clause that stipulates an age barrier of
22 years for BA students, 25 years for PG students and 28 years for
M.Phil./Ph.D. students (30 years for JNU as per the relaxation granted),
militates against students from deprived backgrounds who are often forced to
enter higher education at a later age. The clause that prevents candidates from
contesting more than once in the central panel and twice for councillor posts
defies logic even as it serves to constrain the development of a mature
leadership for the union. The eligibility criteria which prevents students who
have been “tried/convicted” for any criminal offence and those who have been
“subjected to any disciplinary action by the University authorities” only aids
the college/university administrations to victimise student activists who have
participated or led any kind of protests against unjust measures by the
authorities. In short, the overarching framework of Lyngdoh curtails students’
rights and has been damaging to our fight against anti-student college and
university administrations and the neoliberal policies of the ruling classes.
LCR and JNU
The students of JNU, having recognised the perils of
the LCR, rejected LCR at the very outset, and held elections for two years (in
2006 and 2007) as per the JNUSU constitution without accepting LCR. But in
2008, the Supreme Court stayed the very JNUSU elections which Lyngdoh had held
up as a “model”, thus exposing the real intentions underlying LCR. The students
of JNU, however, rejected the LCR and chose to battle it out in the Supreme
Court by constituting a Joint Struggle Committee for the purpose. But the
Supreme Court referred the case to a constitution bench on 11 November 2009,
and the said constitution bench has not been formed till date. When it became
clear that the formation of the constitution bench and the final settlement of
the case will take several years, the SFI in 2010 took the position that we
should go ahead with the JNUSU elections as per the JNUSU constitution. If the
election process is challenged in the SC or if it takes suo motu cognizance, the JNU students would be
asked to explain their stand. We argued that it is likely that the SC, given
the fact that it is deliberating on the constitutional validity of the Lyngdoh
recommendations itself, would agree with the position of the JNU students and
restore the JNUSU constitution, at least till the final verdict on Lyngdoh
Committee is delivered. It might of course disagree with the JNU students and
issue specific directives on JNUSU elections, and the question of any “contempt
of court” would arise only if the JNU students wilfully defy those specific
directives. Many other progressive organisations in the campus agreed with the
SFI position and supported holding the elections as per the JNUSU constitution.
But the AISA went on a scare-mongering campaign arguing that there would be a
crackdown on the JNU student movement if we went ahead with our elections as
per JNUSU constitution. Ultimately the UGBM did not accept the proposal to hold
elections immediately as per JNUSU constitution, and SFI and the JNU student
movement, respecting the verdict of the UGBM, went ahead with other initiatives
to take our struggle forward. Negotiations were held with the SC-appointed
Amicus Curiae and the students, in a UGBM in 2012, decided to restore JNUSU
elections, the election process being governed by a modified LCR. It was agreed
that the modified LCR was being accepted as an interim arrangement pending the
judgement of the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court. It was also decided
that the newly elected JNUSU would be mandated to carry forward the legal and
political struggle to restore JNUSU elections as per the JNUSU constitution.
Elected Unions Cannot Run Away from Their Responsibility
But the unions which were elected subsequently (two
AISA-led, AISA-majority unions and one DSF-led, AISA-majority union) have done
precious little in carrying forward this struggle. It is indeed ironic that the
DSF, which did nothing to intensify the struggle when it led the Union is now
part of the “joint front”. It is also to be noted that the DSF holds the
position that the association of student political groups with political
parties is the biggest impediment to the student movement in the country
(something that the Lyngdoh Committee would gladly endorse).
The restoration of the JNUSU elections as per the modified
LCR was definitely not the first choice of the JNU student community, but
something that was forced upon it by objective conditions. The student
community took this difficult decision recognising the fact that not having an
elected Union in JNU was doing immense damage to the student movement, causing
depoliticisation among students and making it extremely difficult to wage
powerful and united struggles against an emboldened, anti-student
administration. In doing so, the students rejected farcical arguments like
those put forward by DSU, which essentially holds that almost nothing can be done
to advance the student movement when Lyngdoh is in place. It was plain for the
students to see that the DSU’s argument
against having an elected union at a time when the administration is on a
rampage trampling upon hard-won students’ rights was, in the ultimate analysis,
a brazenly pro-administration argument — after all,
not having an elected union would simply mean handing the decisive upper hand on a platter to the
anti-student administration.
Incidentally, the “joint front” has been arguing that
episodes like the militant student struggle by the SFI-led JNUSU of 1998-99
when 63 students were arrested and 14 students were sent to the Tihar jail are
no longer possible now. We would like
to remind them that seven SFI comrades, including two JNU students – Com. Rahul
N and Com. Nitheesh Narayanan – were sent to Tihar jail in July 2013 for
protesting against the corrupt Congress government of Kerala, and both of them
contested as candidates to the JNUSU elections later in September 2013. In spite of Lyngdoh, SFI in the
recent past has successfully waged a number of struggles in different parts of
the country against fee hikes, for student amenities, for increasing seats in
colleges, for restoring union elections in several places where they had been
scrapped and so on. Therefore
while it is true that the Lyngdoh clampdown is a significant setback for the
student movement, it cannot be the case that the LCR, which governs the
election process, is the factor that conclusively determines the
character of the entire gamut
of the student movement. We have seen
in the recent past forces like the DSF trying to wash their hands off their
failures in the Union by blaming LCR, and we will have to remain guarded
against such opportunism. Nothing can justify the unwillingness of recent
Unions, whether led by DSF or AISA, to take up and fight for core student
demands.
The SFI restates its commitment and resolve to carry
forward the struggle to restore the JNUSU constitution and to uproot Lyngdoh
from the campus. A democratically elected JNUSU should lead this struggle rather than ad-hoc “fronts” which are not accountable to
the larger student community. Further, the struggle against LCR and for campus
democracy essentially has to be an all-India struggle. The JNU student movement
and the JNUSU have important roles to play in this struggle – what is required
is concrete study and sincere struggles that would in all probability be
protracted, not opportunist alliances devoid of any politics.
Sd/-
Srabani, Secretary,
SFI JNU Unit
Viswanathan V, President,
SFI JNU Unit
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