Proscription cloud over student unions

With student unions synonymous with violence, indiscipline and muscle power in the public mind, unsurprisingly Uttar Pradesh chief minister has imposed a ban on student union elections in the state with other states likely to follow suit. Puja Awasthi examines the pros and cons of student unionism in contemporary India Although they have shaped some of the country’s most prominent political leaders who have changed tides of public opinion and shaped the destiny of the nation, India’s college and university unions seem to have lost their status and elan and are widely regarded as nuisances rather than training grounds of national and state leaders. Contemporary political leaders including Salman Khurshid (Congress), Prakash Karat (CPI-M), Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M), Arun Jaitley (BJP) and Digvijay Singh (Samta Party) learnt their politics in college and university student unions - once institutions brimming with idealism, and innovative ideas for social and economic change. But today in the public mind they are synonymous with violence, indiscipline, and muscle power. College campuses in pre-independence and post-independence India (right upto the 1980s) were testing grounds of idealistic leaders, political causes and social campaigns. Today student union leaders make newspaper headlines for anti-social activities such as assaults on vice-chancellors, rioting and murder of rival students, gun-running and assorted criminal activities. For instance in November last year, five students were seriously injured following clashes during a non-political debate on the existence of Lord Rama in the run-up to student union elections at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi. Unsurprisingly shortly after she was appointed chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, following the Bahujan Samaj Party’s runaway victory in the assembly election of April 2006, Mayawati issued a diktat banning student union elections in the state to “improve the educational atmosphere in universities and colleges”. On the same day in the Supreme Court of India, Justice Arijit Pasayat wryly observed that universities and colleges are infested with “part time students and full time leaders” and that it would perhaps be fitting to makehooliganism and booth capturing part of their syllabuses.  Indeed during the past three decades student unionism in India has travelled a long way from the ideals that had shaped them in the early years of the 20th century leading to India’s freedom movement. As far back as 1818, social reformer Raja Ram Mohan Roy enlisted the help of students when he launched his anti sati movement across the country. Since then Indian history texts have lauded the role of the students community in socio-religious, political and reform movements. For instance social reformer Ishwarchand Vidyasagar’s campaign for widow remarriage and female education (1840s), the Theosophical Movement for universal brotherhood launched in 1882, and the campaign to boycott foreign goods that morphed into the Swadeshi movement of the early 20th century, drew heavily on the idealism and energy of students. Likewise when Mahatma Gandhi returned from South Africa in 1915, he roped in the idealistic students’ community to revolt against British imperialism. In 1920 more than 90,000 students dropped out of schools and colleges to join the freedom…