The march of the ABVP
The Sangh's student organisation strides across campuses on the strength of a BJP regime at the Centre.
As the video of some people-unidentifiable because of poor light-shouting these slogans went viral, all hell broke loose across the country. On February 12, based on an FIR filed by BJP MP Mahesh Giri, the Delhi Police arrested JNU students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar on charges of sedition and claimed there was evidence that he was part of the sloganeering. "I have evidence to justify Kanhaiya Kumar's arrest," Delhi police commissioner B.S. Bassi told India Today.
While demands to shut down JNU because it had "become a hub of antinational elements" were made at various platforms, students and teachers claimed it was an attempt by the ABVP to dictate the discourse in the university (otherwise a Left bastion). According to his supporters, Kumar was only trying to defuse the tension inside the campus following the possibility of a clash between the ABVP and the DSU. Another video of a fiery speech in which Kumar pledged his allegiance to the Indian Constitution also went viral following his arrest.
"The irresponsible language of some ultra-radical students cannot become the basis of labelling the whole university, with its 7,000-plus students, as anti-national," says Kamal Mitra Chenoy, professor, Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, JNU. "The ABVP has provided police with a list of students to be picked up. They had no connection to the February 9 event, but all of them support Left ideology. It's clearly an attempt to crush any school of thought that is in conflict with the ABVP or other Sangh affiliates."
This is not the first time that such an allegation has been made against the ABVP. Though the student wing of the Sangh parivar, with 33,00,000-odd members, is the largest in the land, the reins of power in most academically and politically significant universities in the country are firmly with Left-wing student organisations, notably the Students' Federation of India, which recently broke ranks with parent CPI(M), and the CPI(ML)-backed All-India Students' Association, backed in some places by the radical Left as well as newer caste-inspired cohorts like the Ambedkar Students' Association (ASA) in Hyderabad.
Though the student group has recently emerged as more assertive and vocal, backed by the BJP government at the Centre, the ABVP has often been accused of using violence as a method of protest and assertion. The arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar has only added to the narrative that the current BJP government believes in suppressing even the right to dissent and ABVP has been given the task to "sensitise" the campuses to conform to the Hindutva agenda. The thrashing of journalists, Left leaders and JNU students by a group of men led by Delhi BJP MLA O.P. Sharma, when Kumar was presented at Patiala House Court in Delhi on February 15, has again brought forward the intolerance debate that started with the killing of a Muslim man at Dadri in Uttar Pradesh for allegedly keeping beef at home.
Osmania students protest against police excesses in JNU. Photo: Mohammed Aleemuddin
The ASA, founded in 1993 by a small group of Dalit students, is particularly strong in the University of Hyderabad where its support is essential for the left-wingers to capture power. It is largely focused on issues relating to the students and reservations though they join hands with other groups, except the ABVP, in specific campaigns, like the beef festival, or the screening of films like Nakul Singh Sawhney's Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai. "There is incongruity between what these groups and the left-wingers want to do on the one side, and the ABVP on the other," says Kancha Ilaiah, director, Centre for Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad. "While most groups like to be informed on issues of wider political and social concern by inviting faculty on campus or from outside, the ABVP is obsessed with festivals and temples." He is apprehensive of a deeper and longer conflict between the pro-Hindutva ABVP and groups like the ASA, which have Buddhist leanings.
The triggers behind ASA being labelled as "anti-national" were the screening of the Muzaffarnagar films and the protest against the hanging of Mumbai bomb blast convict Yakub Memon. "Anyone can protest against capital punishment, a constructive debate is fine, but statements such as every house will deliver a Yakub are disturbing," says the ABVP's Susheel Kumar who was at the centre of the spat with the ASA activists.
While ASA was successful in screening the film, ABVP members managed to stall its screening at Kirori Mal College in Delhi in August last year. More than 60 people were killed and 40,000 displaced during riots in Uttar Pradesh's Muzaffarnagar district and neighbouring areas in September 2013. The film blames the Samajwadi Party and the BJP for the riots.
The ABVP's interference isn't just restricted to banning films on campus. In 2014, backed by the Union HRD Ministry, it was instrumental in getting the controversial four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP) repealed in Delhi University. Though Left-wing leaders were on the same side of the fence during the FYUP agitation, following Vemula's death, the HRD ministry's interference was seen as an attempt by the Union government to back ABVP's mission to sabotage the growth of organisations that were diametrically opposite to its political philosophy. "The strong statements made against JNU and its students by Union ministers Smriti Irani and Rajnath Singh, make their agenda evident. They want to enforce the saffron ideology in the campus. If you don't subscribe to their beliefs, you are anti-national," says Chenoy. "When the government can shake hands with Kashmir's People's Democratic Party (PDP), who also denounced the hanging of Afzal Guru, how can they tell students not to talk or debate with each other?" asks Kavita Krishnan, secretary, All India Progressive Women's Association and politburo member, CPI(ML).
In fact, political observers see the current campus unrest across the country as a direct conflict between two ideologies-the right, represented by ABVP, and the left, represented by SFI, AISA and AISF. That's not surprising as Rakesh Sinha, an RSS ideologue and columnist, says that ABVP was created to provide an alternative to the Leftist discourse. With the BJP in power, the impatience to make those changes has become explicit in the organisation's forceful assertions.
It's not only the ABVP but its parent organisation, the RSS, is equally active in purging educational institutes of ideas and intellectuals who don't conform to their idea of nationalism. Social activist and Magsaysay awardee Sandeep Pandey was sacked by the Banaras Hindu University on charges of being a "Naxalite", engaging in "anti-national" activities and screening a banned documentary on the campus. Pandey was a visiting faculty in the department of chemical engineering at IIT-BHU. Though the termination order did not state any reason, Pandey has alleged that the decision to remove him had been forced upon IIT-BHU director Rajeev Sangal by V-C G.C. Tripathi and dean of faculty affairs, IIT-BHU, Dhananjay Pandey, both of whom, he claimed, were "associated with the RSS".
Ambekar and his colleagues believe that the growing acceptance of the ABVP ideology across campuses has created a scare among Left-leaning organisations, which have lost relevance in a resurgent India. "By accusing the government of trying to suppress freedom of expression, they are trying to divert attention from their anti-national agenda. They are trying to hide their criminal activities under the garb of the free spirit of JNU. We are not opposed to freedom of thoughts but we can't allow someone to seek the destruction of India," he says.
Since the BJP government came to power in 2014, the ABVP has managed to grab some key positions in student councils in several universities such as JNU, Delhi University, Calcutta University and Allahabad University. Currently, it controls the student unions of 18 universities across India. In September last year, it swept the Delhi University Students' Union (DUSU) elections by bagging all four positions. It made a comeback in the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union panel after 14 years when it won the joint secretary post. (The first challenge from the ABVP in JNU came in 2002 when Sandeep Mahapatra won the JNUSU president seat by a single vote on an ABVP ticket. Then, as now, a BJP government was in power.)
The ABVP's rise even rattled someone as feisty as West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee who, in December 2014, demanded a detailed report from district-level Trinamool Congress party workers on the rise of the activities of the RSS and ABVP in the state.
ABVP leaders see the current strife as a panic reaction by left-leaning and other student organisations, "which are being funded by anti-Indian Islamic forces through Students' Islamic Organisation of India (SIO)". Though Union home minister Rajnath Singh caused a major embarrassment to the Modi government by claiming a Pak-based terror group's support to JNU students (based on a fake Twitter account of 26/11 mastermind Hafeez Saeed), Ambekar asks a pointed question: "Why is Afzal Guru celebrated in a Left bastion? What does a Dalit student group have to do with Yakub Memon? A new axis of Islamic forces and Naxal groups is emerging. They are trying to attract Dalits and other marginalised groups of Hindu society to split our country down the middle."
Amid these allegations and counter-allegations, the primary discourse, which should concern every student, has taken a backseat. No one is asking the one question that must be asked: why is it that only two Indian institutes have made it to the top 200 list of the world's best universities?
With Karishma Goenka and Amarnath K. Menon. Follow the writer on Twitter @KDscribe
