In present times, the All India Students’ Association (AISA), founded in 1990, is one of the biggest contenders in Jawaharlal Nehru University’s (JNU) political landscape. JNU’s battlefield has always been red – however, what started as a Students’ Federation of India’s (SFI) stronghold under Prakash Karat’s leadership, is today very much AISA’s domain. AISA is the students-wing of the ultra-left Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist Liberation (CPIML) and while on the one hand it poses a challenge to Right-wing fascist forces in the country, according to the AISA manifesto, it also attempts to unmask the “hollow left rhetoric and ritual activities of SFI and AISF [All India Students Federation]”.
A charismatic figure in JNU’s Left wing is Chandrashekhar Prasad, two-time JNU Students Union [JNUSU] President who was brutally gunned down in 1997. ‘Chandu’ is believed to have almost single-handedly built AISA’s reputation in JNU. Presently, Shehla Rashid Shora and Rama Naga of AISA occupy two central panel positions in the JNUSU – Vice President and General Secretary. For four years, between 2008 and 2012, there were no student elections in JNU because students had refused to accept the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations and so were forbidden from holding elections at all. In 2012 when elections were held again, Sucheta De, the national President of AISA now, won the position of Union President. AISA is currently under the scanner after allegations of rape were leveled against a former AISA unit President (and a student of JNU) by a research scholar from the same university. The party was prompt in condemning the act and dissociating itself from the alleged offender. AISA has recommended the accused be suspended and declared out of bounds from JNU.
By winning the post of Joint Secretary in the 2015 JNUSU election, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), constituted in 1948 and affiliated to the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), clinched an epic comeback in the Left-bastion that is JNU. Though ABVP has always managed to win a certain number of seats in the JNUSU elections – usually as Councillors of the Science schools and the Centre for Sanskrit Studies – their activism on campus had been peripheral. Since their victory in 2015, ABVP has made their presence felt. On February 9, 2016, when allegedly anti-national slogans had been raised in the infamous event to discuss the issue of Kashmir’s azaadi and the judicial killings of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat, ABVP emerged as the opposition to the united Left front on campus.
Anticipating the escalating presence of ABVP in JNU and Right wing politics in India, Kanhaiya Kumar, an AISF member and JNUSU President 2015-2016, sought that the several Left organisations in JNU let go of their ideological differences and fight together as one united democratic, socialist force.
Despite the inclination towards the Left, the situation hasn’t always been favourable for these parties in JNU. In 2012, four SFI leaders of JNU – V Lenin Kumar, Zico Dasgupta, Roshan Kishore and PK Anand – were expelled from the party because of their refusal to tow the CPM politbureau line. These students had raised their hesitation against the decision by CPM to support Pranab Mukherjee as the President of India. The SFI’s credibility in JNU seemed to be faltering when the four young activists and their comrades formed a new organisation (initially called the SFI-JNU, now known as the Democratic Students Federation, DSF) which posed a major setback to SFI in the elections held in September 2012. Since then, the organisation has reworked its image and rebuilt its reputation on campus. It fielded a JNU’s first openly gay scholar as a candidate in the 2013 elections, for a JNUSU Central Panel position (Gourab Ghosh) and has spearheaded several pro-LGBTIQ [Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Intersex and Questioning] initiatives on campus. In the 2015 elections, though SFI failed to win any Central Panel positions of the JNUSU. They did win a substantial number of seats as Councillors in the different schools of JNU.
The big question in JNUSU is whether the Left will be able to come together and create a unit that can and will counter the ABVP’s position in the university. From the growing numbers that show up to support ABVP when it has a march on campus, it’s evident that a large percentage of the newcomers are inclined towards the Right even in the bastion of the Left that is JNU. The rise of ABVP has come as a surprise to parties like AISA and in the coming elections, the Left-leaning parties will be hoping that the ABVP hasn’t won over their ground support.
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