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Posted on 18 November 2011 |
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| CURRENT AFFAIRS |
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JAMMU & KASHMIR |
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Congress tries to gain political foothold on campus
In a first ever such experiment, the party attempts to set up a student union at Kashmir University
Riyaz Wani
Srinagar
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Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi visited Kashmir University in September |
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In what is billed as a battle to capture the heart of Kashmir’s intellectual space, the Congress party is making a determined bid to set up a student union in Kashmir University. The university is a space which has remained a continuing repository of separatist sentiment and where even the Valley’s entrenched political parties, the ruling National Conference and People’s DP are yet to make a foray.
Even though the attempt is still at a nascent stage, its fallout, has the potential to profoundly alter the nature of the political discourse in the state. It started with Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi’s visit to the state in September. Gandhi went to the university to try and forge a bond with the youth. In an interactive session with the students, Gandhi invoked his family’s ancestral connection to Kashmir to strike a chord.
"I am a Kashmiri. I have not come here to talk politics. The pain and suffering of this place is my suffering as well," Gandhi had said. "In a year or two, you will realise what I am promising you today was true. I have a Kashmiri origin and I deeply relate to that origin”.
However, two days before his arrival, a group of Congress activists had descended on the campus distributing membership forms. Since then there have been many such attempts to recruit students with activists even barging into hostels to urge students to join the party. On the night of 14 November, one such incident touched off nightlong protests at Mehboob-ul-Alam hostel.
The political forays have been a great source of unease on the campus where student unions have been banned since 2009 after being allowed to function for a brief period. Situation came to a head when university, on the urging of Rahul Gandhi, sent 15 students to New Delhi to meet senior Congress ministers. The four-day trip, significantly was sponsored by National Students Union of India, the Congress’ student wing. They were accompanied by the dean student’s welfare, chief proctor and the university registrar. The students met Education minister Kapil Sibal, Law minister Salman Khurshid, Rural Development minister Jairam Ram Ramesh, AICC secretary for Kashmir affairs Mohan Prakash and chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India Nandan Nilekani.
However, the tour blew up to assume scandalous dimensions on the campus. It was seen as a covert bid by the Congress to get a foothold on the campus, hitherto alien to pro-India political activity. Students with affiliations to now banned unions such as Kashmir University Students Union are aghast. They think, the Delhi visit was organised without taking the entire student community on the campus into confidence.
“It is unacceptable. On the one hand you want university students to remain apolitical and ban student unions and on the other the administration abets agenda of a particular political party,” says a student from the department of law unwilling to be identified for fear of disciplinary action. “We will strongly resist this. We demand complete and not selective political freedom”.
When contacted, the J-K president of NSUI Rashid Chaudhury admitted that Congress was intent on starting a student union in the University. He revealed that the membership drives were a deliberate effort to introduce Congress on the campus. “Our recent drives have been successful. We have received more than 200 membership forms. We plan to hold elections in December and then we can introduce our members to the media,” Chaudhury said.
The J-K Youth Congress president Shuaib Lone said the same thing. “You see, Kashmir University is the only one in India where we don’t have a chapter. So, it is a priority for the party to have a union there,” Lone said.
However, Vice Chancellor Prof Talat Ahmad played down reports of Congress foraying into Kashmir University. “If there are membership drives on the campus we do not approve of them,” Prof Talat told TEHELKA. He said the visit of students to New Delhi was for the benefit of university. University, he said, had received a Rs 40 crore package from the Human Resource Development ministry. “As for politics on the campus I will not allow any party to set up shop here”.
In the past two decades, Kashmir University has strongly curbed the student activism on the campus. There was, however, a brief hiatus through 2007-2009 when unions were allowed to resume their activity. The KUSU was allowed to hold formal elections. However, by 2009, the university gave up. The simultaneous separatist groundswell through Valley rubbed off on the campus triggering violent protests in favour of separatist parties. The administration moved fast to ban the unions. But this hardly stopped KUSU which informally pursued its activities. The situation came to a breaking point when Hurriyat hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani visited the campus in November 2009 and delivered a speech calling upon students to work for “freedom movement”. A few months later, the university demolished the KUSU office forcing the students to go on a month-long strike.
To cool tempers, the administration, however, set up the Students Executive Council comprising the class representatives of the various departments. “The council has little role in student affairs. For example, we were kept in dark about the tour of students to meet Congress leadership and government functionaries in Delhi,” a class representative told TEHELKA. “After all, they went to New Delhi as representatives of the student community”.
It is the anger like this that makes the prospect of a Congress backed student union at University an ambitious idea. More so, with Valley’s own mainstream political parties NC and PDP still fighting shy of starting one.
Kashmir University has traditionally had students unions with separatist political leanings. In the early nineties, the university had unions like Islamic Students League and Students Liberation Front which had a pronounced separatist agenda. In fact, these unions played an overwhelming role in how the university was run. These were the years when militant outfits held a complete sway over Valley and the university could not remain untouched. This resulted in the then Vice Chancellor Professor Mushir-ul-Haq being kidnapped by militants on April 6, 1990, and later shot dead when government didn’t respond to their demand for the release of some of their colleagues.
However, Kashmir has come a long way since. Militancy is reduced to an occasional gunfight, mostly in some distant area in the countryside. Mainstream political parties have hurtled back to the centre stage. Separatists, however, return to the prominence in occasional bursts of public ferment before being imperceptibly driven back to margins.
Even in such a state of normalcy, the prospect of a Kashmiri student union backed by a national political party seems like an audacious project. For the observers in Kashmir the very fact of Congress holding a membership drive in Kashmir university is an indicator of the profound change the Valley is going through. At this pace, a Congress-backed students union could well be a reality soon. There is a word of caution here too. “Such a move goes against the predominant sentiment in the university and could backfire,” said a teacher who wished to remain unnamed.
Riyaz Wani is a Special Correspondent with Tehelka.
riyaz.sakhra@gmail.com
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