Is Only One Kind Of Student Politics Allowed To Thrive?

Hues of saffron flooded the nooks of Delhi University last month, as three out of four central panel posts in the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) were won by members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). A scion of a noted business family—that owns a leading brand of alcohol—led the student affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to its massive victory.

Aryan Maan, who won the post of the DUSU President, stated to the press that, “The students’ participation in DUSU polls showed that claims of Gen-Z being disinterested in campus politics were misplaced.” Maan’s statement, hopeful on the surface, appears steeped in irony, when seen in the light of the recent First Information Report (FIR) lodged by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) administration against 10 of their own students in Mumbai. The allegation against them is organising a ‘get-together’ to commemorate Dr G.N. Saibaba’s first death anniversary. Some participants have alleged that it was students from a right-affiliated organisation that drew the attention of the police and administration to their gathering.

The questions then arise: Are students genuinely losing interest in campus politics today? Or are they exiting the playfield due to the penalisation that follows? Will only a certain shade of student politics find footing in India’s universities henceforth?

A tree beside a library, a desk underneath its shade, and a banner that humbly asked: “May I help you?” This is how Ashutosh Kumar Upadhyay was introduced to his calling at Deen Dayal Upadhyay Gorakhpur University back in 2016. “We were fresh out of school. Bohot zyada social interaction nahin tha. I saw a group of people helping the new students with arranging their documents for admission. That’s when I first came to know ABVP,” he says.

Upadhyay is starry-eyed when he recalls the first dharna pradarshan by ABVP that he participated in. “When we were admitted to the hostel, there were several infrastructural problems we were faced with,” he remembers. On one occasion, when there was an acute water crisis in the hostels, 350 to 400 students gathered and marched towards the airport road and blocked it. At that moment, Upadhyay didn’t understand what was going on. But then a senior told him, “These things will now be a part of your life. If there is any problem that plagues you and people around you, then you must raise your voice.”

Incidentally, in the same year that Upadhyay was brought into the fold of the student organisation, a few other students were exiting it, hundreds of kilometres away from Gorakhpur, at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. The exit was neither quiet nor insignificant. Days after three students of the university had been arrested on charges of sedition by the Delhi Police, for organising a poetry event marking the capital punishment handed out to parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, Pradeep Narwal, a Dalit student, left the ABVP citing “ideological differences”. On the occasion of International Women’s Day, he, along with the then JNU ABVP vice-president Jatin Goraya, burnt pages of the Manusmriti, a Hindu religious text, which contains verses derogatory towards women and Dalits.

In a press conference in 2019, when the chargesheet in the sedition case was filed, the two former ABVP members alleged the entire incident that led to the 2016 sedition case in JNU was pre-planned by the ABVP to divert public outrage on the ‘institutional murder’ of Rohith Vemula, a Dalit student from Hyderabad Central University (HCU) in January that year.

Furthermore, Goraya reportedly stated that though their demand was that ABVP take a stand over Vemula’s death, the organisation asked them to go out and speak against Vemula instead, as they were the “Dalit faces of the organisation”. Significantly, Vemula was one among five Dalit students who were suspended by the HCU Administration over an accusation of assaulting an ABVP member in 2015. They had been agitating against their suspension for months before Vemula’s decisive step to end his life.

Nine years since these events transpired, Upadhyay is a dedicated member of the ABVP at JNU. He joined the School of Computational and Integrative Sciences at the university for a Ph.D in 2024 and is now in his second year. During his induction into ABVP at Gorakhpur, he says that the students were told to be careful about not damaging any government property. “We were taught how to improve the environment on campuses. In state universities, hooliganism is prevalent. Therefore, we were instructed to deal with ‘disruptive elements’ on campus. When we spread positivity, the negative atmosphere is automatically cleansed in these spaces,” he says.

Upadhyay’s statements stand in stark contrast to the repeated instances of violence that the ABVP has reportedly been accused of initiating at the JNU since 2016. In January 2020—during the peak of a students’ movement against a massive fee hike proposed by the JNU administration—masked goons entered the university campus and assaulted students and teachers indiscriminately, seriously injuring many. The then Students’ Union President Aishe Ghosh also received injuries to her head. Hostel rooms of many students were vandalised during the assault, and the Sabarmati hostel of the university particularly incurred severe damages. In videos that surfaced later, one of the masked attackers identified by the Delhi Police was Komal Sharma, an ABVP member from Delhi University. However, ABVP denied the allegations made against them. Years later, none of the accused, identified or otherwise, have faced any action for the violence.

Four years earlier, another instance of violence—that led to the university making it to the national headlines yet again—also involved the ABVP. In October 2016, Najeeb Ahmed, who had just joined in MSc Biotechnology at JNU, was assaulted by ABVP members in his hostel. The next morning, he was reported missing from his room and to this day, there is no information on his whereabouts. Nine JNU ABVP members were accused of being involved in the assault that led to his enforced disappearance, but no charges have been pressed against anyone, even after an investigation by both the Delhi Police as well as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Earlier this year, a Delhi court accepted the closure report filed by the CBI.

In spite of these instances and their glaring prominence in the campus political discourse, there seems to be a consistent interest among new students in being a part of the ABVP. In the last Students’ Union elections held at JNU, ABVP managed to secure a seat in the central panel after nine years. Upadhyay himself is an elected Councillor in the current Students’ Union. Perhaps, this enthusiasm for membership can be attributed to the organisation’s flexible approach.

As Upadhyay elaborates, in state universities, very few student organisations exist and can flourish, given the rules about students’ involvement in campus politics. “In Gorakhpur and Allahabad universities, where I come from, there were hardly any organisations, which were mostly student wings of mainstream political parties like the Congress or the Samajwadi Party. In such a scenario, the approach is usually of establishing dominance over one’s turf. This often led to violent clashes among different student groups,” he says. “However, in JNU, the approach is more intellectual.” In his view, the university has a culture of debate and dialogue, and the organisation moulds itself in this framework accordingly. “The personal concerns of students must also be addressed. We engage with students by asking them about the socio-economic challenges in their personal lives and helping them fulfil their desires to pursue higher education,” he explains.

Once students are inducted as members in the organisation, they are then sent to residential training camps called the “Prathamik Shiksha Varg”, which are held at the premises of Sarsawati Shishu Mandir schools, run by the RSS, during their break periods. “The first time I experienced a massive transformation within was when I attended my first training camp. I was in my B.Sc first year and my seniors explained to me that the camp would make me a social worker and help me learn to engage in nation-building. They even arranged the fee to attend this seven-day camp,” he says. For the seven days that a member attends the camp, they are completely cut off from the outside world, not being allowed to keep their phones or meet their families. The attendees are trained in punctuality and daily services as well as engaged in lectures and heavy physical training. “All through the week, we were only made to focus on one principle—the nation comes first,” he states.

After spending nearly nine years as an ABVP member, regularly attending RSS shakhas, Upadhyay still doesn’t seem to have lucid answers on a lot of social issues. When asked why such training camps are not held for women, he fumbles. “The thing is, these camps are physically intensive, so women can find it difficult to attend them. However, intellectual camps are organised for the swayam sevikas, which they anyway express greater interest in,” he argues.

On the question of whether there is adequate caste representation within the ABVP, his arguments meander. “We don’t allow caste to become a problem within the organisation. We address each other without using surnames and eat together as well.” But does he think that the caste system should exist? Upadhyay dodges the question with a long- winding answer. “You see, the caste system was built with the intent of division of labour. The good thing about the system was that it ensured at least one professional choice for any child born within a particular caste. However, I do agree that if someone wants to switch their professional preference, they should be allowed to do so,” he says.

Upadhyay and others from his organisation may have to encounter uncomfortable enquiries in spaces like JNU, but the existing educational policies are ensuring the rapid erosion of such spaces altogether.

In most universities across the country, administrative rules and state-level laws have ensured that students’ politics ceases to exist. A young professor from a famous state university in Gujarat says, on the condition of anonymity, that the presence of organisations like ABVP is not required there for the right wing’s ideological expansion—the job is being done by the curriculum. “We are teaching from Hindu scriptures like the Bhagwad Gita and Manusmriti in courses like “Indian Knowledge System”, which are mandated to be taught to first years under the National Education Policy,” she says. “Student organisations are unheard of and ABVP’s presence is perpetuated by the faculty itself. We have heads of departments encouraging ABVP members to seek membership from the temporary faculty. The examination hall tickets reach students from the administration through the ABVP. They barely have to make any effort themselves,” she adds.

A similar situation is seen at Nagpur University in Maharashtra, where an English professor (anonymous) stated that even though he makes humble attempts to add critical dimensions to the course content, heavily lopsided towards Hindu scriptures, the new batches of students coming in have no inquisitiveness or curiosity to learn.

“I myself studied at this university in the late 80s, when campuses here were politically turbulent and our classes were shut down for months during elections. But I am still very much in favour of campus politics,” he says. At his university too, it is the teachers and administrative officials who are more proactive about organising programmes that propel a right wing ideology, rather than student bodies. “Students’ elections may have their faults, but students’ politics made us more politically aware. It teaches students to confront the same issue from multiple stands. Without these varied critical dimensions, students have become placid and there is a perpetual lethargy about academic initiative,” he rues.

As policies and legislation work towards numbing critical faculties among students across the country through monochromatic academic curricula, it remains to be seen how student organisations, apart from the ABVP, will confront the challenge to stay relevant in such a socio-political landscape within universities.

Apeksha Priyadarshini is senior Assistant editor, Outlook. she writes on cinema, art, politics, gender & social justice.

This story appeared as Campus Chaos, Outlook’s November 1 issue, which explored how the spirit of questioning, debate, and dissent—the lifeblood of true education—is being stifled in universities across the country, where conformity is prized over curiosity, protests are curtailed, and critical thinking is replaced by rote learning, raising urgent questions about the future of student agency, intellectual freedom, and democratic engagement.