Elitist protest in Jadavpur

Throughout September Jadavpur University in Kolkata witnessed student and youth mobilisation and protests. Students initially demanded investigation into a complaint of molestation of a female student. The university administration and the students failed to reach any agreement on this, leading to escalation of protests. On September 16, agitating students gheraoed the vice chancellor. In the early hours of September 17, the police was called in by the VC to rescue him and other senior members of the administration. Students complained that unidentified men along with the police had entered the campus, beat up the students, dragged them aside, molested female students, and cleared the path for the VC to come out. The police maintain that there was no lathicharge and there were plainclothesmen among their ranks while the students insist that those were ruling party cadres. Police intervention raised a massive hue and cry in the city. 

Demonstrations showing solidarity with the students spread quickly across the country, including in cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad. Protest marches in Kolkata increased, culminating in a rally on September 20. Estimates of participants in the rally varied from 20-50 thousand. Students, alumni, and teachers from some educational institutions in the city and across the country supported them. The university alumni organised demonstrations in New York, London, and Sydney. On September 24, a citizen's convention condemning the police brutality was held in the university campus attended by famous intellectuals. 

On September 22, a counter rally was organised by the ruling Trinamool Congress party against the agitating students who were mocked through slogans and posters. Interestingly, the father of the allegedly molested female student joined the counter rally. The ruling party said that the agitation was part of a campaign that was politically motivated against the government. 

Students demanded the resignation of the VC. Some students said they were never a part of serious decision-making forums in the university, while others pointed out that student politics has changed over the years. It is true that students were on the forefront of political movements in the past. Some, however, asked, with student activism becoming politically motivated along party lines and resulting in criminalisation, where is student activism going today? 

Jadavpur protests were marked with a distinct cultural and virtual media flavour. Protesters sang, danced, created posters, graffiti, poems, songs and slogans. Some say that it was one of the first movements in India to significantly employ social media for coordination and dissemination. Helped by a sympathetic big media, one slogan became famous: Hok Kolorob (written as Hokkolorob; in English, let there be noise). This was the title of a song by Arnob, a Bangladeshi singer. It got new life with the help of Rupam Islam, a rock star in the city, and became the anthem of the movement. Students and their slogans received an extraordinary amount of support in social media such as Facebook and Twitter. New, witty, and sarcastic slogans were born: E shatabdir duti bhool, CPM ar Trinamool (CPI-M and Trinamool are the two biggest mistakes of the century); Ei VC ke chine ne/ OLX-e beche de (Pick up this VC and sell him on OLX). On Facebook, the agitators posted a VC rap and a screen shot of Quickr where someone had actually put up the condemned VC for sale.

It is clear that the agitating students belong to an articulate class. They defeated the government and the university administration hands down in spreading claims, demands, and messages. The populist government representing the inarticulate lower classes could not cope with the clever eloquence of the educated class. The students ridiculed the Chief Minister in particular. She was the “Kalighater moyna” (the love lady of Kalighat).

Kalighat in the literature of the city gentry is the place of slums, prostitutes, pimps, and love ladies. Typically, the poet Samar Sen had written lines, by now famous, marking Kalighat forever as the site of the lower depths: “O city, O grey city, do you not hear the lecherous steps on Kalighat Bridge!”The most circulated Bengali daily carried battle hymns of the event as moments of freedom and liberation. A student leader of bygone era declared that the movement signals the beginning of the end of the “fascist government”. If the BJP was gaining through all these, so be it.

In this situation, uncomfortable questions have been dubbed as reactionary, only serving the ruling party’s interest. Yet, no matter how disturbing, these questions need to be asked. From 1989 onwards students and youth from Beijing to Cairo to Kiev to Kolkata and now Hong Kong have been demanding freedom. Everywhere the freedom cry has been singularly void of social content. This is different from the student activism of the Sixties when students marched with workers, joined the peasants, and upheld in their manifestos and slogans the cause of the lower classes from which most of them came. But who now speaks of the poor students in ordinary colleges, schools, and distant towns? What is the innate virtue of any student mobilisation when shorn of any vision of social equality? After all, let us not forget that students were the front paw of military dictatorship in Indonesia in 1965. 

What do the chattering classes represented by the activist students want? Why are they so opposed to the coarseness of the lower classes? And if they are loyal to the cause of the latter, why are they so silent on policies and issues of the Central government affecting the lower classes?  

Strange as it may seem, neo-liberal subjectivity makes youth the first victim of its charm. Long after the articulate students will have gone from the scene, left the university, taken up comfortable jobs, and become cogs and wheels of the order, the lower depths will remain. Their governments will still fumble, they will still be exasperated with the aspirations of the chattering classes, will still commit mistakes as they did in the case of Jadavpur. The need for social dialogues will still remain immense in face of neo-liberal aspirations of the new middle class.

There is no escape from this destiny. There is no way we can say that student movement in Ujjain was bad, but this one in Jadavpur is good. With social media as support base and innovative propaganda tools, the elite students have arrived. This is the message from Kolkata to Hong Kong.

The social war continues.

The writer is Director, Kolkata Research Group