28/10/2026
///Companion Priyanshu Dey of CSA, on the recent fascist attack on students of SRFTI at the protest meeting held at College Street, organized jointly by various organizations; 27/10/2026///
Since 2016, we have been witnessing a decline in left-wing and progressive student politics in this state. Towards the end of the Left Front government, Class Representative (CR) Council meetings began to lose their importance. As a result, student unions had, in practical terms, started becoming ineffective. Union activities had been reduced to factionalism and groupism. After 2011, under the Trinamool Congress (TMC) regime, the idea was promoted that a student union meant just the three F's - Freshers’ Welcome, Fest and Farewell, along with Saraswati Puja. The union’s role was reduced to organising these events and nothing more. On every campus, the Trinamool Chhatra Parishad (TMCP) worked to depoliticize student life. As a result, its extortion practices in the education sector continued unabated. There was no space or platform for protest. The moment students protested, student movements were portrayed as something undesirable or even dangerous. Meanwhile, the campuses were plastered with the ruling party’s festoons and banners, and student politics became entrenched in the hands of old uncles. In college governing bodies, there was only one student representative and even that person was selected, not elected. Consequently, students lost the space they needed to raise demands for improving educational institutions and the quality of teaching and learning, as well as for reforming the curriculum. Now, let us turn to the BJP. The BJP is making effective use of precisely these shortcomings. The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) questions the need for General Body (GB) meetings. We have seen ABVP goons attack a GB meeting of engineering students at Jadavpur University recently. But it is important to understand what demands had prompted that meeting in the first place. According to the engineering students, campus recruitment had not been functioning properly for a long time. The GB meeting was organized to demand that campus recruitment be conducted properly. It was none other than BJP MLA Sharbari Mukherjee who came out in opposition to that meeting. Following the Assembly elections, ABVP had loudly proclaimed that student unions would be democratically elected on every campus. It is now becoming clear that all of that was nothing but empty rhetoric. ABVP and the BJP are not interested in student politics. Since their own party is in power in the administration, they want to seize control of unions through force wherever they can, following the same methods used by the Trinamool Congress. Wherever they cannot take control easily, they want everything to remain apolitical. But why? Do they lack confidence in their own ideology? Why are they unwilling to enter student unions through elections? In reality, this depoliticization is intended to pave the way for the privatization of education. We are witnessing campus after campus being forcibly taken over by ABVP goons. This appears to be a continuation of the TMC era, only in a more aggressive form. Let us, for a moment, accept the argument that politics has no place on campus and that everything should remain apolitical. In that case, what relationship does SRFTI have with those who were holding a meeting in its auditorium - an affiliate of a fundamentalist, religious-supremacist and fascist organization? We all have seen SRFTI students being beaten up. They retaliated as well. That was one round of violence. The very next day, the goons returned to the area outside the campus. In this way, they are introducing a culture of mob violence into our state. Once mob culture takes hold, a culture of lynching will follow - a phenomenon that has not historically been prevalent in our state. We are also seeing water supplies being cut off in the campus. What next? Will students no longer even be allowed to study on their own campuses? “The more they read, the more they learn, and the less they obey”. We must reclaim the progressive student politics that was once firmly established in Bengal. To do so, we need to fight for the establishment of student parliaments at every university. Representatives elected to university-level student parliament should go on to a state-level student parliament. From there, elected representatives should also be sent to a national-level student parliament. We must launch a movement to demand this entire structure. Today, we need a complex web of student unions like the one established in Chile, a country that has once served as a laboratory for neoliberalism. CR Council meetings must be revived. GB meetings must resume. Representatives must be elected to CR Councils, and student representatives must be included in governing bodies. We need a model in which governing bodies do not have just one student representative, such as the General Secretary. Instead, there must be proportional representation for all student organizations, along with independent candidates. What does a party that has strayed from its ideology want? It wants to turn campus unions into a network of obedient cadres who serve its interests. It wants to subvert student politics. We must oppose this. We must emphasize that student politics has a wider social significance. Its role is not limited to raising demands within educational institutions; student politics is also necessary at the state and national levels. Gabriel Boric emerged from the complex web of student unions established through a long struggle in Chile and was subsequently elected President of the country. In other words, national leaders can emerge from student politics. We are also seeing the Student List in Serbia challenge the authoritarian rule of Aleksandar Vučić and defeat him in the recent elections. These are lessons for us to learn. The scope of the student movement is not confined to educational institutions. Students can play a direct role in the governance of a country. Therefore, campus-based struggles alone are not enough. We must build broader networks of solidarity.
Revolutionary greetings and solidarity to everyone in struggle!
