~By Kamran
I
The
university space in India has had an inseparable connection with political
struggles, but in recent times we see quicksilver decadence in this trend.
Similarly, the factories and trade unions in most states of India, particularly
Delhi, have seen a decline in political organization and strikes in the
present. Is this a mere coincidence or is there an objective condition which
ties the fate of the worker and the student together. We shall discuss this
matter further in the second part of the article.
A recent
scandal took place when certain student activists informed the general public
of the fee hike at Hamdard University in Delhi, a minority-based institution.
The students of the university had reported to the activists that the
university increases the fee by some percent every year. The condition of the
students at Hamdard University is also deplorable since there virtually no
hostels, and the administration is overly authoritative thereby lessening the
extent of liberty by a great deal in the
institution, and the brutal brunt is borne by the students as they are never
permitted to register the complaints against the bureaucratic regime of the
administration. Even the professors are not spared from the totalitarianism of
the college authorities. We should stop for a moment to consider the notion of
“college
authority”. Who is the one presiding over all the activities of the
college administration being responsible (or rather appointing themselves as
responsible) for the way the college is supposed to run. In almost all of
universities across India, there is a chancellor appointed by the Government of
India (I use the capital G here for satirical purposes) who, by the sheer
virtue of his appointment holds supreme and unchecked power over the university
and enjoys such pleasures of power as expelling any student without cause,
demoting him or putting him on academic probation, subjecting him to special scrutiny
(blacklisting), barring the student from entering the college premises(though
he/she is a student of that college!) and the power goes so far as to firing
any teacher(with the most causal of causes), clamping down on any teacher or
student union(which is also the case with another minority institution, Jamia
Milliah Univeristy) and even call the police inside the university spaces for
brutal repression if faced with a peaceful demonstrations of teachers and
students(as we have seen in the anti-FYUP protests, the transport protests and
the recent anti-CBCS protests in Delhi University). Aside from these
administrational powers, he also enjoys an absolute control over the treasury
of the university. There are, so to say, administrative officers allotted to
each part of the university administration, again either appointed directly by
the (Supreme!) Vice Chancellor, or again, by the Ministry (either the UGC or
any other state functionary regimes)
It is almost
idiotic that India, a ‘remarkable’ example of democracy in the world, a country
which describes itself in the first page of the constitution as ‘socialist’
would appoint vie-chancellors to give them all the dictatorial powers that he
would then use to repress the democratic spirit of the university space, a
space for education and breeding place for academic intellectuals. The
conclusion to come out of this is only one- that is the State of India is
falling short of its promise on democracy. In HU, the administration has banned
the formation of both student as well as teachers’ union (such is also the case
in Jamia Milliah). Even in universities like Delhi University, where a
distorted, disfigured, corrupt and opportunistic (outright greed-stricken!),
but some sort of a student union holds, even there the student democracy is
further lowered and the question of student rights unanswered due to the presence
of administration and administrative power, and lack of unity among students. An
example corresponding to what I have just mentioned took place in St. Stephens’
College last year when the students released a magazine which was banned by the
college authorities and when the students attempted to protest, the principal
called the cops who violently suppressed the “attempted demonstration”.
I will also deal with the issue of increasing political unity among students
through means of organization and development of a critical consciousness.
Looking at
these examples one has to ask is not this unrequited power given the university
administration a form of sate power? For some who see this relation too
farfetched, I furnish the history of Jamia’s history of suppression which was
around the time Najeeb Jung was appointed the vice chancellor of Jamia and the
credit (which the students might call fault) of the ban on student union
elections goes to him along with other accolades such as a fee hike of two
hundred percent (!), stationing of armed guards at the university gates (with
full martial uniform!), fencing of the college premises with barbed wire and
installing cameras for complete surveillance. The university space was turned
into a maximum security prison or rather a Nazi concentration camp by (Nazi?)
Mr. Jung and now the same Mr. Jung having shown unparalleled skill in
disciplining a “particular sect” of students (minority class), as a result
enjoys the comfortable and powerful (and dictatorial) position of the
Lieutenant Governor of Delhi. We should also try to understand why the student
fears the administration, or, why should the student fear the administration
(or should the student fear the administration?) even though both parties are
mutually dependent on each other, the officials being more dependent on the
students than the other way round (like the citizens and the state). The
answer, or the hint, I have just mentioned in the parenthesis, i.e. the
students fear the administration in the same way as they fear the state.
Democracy is just a veil that the state hides behind while it oppresses a
certain class of people from who can economically profit. Here we must look at
the two great examples, HU and Jamia which are both minority institutions
catering to a certain section of society, a section to which the constituent
people belong (unlike the population of St. Stephens), more and less, also to
an economically oppressed class. And here, in Jamia and HU, it is more than a
coincidence that we find the most authoritative and repressive attitude of the
administration. There are other universities in Delhi as well, like DU, JNU,
Ambedkar, Indraprastha, etc. but nowhere do we see such oppressive measures
taken upon the students. Only a few colleges belonging to South Campus and
other off-campus colleges which are called ‘lesser elite’ colleges come closer
to such ruthless administrational oppression, such as Aryabhatta College,
where, on one occasion the principal physically restrained and assaulted a
student, when the students protested on the issue of procurement of admit cards
for second, fourth and sixth semester examinations. Here also we see a pattern
as in Aryabhatta College too, the students do not belong to the same elitist,
bourgeois crowd as Sri Venkatesware, but to a more economically backward class
(I generalize broadly due to a need to elucidate a point. It is not that there
are no economically backwards students in Venky, but the most vocal and visible
crowd in the college is that of the bourgeois and the petty bourgeois).This
makes the administration think that they have a right over these “low
class” students to discipline them.
At this point, one had to be able to reason that if after decades of
independence, we still have the colonial mentality of domination and servitude,
that we have not been free at all and that we should reject the democracy we
have, the state that oppresses, and call for a fuller democracy governed, or
rather, dictated by those who are oppressed culturally and economically not by
the virtue of the power that they hold but by the virtue of their labor. We
should rid ourselves of those pin-up middlemen in the university spaces such as
the administrative officers, the vice-principals, principals, university
officials and vice-chancellors or at least reduce the power they enjoy by
reducing their status to mere workers as they are no producers of intellectual
capital in a university apparatus. The professors ought to have more pay and
power than the principal because they are the ones putting their labor (though
it may not be much, as much of it is only theory) for the purpose of the mental
development of the student. We need to challenge the existing structure of the
university if we mean to really free ourselves from the kind of education that
is overpriced and is taught to us “in slavery”. But we must not forget
that in going against the university structure and its culture, we are also
going against the dominant state structure i.e. the government and its
ideologies as well. So e will require a counter-state ideology that will ensure
fuller democracy and representation of the oppressed and the working-class (the
oppressed class is the working-class) among the highest orders. We require the
weapon of true militant socialism. To understand why the students require
socialism, we must observe the nature of oppression in the university very
scientifically.
II
A student is
as much a worker in the university space as a professor and I would say even
far more oppressed (from the professor, not from the worker). The kind of labor
produced by a student is similar to the idealistic cognition as the teacher,
and it is often the student who has to account for the synthesis of the
dialectics that occur between the teacher and the student. Simply put, it is
the student who has to put up with the burden of examination and the aspiration
of passing with a degree. Rather than rewarding, or at least partially
compensating for his intellectualism (in the most honest of terms as the
student works towards his theoretical ambitions in a material manner), he has
to in turn pay the fees in a sort of a reversal of the ‘concession scheme’
which is granted to certain areas. This concession is being deprived from the
student as there is no stipend given to the student for his efforts. The notion
is stipend is applicable to only the fields of study from which the state
profits such as the armed forces, merchant marines etc. and this in a sense,
alienates the average student from his education or academic affairs and the
student gets “frustrated” even though he had opted for the course of his/her
will. We must understand that the nature of the problem of the students in the
university with the administration is economic in nature, and also that the
interests of the students and teachers are diametrically opposed to the
administrative bureaucracy. For instance, while the student demands for lower
fees and the teacher for a permanent faculty, the administration (who are
appointed more or less permanently themselves) involves itself not with those
demands but things exactly opposite to it such as raising the fees while at the
same time cutting down the number of students to be admitted in the subsequent
year, and if need be, increasing the number of ad-hoc staff (but oh! Not permanent).
The number of oppositions of interests is far too many to be broadly enlisted
in the span of this article. But from the above made premise, we can safely
deduce that the interests of students and professors are antagonistic to the
interests of the administration. This is very similar to the situation of the
worker in a private factory where his demands of pay according to his labor
(i.e. the entire cost of finished products) is opposite to the demand of the
capitalist factory owner which is maximized profits (for him!) for the industry
that he owns. He earns more than the laborer by putting no work at all just by
the virtue of ownership of means of production. This is the characteristic
feature of any capitalist mode of production, even a mode of intellectual
production such as the university. In this sense, the worker and the student
are united in their economic struggle (on a major or minor scale) against
democracy-induced capitalism and against state institutions to put an end to the
tyranny that oppresses us. The true nature of a people’s republic is not
realized in the economic structure of capitalism, and will not be realized in
the near or distant future as long as capitalism and a few greedy,
individual-minded capitalists (the 1% who make the 99% bleed) reign the
dominant modes of production. True democracy and true republic of the people
can only come with a suppression and consequent overthrow of the present state
by the truly powerful masses to create an armed workers’ state to run the
universities and the factories thus redistributing the dominant modes of
production.
Any student
activist or any student for that matter who wishes for complete liberty and
freedom of expression and criticism in the university ought to strive towards
creating an armed workers’ state and reducing himself or herself to the state
of a worker (if it hasn’t already become the case). A student is the rightful
master of the university and the only aid he requires is from the professors
and no more. The Indian universities especially state universities in the 60s
and 70s had that proletarian (revolutionary) culture of struggle and
intellectual critique. By the end of the 80s and the coming of the 90s, around
the time when India opened its doors to globalization was the time when we
moved into a form of neo-imperialist subjugation where instead of global
colonies, global economic powers and corporate magnates started to govern not
just our economy but also our socio-political nature. It was in this period that
the Indian universities became a factory for “professional” study as
opposed to a haven for intellectual learning. Active discourses about Indian
politics and its future were cut off from the university space and vice versa
(that is, the student movement detached itself from larger working class and
rural peasantry struggles and political movements) by the new millennia with
the rise of the foreshadowing consumerist mass culture. It is also the very
same reason, that of the student culture being dominated by opportunism and
improper social consciousness, that there are no student newspapers (in Delhi
University and Jamia, and JNU, to a greater extent) that oppose the inherent
contradictions of interests between the students and the university officials.
Professors in the university are intellectuals only in talk (paper tigers) as
they too make little effort to increase the consciousness of the students and
all they do is dazzle the student with radical lectures in the class. What
these so-called intellectuals need to understand is that for a struggle so
major as to reconstitute the university space, the students cannot be called on
to bring a revolution. A gradual process is required to be built up which would
create a mechanism of the formation of a revolutionary action. Even students,
those who can write and have the ability to bring out newspapers in
universities get caught up in popular opportunistic wave which, like an opium
wave over the minds, makes them forget about their actual travail. These
students cannot comprehend that they have a very vital weapon in their hands
which can be used to drastically change the mindset of the average student and
fill him with the revolutionary force with which he/she will fight the greater
battle with the university for his/her right. University newspapers, especially
the ones like DU beat, have the potential of being more popular than they are
by inculcating the ability to expose the conditions of the university, wage a
struggle and subsequently clash with the university armed with facts and a
majority of students on their side. The current outlook of DU Beat, or even DU
ki awaz caters to only an elite class of students, for two reasons (1) The sly
gabbing and witticism in which DU Beat speaks is not the general colloquial
among university students (2) The articles are far too wide spaced and
non-contextual to the core of the conditions which make the student life
unique. Granted that DU ki awaz has taken up some crucial issues time and again
(while DU Beat is too busy taking interviews of Kiran Bedi and covering the
treacherous vice-chancellor Dinesh Singh in a positive light!), a student
newspaper should not only do the job of throwing current happening on the face
of students but help building up a common university culture and that is, and
will be impossible without addressing that which unites the student of all
classes- the problems of the university and student life. DU Beat, especially,
is so detached from students’ lives and their financial reality that it does a
short review in some of their editions of the cafés and restaurants. What DU
Beat does not take into account is that at least ninety five percent of
students studying in DU, especially those living in residential areas around
the college and also those studying in the university are seldom simply cannot
afford going to these places, even on the rarest occasions. Why, the reader of
this article should ask, do they then print this useless article and waste the
precious space in their newspaper that can inform the students about the
legitimate problem regarding the shortage of cheap and affordable eating spaces
in the vicinity of the campus. As much as I would like to answer it by saying
that that it improves their rate of circulation, such triviality can hardly
sway students to the side of the newspaper so that they can become its regular
readers. So I come up with a simple and blunt answer that they do not know and
they do not believe that a simple newspaper can turn into an organizational
force and gather not just a cult following but a mass support in terms of
funds. Or even if they know the fact, they might give the old argument about
being ‘neutral’ and not being too political, but they do not realize that by
not taking the side of the students, they immediately make a choice of siding
with the authoritative forces (for example, the article about the
vice-chancellor).
Nothing can
be achieved if we stay divided among ourselves and do not utilize the weapons
and forces at our disposal to flight for student rights. We have to flush every
newspaper full with facts and theories about the nature of exploitation of the
students, and if possible every department magazine (especially political
science, sociology, economics, English, Hindi and for numbers, the science and
math departments) and college magazine that come under the ambit of the
university as well, and are drafted by student editorial committees. I urge not
just the students but even the professors of the university to use the magazine
as a weapon against the authoritative forces of the university and truly show
and teach the students how to be an intellectual who carries forward his duties
and responsibilities. The battle-ground is already set but we are wavering and
fearing our opponents even though we are large in numbers and have ample
weapons to use against them (as I have already shown). We waver because we do
not really what our nature is, as students and those who do know (who are more
than a few) feel insignificant, insecure and scared because either they are opportunists and prostitute
their intellect for better prospects or they lack the strength to confront
their individual oppression. If each such student unites with others to form a
front of solidarity of students’ mass with the same problems, we can easily
fight the battle and win. In order to win the battle however, we need a unity
of opinions among our ranks, and we need to understand the sameness of our
nature of oppression. And here I repeat again, all of our oppressions arise
from the very nature in which (the very dictatorial and non-democratic nature)
the university is constituted such that we have no say in how or who the
administrational officers and executives are, and they enjoy immense power over
us because of the economic structure wherein the administration holds the
economic power of salary in the case of professors and college fees in the case
of students. We only demand for an economic shift of power from this
bureaucracy to a committee of students and teachers to gain ownership over the
university space.
Our simple is
singular and simple, and it is indeed our only solution. The so-called “democratic”
student union has failed us (so far) or in some cases (Jamia), it does not
exist at all. Once the students gain the necessary consciousness and ready
themselves with the means of organization, they will wage a war for fuller
democracy and economic change and they will gain the support of many allies in
this war. Rest assured, we will see the fight to its rightful conclusion.
