I
The prime question of a student and the way in which his/her
student life is to be destined is determined solely by his/her adherence to a
form of culture. When a student leaves behind his home and school, he leaves
behind a huge chunk of his/her culture (which is also true for students living
in Delhi though they do not leave their homes completely) and the student’s
most important need becomes culture. The student might have a prejudice on the
question of culture and might have his/her own ideas about culture but seldom
is it realized in true material reality when the student becomes a part of the
university. Why is it so? This is precisely because the university campuses in
general and the University of Delhi in particular have no culture. The
phenomenon that gives rise to a collective culture in Delhi University has not
yet been formulated. There are many reasons as to why there is cause for the
phenomenon of culture in Delhi University which we would deal with later.
First, we must concern ourselves with the epithets of
culture (and one can only call them epithets of culture in that they are
stereotypical) which is imagined to be the case not just by the students but by
the enterprises that concern the students as well. There is a relation between
“student
culture” and “youth culture” which I have no
qualms with but it is often seen that in most cases one is forced upon the
other, i.e. the student culture is forced upon the youth culture and vice versa
and the source of these forces are the very enterprises that concern themselves
with students. What enterprise am I talking of? Any and every body, group or
conglomerate that does the job of inducing capitalism into the student masses.
These “enterprises” (which are increasing drastically in number)
enforce the larger “youth culture” upon the more precise and different “student culture” which can be seen
and should be seen as detrimental to the space of the university, and the
University of Delhi has become the fertile ground for this eutrophication of weeds which is killing the more
independent “student culture”! ‘Why do they do so’, one might ask, and the
obvious answer to that is the general motive with which every capitalist
enterprise works- profit. And as to the question of ‘why the case of Delhi
University in particular’, the answer is that unlike JNU or Jamia which are
closed campuses, the colleges of Delhi University are scattered around the city
and make easy targets as the students are mostly undergraduates who aspire more
fun and materialistic satisfaction than the contentment of their basic plight
and issues. But as I have already mentioned, since there is no inherent culture
in DU, these packets of commodity culture easily find its way into the main
nerve of DU students like an injection of heroine. It is not mere coincidence
and is very surprising indeed that the residing areas in the vicinity of DU
colleges have an exorbitantly high rent such as Patel Chest, Vijay Nagar,
Mukherjee Nagar and in South Delhi, Satya Niketan, Munirka and at the same time
scores of high-priced and “modern cafes” open up, as is seen on
the lane opposite to Sri Venkateswara College. This vicious treatment of
students as cash cows is not “modern”, but feudal, backward and
absolutely abhorrent in its economic oppression. And what’s more, not only do
the philistine students (a minority that projects itself as a majority) is
silent on these issues to a mum, they even enjoy the bourgeois illusion without
the slightest hint of disillusionment. This perverse copulation of ‘student
culture” and “youth culture” is a lethal poison to
the intellect of student life which has been visibly on the decline. However,
this intellectual degradation does not show and on the other hand, a rise of
standards and civilized outlook is seen as a result of this in “youth
culture”. The youth culture is a characteristic and an outlook of
people of ages from seventeen to twenty seven which also brackets the average
age of students but is not limited to it. Besides students, it also includes
uneducated people of that age, educated and employed people of the
aforementioned age bracket as well as drop-out students. As the population
strives for educated members in society, there is also a quest nowadays for “capitalist
composure” or so called “professionalism” (here we leave
aside the much larger debate about social culture which includes religion,
domicile, etc. as a factor). The proletariat characters are shifted to the
realm of the counter-culture (for example, the kurta, jhola outlook which is
also well exploited by enterprises like Fab-India owing to its attraction among
the elite pseudo-socialist bourgeois liberals and winnable revolutionaries).
Thus the youth, that is not the student, aspires more and more to be a part of
the student culture to pass himself or herself as a member of a higher class,
i.e. the intelligentsia. Therefore the question of outward appearances should
be completely disregarded in the “student culture” as giving it a
place will mean giving the monster of capitalism a place and I have already
hinted to the fact as to how it is detrimental to the idea of “student
culture”.
One might think that the subject we are dealing with here,
that of fashion, is more or less trivial to the idea of culture nothing can be
far from the truth than this assertion. Fashion is the source of all the
glamour that “plagues” Delhi University. Yes, I use the word plague in its
negative sense of the term precisely because it hinders the creation of a more
basic student culture due to its superficial nature. If one wants o be
fashionable, one can very well join a modeling academy and relieve himself or
herself off the burden of being a student, because being a student requires
following a certain code which is in the best interests of the student
collective. This argument that I have just made might seem a tad bit orthodox
(and some would even say fundamentalist) and due to this very supposed
accusation on the issue that we need a student culture that rises from the
basic needs of the student which remains unanswered. As a result of this, and
as a result of the added capitalist exploitation especially targeted upon the
students, it becomes a need for the student masses to banish fashion from the
campus because an average student is too riddled with basic issues of
sustenance to be worried about how to dress for college. And only those people
will have a problem with this after my explanation who are either
materialistic, superficial students made idiots by the bourgeoisie propaganda
of addictive commodity fetishism or pseudo-intellectual liberals and hippie
morons who talk of abstract freedom without realizing the ground reality and
the oppression that it holds within. Both these groups represent a useless
minority who do not suffer the pangs of financial oppression in student life.
Although they are a minority, they are the most visible section of the student
crow solely because they are a part of the much larger youth culture (which is
also a fallacy and a giant solely created by media and advertising) and have derailed
from and defamed the tenets of student culture.
As a result, they eclipse what
is supposed to be concrete student culture.
What should be the ideal case for every individual student
is for him or her to be distanced from his individuality to be a part of a
larger progressive (in proletarian terms) collective of students from the
ground up and not by any external force because any external force, no matter
how progressive or liberal, will be a capitalist force and hence exploitative
and profit-oriented in nature. Egalitarianism (or even socialism) in the
framework of capitalism is a mere illusion and a dream from which the student
majority has to wake up. Equality under capitalism is a farce and students
strive to be equals to their fellow students. Students are therefore the
strongest collective after the collective of workers as they are united both in
their workplace (that is, the universities) as well as in their ideology (that
is the circumstances which gives rise to their consciousness). There is neither
room nor time for a reformative action because every power system, be it the
market forces which the students will face once they graduate from the
university, or the administrative (bureaucratic) forces that reside in the
university are antagonistic to the interests of the students. In simple words,
everyone is against us and the only ones we can trust are fellow students. But herein too, lies a problem that some
students or student groups valorize administrative power as opposed to student
power (the power of the student masses in the university) and use the
administrative framework under the guise of a student group. We will deal with
such student groups and the negative impact of such student groups when we deal
with the political nature of Delhi University.
First we must aid the argument of the detrimental effect of
the lack of culture (i.e. student culture) on the students through a
psychological critique of a student in Delhi University. Primarily, a student
studying in Delhi University is a “DU student” only before the ignorant
public unaware of the structure of DU. In reality, a student studying in DU is
a Ramjas student, or a Hnasraj student, and an RLA student, or a Venky student
and is seen and characterized accordingly. Each college imposes a signifier (or
simply a psychological symptom) on a student which is in no way cultural in
nature. And because the signifier of the college is imposed on the student with
no underlying culture (or a complete base which results in the manifestation of
the psychological symptom), the signifier gradually loses its meaning on the
student (and not for the student). What this essentially means is that the
student becomes a part of a psychological process over which he or she has no
control. Those familiar with epileptic seizure might understand what I am
trying to get at, which is that a student has no control over the time he/she
spends in college. He or she is unconscious (for the most part) only of the
time when he/she is idle, or with friends an at that time what prevails among
them is not a form of student culture but a brooding mundane discharge of
non-intellectual blabbering (i.e. useless discussions and gossips inconsistent
with the larger student collective). It does not mean that the average DU student
is a fool but that he/she is rendered unconscious about the surroundings due to
a lack of culture. You cannot call them fools in the same way that you cannot
call epileptics insane.
The students of Delhi University are becoming nihilists, and
not just nihilists in the classic philosophical meaning of the word. They are
becoming technocratic nihilists. It means that their activity is in an outer
dimension and does not materialize to form a complete psychological process. An
example to ferment my argument is that the students of DU enjoy the most
invigorating college festivals, and their parties sometimes overwhelm the
workaholic IITians. Also, DU students can be seen in most of the clubs in Hauz
Khas and yet the mood of any DU college is like a Gothic novel; bland and
dismal, and without any color or hope. What this teaches us resonates
throughout my essay, and is the central line of my argument; that the
University of Delhi has no unified student culture.
II
The Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung wrote in his essay “The
Culture of New Democracy” that ‘a given culture is the ideological
reflection of the politics and economics of a given society. This statement
also holds absolutely true when applied to the student society. The student
culture in Delhi University is meaningless (non-existent) because the political
and economic situation of the students in the university framework is absurd.
Politics is the focal point of any form of culture in a society because
politics decides how to address the needs and characters of a society. Politics
involves within it an entire shed of tools ranging from popular opinion, nature
of collective consciousness, the extent of reactionary force, the power of
administration to even matters such as censorship. DU witnessed the use of the
lattermost tool of censorship when the ABVP-led Delhi University Students’
Union banned a play by the Hindi dramatics society of Khalsa College because of
its content. What we see in this sort of an execution of power is a regression
and a lack of political aim. Let us, for one moment, move to JNU and examine
its culture of putting up posters, politicized wall-painting (on the walls of
the Central Library of JNU), of the night of presidential debate during the
students’ union elections that factors into JNU’s “campus democracy”
The “Ganga dhaba” of JNU is lively with
conversations that pertain to political issues, social issues, historical and
literary discussions and is always the centre of polemics. The bookshops of JNU
offer a variety of texts by eminent scholars, rare writers and authors, magazines
of all kinds and novels in Hindi, English as well as regional languages (of
that there are a few though). Compare this with Delhi University where even the
main campus (North Campus) does not have a proper bookstore (let alone a good
bookstore such as the ones in JNU). Why is this so? It is not that North Campus
has such a shortage of space that it cannot put up a book kiosk. The problem is
the students who will be unwilling to buy the books (under the present cultural
conditions) or simply will not be able to afford it (under the present economic
condition of the students). But even if DU overlooks the above mentioned
conditions to compete with JNU, there is an added political dimension due to
which DU would not want to do so.
The mechanism that I mentioned at the start that creates the
culture is not politics per se. Politics is a means of generating the mechanism
that creates culture. The mechanism that creates culture and is generated
through politics is consciousness. The axioms that can be derived from this
premise regarding student culture are the following:
1)
A conscious student is a cultured student and
vice-versa.
2)
A political conscious student is a cultured
student
3)
An unconscious student is an uncultured student
4)
An un-political is an unconscious student and
therefore he/she is an uncultured student.
5)
A political student is a conscious student and
therefore a cultured student.
This is the most basic point of my argument about politics
and culture in Delhi University. Moving on to more advanced points, politics is
a necessary discipline to raise the consciousness of the students and give rise
to a student culture. But how is its worth to be determined?
Here I would like to expand n the point of student groups
and the negative impact of student groups that use the administrative
framework under the guise of student groups. These groups rely on students as
unconscious masses and they seek to make them political without the necessary
step of raising consciousness. According to my derived based on a proper and
objective premise, we can conclude that the political activity of these kinds
of student groups are responsible of propagating the popular discontent among the students who
then hide behind fashion, parties and technocratic nihilism student politics
aims to rid the students of. Who are these political parties that work against
the interests of the students? These parties are always the parties in power,
holding one or more seats every year such as the National Students’ Union of
India and the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad and other parties along their
line. Of all these parties, ABVP, Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad, an
autonomous registered party working along the lines of the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) boasts of having an
ideology. An ideology is necessary for the cultural development of
consciousness so there might be confusion as to why ABVP is included in the
list of students’ group that harms the student. However much the ABVP talks of
its Hindutva and Akhand Bharat ideology, it has no impact whatsoever on the
issue of student culture precisely due to the reason that the students have
seen their unprecedented reign in DUSU wherein nothing of significance has changed.
As a result, they failed to play the part of integrating ideology to practical
affairs of the university to bring about a systemic change. A systemic change
can only be brought by a revolutionary force which is communist in its
ideology. A communist ideology entails the surrender of power to the people
(working class) who are the revolutionary masses realizing the correct nature
of their consciousness by meeting the counts of oppression that has been dealt
upon them. Parties such as the Students’ Federation of India, the All India Students’
Federation and the more popular All India Students’ Association will serve as
the organized focus and constitute the necessary politics and ideology which
will help to develop a student culture (as is the case in JNU by the effort of
AISA-led students’ union there). ABVP practices a system of rigorous
administrational procedure in its working, participates in delinquency and
violence (which since they are in union is akin to state-sponsored violence)
and follows the advice of political leaders of the BJP. Their organization is
bourgeois and so their ideology is fascist in nature, much like the National
Socialist Party of Germany, better known as the Nazi party. Therefore, with
ABVP in power, we see a neo-imperialist and feudal culture in Delhi University.
For this to end, we need a siege from the collective majority of students who
will use the means of popular violence (As was the case with the Commune of
Paris) to quell their state-sponsored violence and ensure the dictatorship of
the proletariat. In terms of the university space, this means that the students
become the proletariat (working-class) not by the virtue of their actual class
conditions (their family background, their economic class) but by the virtue of
the socio-economic oppressions they face, such as fee-hikes, high rent of
accommodation, insufficient food etc., uninformed changes in the education
system (such as the introduction of the FYUP, CBCS and the passing of the
Central University Bill). The common students need to seize power over the
university by any means necessary, either by electing a pro-student body like
AISA, or by the violent overthrow of anti-student bodies like NSUI, CYSS and
ABVP.
The seizure of power will only be complete once a single
pro-student body, a proletariat vanguard of the students takes complete control
of the university and is at its epoch. A democratic process such as the
elections is a bourgeois technique by way of which the bourgeois
pro-administration student bodies take control and wreak havoc upon the student
majority by massive fund frauds, small-scale riots, racial altercations and
most of all preventing the genesis of a proper student culture. The current
political scenario in DU needs radical reforms such as a centralized vanguard
party which is ideological in nature and through which the members of the
students’ union are elected. This will ensure a pro-student and working-class
ideology practiced from the top down. Such a centralized system is required
because the student community in general and the student crowd of DU in
particular is facing an assault on all fronts in the form of rent-mafias, big
franchise restaurants, by the propagators of “youth culture” guised as
student culture, by the dictatorial force of the university administration, and
lastly by the corrupt Indian State (the government) which has lost all regards
for its citizens. In such a case, we need a fortified vanguard from where we
can defend ourselves as students and rid the university of all oppressive
forces that seek with a blindfold our political consciousness. A single
pro-student group will ensure the entry of ideologically correct conscious
students as its representatives who will not only be the guardians of student
rights but will also ensure the organic development of a student culture in
Delhi University which has for long been in dire need of change in the
university. Only by ensuring such a political and cultural change can we ensure
the legitimization of the claim that the university officials make about DU
being the best university in India. Only when the students can raise themselves
to become wholly conscious (both socio-politically and culturally) that there
will be a uniformity in the prestige of colleges in the true sense (and not in
the perverted sense that the Central University Bill promises) and the students
themselves will make the University of Delhi a premiere institution not just in
India but all over the world.
