Opinion No campus is an island

In 60’s and 70’s, politics was considered to be a necessary part of student life. However, as the government ushered liberalization in the late 80’s, it began disappearing from campus.As noted sociologist, David Harvey points out that all over the world neoliberalism came by taking over the idea and desire of individual freedom and relating it to market fundamentalism. According to the neoliberal idea, to be free from constraints, whether economic or social, the only requirement was a complete focus on oneself, a strong will to succeed and a belief in the complete freedom of the market with no government interference. Everybody could win with a ‘believe in yourself’ attitude.

As this idea seeped into common sense, every phase of student life turned into a preparation for the ultimate aim of being rich and famous. It was not a period of learning, analyzing and questioning but one of arming yourself with various skills that had a high market demand. In this process, not only was politics separated from education, but education itself got reduced to mastering of skills.

This process started in schools wherehigh school students enrolled in science stream, not to understand science but to get into the IIT. Even the point of studying in an IIT was not to learn engineering but to use it as a signaling device to the corporate sector as being above the crowd. In universities, courses with high market demand were preferred over others.

But that was still no guarantee for the job, one also needed to ‘groom’ the personality and make itpresentable. Not just the intellectual but the whole personal sphere of habits and hobbies became a market terrain as well. One needed to mould ’ the entire being’ to market demands.  Holidays became a period for internships, theatre turned into a tool for personality building and debating was reduced to sophistry and public speaking. Leisure and hobbies became commodities which one had to carefully choose and invest in, to bag a high paying job.  All of this turned not just the coursework but the entire student life into a competitive game of marking oneself as a frontrunner among your peers.

Inspite of doing everything, very few succeeded. The success of neoliberal thought lied not in its dream of success but in turning systematic failures into individual and atomized failures. This way it subverted a collective challenge and then created cyclical spectacles around an individual with apparently mythical powers who would set things right. As these ideas turned student life upside down, what gained most was  ‘the cult of the individual’ at the expense of  ‘the idea of collective’.

Emptied out of its notion of collective action for collective gain, politics lost its emancipatory potential and was now just another career choice.Within campuses, politics became only about winning the student union election by organizing parties, bribing and even using threat and brute force. All of this led to a highly apolitical notion of student.

Paradoxically, the neoliberal ideas, which lead to the rise of this kind of politics, advertised these aspects to deemphasize and demonize politics per se. This was used for banning student elections and also to alienate students from politics.

To make a fair assessment, it wasn’t that student groups or individuals who practiced a different kind of politics were entirely absent from campuses, especially in places like JNU or HCU. But for the majority of students it was not a part of their routine activity orconversations.

If the mainstream of universities followed this regime of thought, the margins of art schools were no different. Being political was seen as opposite of being an artist. Politics was perceived to be restrictive, partisan and propagandist. Artist’s notion of freedom, ethics and morality were supposed to be free flowing and beyond any categorization.  Means of producing a work of art was claimed to be intensely personal. Even though one could look within in both political and apolitical ways, this question was never asked and never answered. In these campuses, cult of individual was replaced with the cult of artist.

However, campuses are in the grip of politics now. So what has changed in the last one year? Specially since the ideas, which once marginalized politics from campuses still remain dominant.

Answer lies in the slogan which is popular in the current student movement  – “ If you don’t take interest in politics that does not mean politics will not take an interest in you”.Even though the campuses were politically indifferent but ideas of secularism, equality before law, freedom of individual and freedom of expression remained the dominant ideas in some key institutions atleast in arguments if not in everyday practices.  This kind of indifferent liberalism suited the pragmatism of Congress. It could let these institutions exist as islands while it enacted draconian laws and trampled upon individuals rights of freedom and liberty elsewhere. By keeping them comfortable, it had made them aloof.

But, for a party like BJP with ideology, cadre and a long-term plan for turning India into a ‘Hindurashtra’, this indifferent liberalism was not enough. High dose of a particular kind of nationalism, a collective eugolisation of the myth of the glorious ancient past and active hatred towards imagined enemies of nation (both internal and external) were needed. It required changing the dormant yet dominant thinking in these institutions.

It was done by actively backing ABVP in university campuses, banning ideas and books against their ideology and silencing people who disagree. It also appointed party people in key decision-making positions within these institutes to further these tasks. However, it never expected a collective fight against it in the institutions where students were important and articulate stakeholder.

As universities and campuses faced crisis one after another, they were no longer safe islands. One had to think of politics because politics was actively thinking of us. To respond, a shared understanding had to be evolved, a common strategy had to be made and everyone had to protest. Collectivity, till now dormant had to be forced into action.As collectivity came back, politics transformed. It became a vehicle for articulating and intervening in society based on shared ideas.

Suddenly, like politics, studying also acquired a different purpose. It was no longer only an individualised, isolated and class room activity but a shared exercise to understand complex realities, an exercise to introspect, deepen and broaden the movement against the onslaught. This kind of study further begged one to be political, to intervene more in society. With the artificial wedge broken, politics and study became complimentary to each other.

As crisis came calling, art schools had no time to think in vacuum.,  As it dawned on them that art existed within the society and not separate or indifferent from it, many ideas came flooding. The halo of the artist was gone, but creativity was unleashed. Politics was not seen as being in opposition to art but a way to create, think, critique, read and understand work of arts.

As protests grew in campuses, it led to a further broadening of solidarities. As friends were thrown in jail, one was forced to think of countless muslim youths who spent years in jail on false terror charges. As Rohith was forced to commit suicide, one had to introspect ones’ own complicity and silence in the discrimination within campus where we studied. Politics was telling us to think within and beyond us.

As the student movement grows, it dawns upon us that democracy and its institutions are not carved in stone. They have to be tested and fought for in everyday reality and practice. One understands that laws are not mere legal right but usually operate keeping in mind the power equation and hierarchies and unless a struggle is mounted to change these very equations in society, they will continue to operate in a biased way.

Horrors in Kashmir, Kheralanzi,Azzamgarh, or on Maruti workers in Gurgaon have some commonality now. They are not mere aberrations but integral part of the functioning of Indian democracy.

It is the ability of student movements to broaden their demands, their understanding, their courage to question the unquestionable and the imagination to think the unthinkable which makes certain politicians preach to the students to not do politics. They surely have reasons to be afraid, very very afraid.