Across the world, any country that listens keenly to protesting students has always benefited. During the Vietnam War, students protesting at American universities were considered a threat to the American agenda. Subsequently, an education system driven by the neoliberal agenda has spoilt the ecosystem for student protests by trapping them in educational loans and employing other means. The fate of student protests in India is no different. The recent developments at HCU — the Telangana government filed cases against student activists and later withdrew them — show how poorly students’ protests are being handled.
It has become a norm to brand students’ protests as driven by the opposition agenda. This isn’t just the case for JNU or HCU — the protesting students of RG Kar in West Bengal were given similar treatment. Another protest at Jadavpur University demanding an election also bore the brunt of the government’s ire. However, these are the people who shape society’s political future. When the Telangana government was trying to muzzle the voices of the protesting students, it perhaps forgot that it was students who shaped, propelled, and made the dream of a separate Telangana state possible.
Why do governments, irrespective of their political ideology, always try to create a discourse to villainise protesting students? All political parties are aware of the importance of drawing students to their political ideology, and thus have student wings. Many leading politicians and famous personalities were once student leaders or participated in student movements.
In India, we train our children not to question but to obey their parents, elders and teachers. Any form of questioning is mostly considered disobedience, and the children are punished and tamed to accept obedience as reality. Universities are the only spaces where students break free from this loop of not asking questions. The university space, known for its diverse character, debating nature, student unions and political participation, produces citizens with social consciousness who have the potential to question the norms.
However, not all universities and educational institutions have this space; premier institutions like IITs, IIMs and NITs mostly don’t allow students to have space for student activism, and as a result, these spaces lack the discursive edge that is needed to promote anti-caste narratives, implement reservation, and prevent suicides.
According to the 2020 report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), every 42 minutes, a student takes her life, indicating that more than 34 students die by suicide every day. Families push children to live in the future and see them as a ticket out of their socioeconomic conditions. The state disappoints the youth by not creating enough employment and livelihood opportunities. A neoliberal state that measures a person’s worth in terms of wealth further pushes young people to end their lives.
In the face of this silent onslaught, the bare minimum the students can do is make their voices heard. When they raise their voices, it is mainly to address the most important issues in this country. Politicians, civil society, parents and teachers should be fixing the issues rather than villainising them. Students should be made responsible stakeholders in the country’s future, which is highly entwined with their own. The preliminary success of the HCU protests shows that students have the potential to understand the nuances of a society — its multilayered economic, ecological, social and political lives. They must be used to build the nation.
The writer teaches Anthropology at Visva Bharati, Santiniketan
