The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), which is affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), won the election to the four-member Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) that was held on Friday after three years. While the ABVP won three posts, the Congress’s student wing National Students’ Union of India bagged just one. The elections once again cast a spotlight on student leaders and their link to electoral politics. Many universities across the country have seen phases of powerful mobilisations in independent India, even forming the basis for larger causes. The JP movement that shook former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had a powerful student base. In 1974, a student movement against the Congress government in Gujarat made Chief Minister Chimanbhai Patel resign. Students then began protesting in Bihar, leading to police firing. Subsequently, Jayaprakash Narayan or JP, as he was popularly known, agreed to lead the students. The movement was an indication of how students could form key constituents of political change and provide an alternative route from electoral politics. Then, there are the leaders who started their journey with student organisations linked to political parties, rose through the ranks, and went on to contest elections. Prominent leaders such as former Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, current Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari (from the ABVP), Congress general secretary K C Venugopal, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar, and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee (from the NSUI/Chhatra Parishad), Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar (JP movement) were all powerful student politicians once. However, over the last two decades, there has been a growing perception that student leaders have not been able to sustain a long-term career in politics or activism and one of the reasons could be restrictions applicable to student politics at present. A BJP leader who rose up the ABVP ranks said student politics was not necessarily a “direct avenue” to national politics. “Let us not forget that even Arun Jaitley did not move straight from university to politics. He was a lawyer who achieved professionally and became politically prominent two decades after his stint as a student politician.” Former Sirsa MP and Haryana Congress president Ashok Tanwar, who contested as the JNUSU president in the early 2000s, said there were certain “difficulties” within student politics in the current landscape. Tanwar had a falling out with the Congress and joined the Trinamool Congress first and is currently with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Tanwar quoted the recommendation of the Lyngdoh committee — formed in 2003 to issue guidelines for student elections and headed by former Chief Election Commissioner J M Lyngdoh — which says that a student can contest an election only once. “People enter, contest one election, and then fade out,” he said. Former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar is perhaps the only recent popular name who has been able to branch out of student politics. He first shot to fame after sedition charges were levelled against him in 2016. He joined the CPI — he was in the All India Students’ Federation (AISF), its student wing — and unsuccessfully contested the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Begusarai in Bihar. He lost to Giriraj Singh of the BJP who is now a Union Minister. Kanhaiya joined the Congress in 2021 and is now part of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) and heads the NSUI. From Left to Congress There have been three powerful currents of student politics on the national stage: the Left (AISF, the Students’ Federation of India and the All India Students’ Association), the ABVP, and the NSUI. With the Left losing ground everywhere outside Kerala, its student mobilisation, out of which emerged former CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat and current general secretary Sitaram Yechury, has also lost momentum. This is also reflected in the pattern of student leaders from the Left joining the Congress. Along with Kanhaiya, there is also CWC member Syed Naseer Husain, who was the JNUSU president from the SFI a little over two decades ago; Sandeep Singh, seen as a close aide to the Gandhis who was with the AISA earlier; Mohit Pandey, also an AISA activist who now looks after the social media team of Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi; and Akbar Chaudhary who was once with the AISA. Tanwar said the importance that the Congress accords to leaders not from the NSUI was harming the student organisation. “If the destination of Congress is reached easily from other organisations, where is the incentive to work for the NSUI?” he asked. From the ABVP’s side, no single student leader in the last 20 years has become a visible political face. The ABVP, though, is not the student wing of the BJP but is affiliated to the RSS. In this set-up, an ABVP leader is likely to be active in RSS-linked organisations like the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram or the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh rather than the BJP. Student activists also seem to be finding a challenge in the “parties expecting unwavering loyalty” from them to certain leaders. “A student activist who graduates to politics within his own ideology feels a sense of ownership and can be critical of leaders senior to him. Thus, lateral entrants, be they turncoats or people from other professions, are considered better yes-men,” said a Congress leader who did not wish to be named. Some student leaders also said the entry of professional campaign managers and agencies in the electoral arena had limited the chances of them engaging in ground-level campaign work. A BJP leader, who was once in the ABVP, said parties focus on candidates who can win polls, thereby going to faces that already have built a base and have influence. “Winning is determined by caste and local factors and the ability to run and mobilise a campaign. Most student activists come from ordinary families and lack the ability to become winnable candidates.”
