Students don’t want to be dragged into the past, they want a future

Socialists. Leftists. These are tags people are giving our students today. I say let’s not typecast them into categories that we have inherited or ones familiar to us. Socialism brings too much baggage. Yes, today’s students and youth have a deep unease with unequal education and employment opportunities. Yes, they are sick and tired of the Hindu-Muslim dialogue. But what they are actually saying is give me the future, not the past.

They’re saying: You want to settle Partition, which happened over 70 years ago. You want to settle Babri Masjid, which happened almost 30 years ago. But I want to look at my present and future. Don’t drag me to the past again and again. Understanding this is probably the best way of understanding them.

The last time this country witnessed nationwide student protests at scale was the 1970s. We had the JP Movement, led by Gandhian socialist Jayaprakash Narayan, against corruption. Their demand was the resignation of then prime minister Indira Gandhi. The other instance was the Navnirman Andolan, a socio-political movement in 1974 Gujarat, led by students against corruption in public life.

Then there were movements like the Assam Movement against illegal immigrants in the late 1970s, which was led by the All Assam Students Union and the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad. Another one was the Mandal Commission protests, against reservation in government jobs.

The protests we are witnessing now against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019 and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) are different from anything we have seen in the past. Firstly, geographically speaking, this movement is wider than any other youth movement India has seen. At least 35 universities are participating. It is not supported, driven and controlled by any political party or political face. It is neither left nor right.

The other distinguishing factor is that the issues are not specific to students. Generally, previous student protests were about issues related to the campus, from marksheets to degrees. There hasn’t ever been a student protest about an issue that is not student-exclusive and has become such a big wave. The Bihar and Gujarat movements left a mark nationally but both began with specific problems in campuses. The present movement is not just about the police response to protests at Jamia Millia Islamia anymore. And women have taken the lead. No other protest has seen such strong leadership of women.

The manner in which students protested at Jamia and how it was handled is symptomatic of something wider. They are not just fighting police behaviour but also the deeply suffocating environment of university campuses. The quality of leadership at universities has dropped and the desire to control students’ lives has gone up. This is happening at a time when students aspire to be free on their own campuses. They are nothing like the students of two decades ago, who accepted whatever the teacher told them. The student of today has a very different sense of who he or she is, and you can’t confine someone like that to a hostel by 7pm.

At a deeper level, the protests are about what’s happening in the economy. The unemployment rate is unusually high. A 2019 report by Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy shows that 11 million people lost jobs the previous year. Those in university feel they are headed for a world where employment is an uncertainty. The economy is a deeper cause that creates an overall climate in which something like the Jamia incident becomes a spark.

When it comes to women students, there is a strong aspiration not to be chaperoned as they are at home, not to be told what to do, to be whoever they want to be. This is not feminism; this is just an assertion of dignity. They want equal opportunity, they want equal treatment. They may not subscribe to the socialist dream of a world with no private ownership, but there certainly is an egalitarian streak in what they are doing.

At this moment in history, students and youth are the only social catalysts who can bring about radical change in a situation where the regime enjoys unquestionable majority and power over autonomous, independent institutions like the media and judiciary. In such a situation, only a student protest on the street can poke a hole in hegemony.

What makes students unusually powerful is that their participation is spontaneous. Usually, a movement gets direction when it is not mobilized by organized forces. It is this element that comes as an additional cherry on the top that gives it direction. And students are the cherry on top because they are not mobilized. They have become a barometer of society and the direction of the future, and that’s why students and youth have disproportionate influence. That’s why government can withstand a protest by 10,000 but not a protest of 500 students/youth.

We are at the cusp of a student and youth movement, which has the potential to change our public life. It has a wide footprint, the right depth required for such a movement. It does not yet, however, have a face and a name to it. It is not a movement that has come from deprivation and desperation. It is a movement of aspiration. Aspiration for better education and dignified livelihood. Aspiration for a forward-looking national agenda, rather than a backward-looking one.

—As told to Pooja Singh

Yogendra Yadav is a political analyst and national president of Swaraj India.