By Yash Shukla
In a setback for Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the Congress-led National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) won the crucial posts of President and Vice President in the Delhi University Student Union (DUSU) elections 2017. The Sangh supporters would say that it is not a defeat as ABVP, too, won two seatsSecretary and Joint Secretary. However, this is far from the truth. ABVP has won the post of President every year since the Modi government came to power at the Centre. What happened this time?
Omnipresent violence on campus
Most of the journalists who keep an eye on the political scenario of various universities have unanimously seen the incidents that took place at Ramjas College and Gurmehar Kaur as one of the major reasons for the defeat of the ABVP. In an attempt to replicate the political model based on its so-called Nationalism which has always paid dividends to the BJP in a myriad of states, ABVP tried to emulate the same model in Delhi University, but fortunately, it backfired. The students of the varsity have shown that they are unlike the gullible voters of states like Uttar Pradesh.
In a similar fashion, all the students of the varsity rallied behind Gurmehar Kaur who was threatened and trolled by the goons of ABVP. Moreover, these two incidents should not be seen in isolation as violence has been an ever-present element in DUSU since ABVP came at the helm. Satendra Awana, the then President of DUSU, was also seen assaulting and threatening the administration staff and faculty of the varsity on a regular basis in 2015. The students have shown that they do not stand by the ideology of division, exclusion, and violence, and that they hold values like dissent, freedom of expression and diversity dear to them.
Corruption and misled governance
Not only hooliganism, ABVP-led DUSU was also accused of corruption and misgovernance. NSUI, with the help of an RTI, got access to a document which showed that out of 26 lakh Rupees, 22 lakh were spent on tea and snacks. This document was seen and shared by a lot of students before the election and is being seen as one of the reasons for the defeat of ABVP. Political analysts had gotten enough signals of the impending defeat of ABVP, which included the increase in voting turnout by at least 5 percent, and the selection of the Presidential candidate of the ABVP who was not as known among the students as his NSUI counterpart.
Is this the Congress’ revival?
Ever since the result of the DUSU elections came out, there has been a talk of Congress revival. However, too much should not be read into the results of these elections, as the winning margin of the NSUI candidates is not big enough. Moreover, if Congress had really been able to revive its fortune in the capital, then it also would have done a fabulous job in the JNU Student Union (JNUSU) elections, but that is not the case. In JNUSU, NSUI got lesser votes than None Of The Above (NOTA). A clear inference that one can make from this is that the students of Delhi University did not have any alternatives, like the students of JNU where the base of Left parties is quite strong. Hence, instead of becoming complacent and overconfident, NSUI should introspect and devise a strategy in order to win, and do so with a larger vote share.
Universities continue to elude BJP
Having established the BJP governments in more than 18 states across the country, why are universities being proved as the Achilles hill for the BJP? Why does a national party like BJP, which is apparently the biggest political party in the world in terms of the number of members, fighting a contested battle with a party like CPI-M which seems already in its last phase ruling only in Kerala and Tripura?
Despite ruling the country, the BJP is very well aware of the fact that students and youth are an indispensable part of any nation, and have a major say in the politics of the country. In the present scenario, all the universities are Left-leaning and sympathetic to the ideology of Congress and Left parties. The machinery in the government, as well as the party, is bent on changing the ideology of these universities by fair or foul means, including changing the syllabi of various universities and rewriting the history according to its whims and fancies. Not surprisingly, all these efforts are being proved counter-productive by the students who are able to see through the nefarious plans of the BJP and are ready to outwit these schemes. It’s high time BJP stops its rhetoric and jargon of “nationalism” and starts working on the development of the country, lest it will be shown the exit in many other elections.
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