Now that we have answered your queries, MAY WE ASK ABOUT your year-long absence from struggles? About your absurd targeting of JNUSU? Which side are you? With whom do you stand?
On the eve of today’s UGBM, the campus has seen a sudden pre-election ‘awakening’ of the DSF/SFI/AISF/DSU from a year-long slumber, with a series of extremely vicious pamphlets targeting JNUSU’s struggles. When JNUSU started the indefinite hunger strike after decisions taken through a council and subsequent all organization meetings, DSF along with other organisations spent their entire energy in demobilizing students. By sabotaging every attempt to present a united students’ voice against administrative and bureaucratic failures to ensure hostel construction, the DSF/SFI/AISF/DSU also facilitated the Administration’s agenda.
We would like to ask the ‘Mahajot’ of DSF/SFI/AISF/DSU some simple questions:
- This ‘mahajot’ is attacking the JNUSU for sitting on an indefinite hunger strike to ensure fulfilment of deadlines given by Administration for hostel construction. What made them boycott that struggle, when the decision to start the hunger strike had duly been taken from JNUSU Council meeting and all organization meeting? Does the DSF/SFI etc have no respect for democratic decision-making processes of the JNUSU and JNU students?
- They boycotted the struggle for hostels. May we know what was the alternative struggle proposed by DSF? The only model of ‘struggle’ DSF along with SFI/AISF/DSU provided was a road-blockade inside JNU, that lasted less than half an hour, and blocked vehicles and buses, thus inconveniencing students themselves! JNUSU’s model of struggle identified concrete hurdles (of DDA/Forest Department clearance) and struggled to get rid of these hurdles. What did DSF-SFI-AISF’s half-hour road-blockade show achieve, except to send a message of a divided student community to help the Administration?
- If SFI, DSF, etc were so concerned for hostels for students, what did they do throughout the year to show this concern? Why did their ‘concern’ manifest itself only on the eve of elections? And why did this ‘concern’ take the form of unity against the JNUSU and hunger strike, rather than unity against the Administration? Some of the organisations like SFI, DSF and ABVP have councillors in the JNUSU. Throughout the year, why didn’t a single one of these councillors even enquire about the status of hostel construction and alternative accommodation from the administration? Why didn’t they bring out one SINGLE pamphlet or poster in this regard? Why did most of these organisations refrain from even appealing to students from participating in JNUSU protest demonstrations throughout the year, and boycott all such protests? Why is it that the FIRST time they bothered to even talk to the administration about hostels was when JNUSU started the hunger strike on 6thJuly?
- What stops DSF/SFI/AISF etc from acknowledging that there has been a selective delay in ‘clearances’ only for hostel constructions by bodies like the DDA, and Forest and Ridge department, while all other constructions inside and outside JNU continue smoothly? Why do they refuse to identify the political motive behind these selective obstacles created by machinery inside JNU administration as well as government departments only for hostel for students? Has the anti-JNUSUism and pre-election pettiness of these organisations reached such a level that they are ready to remain silent on the anti-student forces in Administration and Government?
- Do SFI/AISF/DSF etc recall that just as they are undermining JNUSU’s struggle for hostel construction now (by refusing to recognise the deliberate and politically motivated delay in hostel-construction ‘clearances’), they had maligned the AISA-led JNUSU’s protracted struggle during 2008-10 too against scuttling of OBC reservations, by refusing to recognise the mischief of the faulty ‘cut-off’ criteria? Then, it was the AISA-led JNUSU that had alone fought the struggle against the faulty ‘cut-off’ first in the campus then in the Delhi High Court and Supreme Court, thus ensuring the proper implementation of OBC reservations all over the country.
- Why are various organisations in the anti-JNUSU Mahajot supporting each others’ lies? For example, they have been saying that this was the 5thHunger Strike under the leadership of the AISA-led JNUSU for hostels, and thus Hunger Strike as a mode of struggle should be boycotted. May we remind them that 2 of these 5 hunger strikes happened during the 2012-13 tenure of the JNUSU in which V. Lenin Kumar from DSF was the PRESIDENT? Is DSF so ashamed of V Lenin Kumar’s role that it wants to erase the memory of their own JNUSU President’s leadership from history? More interestingly, why are the other organisations in the Mahajot pretending to forget DSF’s failed leadership in the Union?
Secondly, why are other ‘Mahajot’ organisations including SFI’s supposed ‘arch-rival’ DSF, supporting SFI’s lie that all new hostels from Tapti to Chandrabhaga were a product of a struggle led by the SFI-led JNUSU in 1999 (20 Sep-2 Oct)? The truth is that the ‘militant movement’ of Sep 20-2 Oct, 1999 ended with a police crackdown in which the JNUSU President ran away, and subsequently signed an agreement with the administration to not hold protests in the vicinity of Ad Block!!!! Planning and construction of Tapti and Mahi- Mandavi hostels goes back much earlier to 1996-1997. These hostels which became fully operational during 1999 and early 2000 could not be the product of a movement held at the end of September and early October 1999, unless two hostels can come up by magic within 2-3 months!
May we also ask them that why all organisations are parroting SFI’s grand claim of ‘alternative accommodation’ in Mahipalpur? Isn’t it a well-known fact that the Mahipalpur arrangement of 1997-98 (and not after Sept 1999 movement that SFI is falsely claiming) had to be abandoned within months due to huge inconvenience that students faced because of distance and lack of basic facilities?
- In yesterday’s (28 July) pamphlet DSF suggested that JNUSU had taken no initiatives to mobilise students against anti-people and communal Modi Government! May we humbly say that JNUSU remains one of the very few elected students’ platform in the country which has been relentlessly mobilising public opinion and mobilising against the present Modi regime. However, DSF and their present day ‘allies’ have been mostly absent from all these. To remind just a few of the instances: JNUSU’s intervention in Trilokpuri communal attack, in Narela-Bawana communal Mahapanchayat, protest against Balabhgarh riots, 2nd October counter pledge to expose the farcical Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and its imposition in Campus, challenging imposition of observing Good Governance Day on Christmas holiday, protest against saffron diktats in FTII and IIT-M APSC, protest actions against LCR and Central University Bill with participation of students from across the country.
However, blinded by their vested political interests and being absent in most of the mobilisations, it is indeed very difficult for DSF and its ‘election-time partners’ to even acknowledge these round the year struggles by JNUSU!
May we ask them now, WHY the JNUSU President from DSF in 2012-13, failed to give even a call from JNUSU for a Protest against Modi’s visit to SRCC when he has trying to use academic space for his partisan electoral purpose? May we also ask DSF why was NO SINGLE call from JNUSU given during the same tenure against Lyngdoh Committee Recommendations?
- What is the political compulsion that makes DSF spread cynicism and lies undermining JNUSU’s important and sustained role in struggling against the present Government? As the student community knows, on the coming 5thAugust, JNUSU has given a call for an Education Parliament on Policy Attack on Education such as Central University Bill, CBCS, RUSA, WTO Commitments and Saffronisation. Responding to JNUSU’s call several Teachers’ Associations and educationists from all over the country are coming on a platform. Students from across the country are also uniting hands on that day to oppose the present government’s offensive against education, autonomy and freedom of expression. JNUSU circulated the call to all these organisations after the decision to hold the Education Parliament was agreed upon by all, in several rounds of all organization meetings in June itself. DSF’s pamphlet now indicates that they will boycott this Education Parliament as well – why? Who will benefit from their non-cooperation in such an important initiative on education policies which is the need of the hour? Is it to woo the right-wing support base in elections in the month of September, which will be the biggest beneficiary of the anti-AISA overt and covert ‘Mahajot’?
Friends, JNUSU is one of the very few elected students’ platform in the country which has been boldly raising its voice against the unjust and communal power at centre. As a result, JNU and JNUSU are very much in the Modi regime’s firing line; one of the indications of this has been the Delhi Police’s crackdown on almost every JNUSU mobilisation in the past year. We are more than willing to pay the cost of our commitment to resist the most reactionary and regressive Modi regime. But when student organisations, out of petty political calculations, undermine the unity of progressive forces against this most dangerous regime, it is highly unfortunate.
We appeal the student community to expose and defeat these opportunist and petty forces in the UGBM, assert the unity of students in the struggle for hostel construction as well as against the Modi Government’s policy regime, and vote for JNUSU’s resolution for :
Carrying Forward the Gains of 15 Day Hunger Strike, Forging Principled Struggle Against the Politics of Targeting JNU and Selective Denial of ‘Clearances’ for Hostels
Mobilisation for 5th Aug Education Parliament Against Policy Offensives of CBCS, Central Univ Bill, RUSA, WTO Diktats, Saffronisation and Lyngdoh!
Unceasing Slander Is Their Only Weapon,
Unceasing Struggle Is Our Only Commitment!
aisa speaks 