History Shows How Stifling Student Movements is Counterproductive

History is replete with examples of why stifling student protests can be counter-productive.

What started out as a cultural event at JNU to commemorate Afzal Guru’s execution has snowballed into a nationwide debate on free speech, uniting opposition parties just ahead of the Parliament’s Budget Session. The anti-government sentiment has been galvanised by police presence on campus, attacks on journalists and supporters inside the Patiala House Court, and questionable intel inputs to establish terror links with dissenting students.

The world over student movements have overthrown regimes, toppled governments, ended apartheids, affected domestic and foreign policy changes and cultivated a new breed of free thinkers. Here’s a look at some major students movements that shaped the course of politics in India.​

1. Nav Nirman Andolan

On 20 December 1973, students at Ahmedabad’s LD College of Engineering went on strike against a 20% hike in mess charges. The food situation across the country was grim owing to the drought of 1972, and the poor monsoon in Gujarat led to a sharp rise in the price of wheat, jowar, bajra and other essential commodities like groundnut oil.

A fortnight later, students at Gujarat University went on strike, which led to clashes between the police and students. The news of police force against students who were fighting against corruption and price rise spread to other towns and cities. Sensing an opportunity, Morarji Desai-led Congress (O) and the Bharatiya Jan Sangh fanned these statewide agitations and encouraged the students to form the Nav Nirman Samiti to consolidate and take the movement forward.

The Chimanbhai Patel government in Gujarat found itself in a corner after police records showed that 95 students were killed and more than 900 injured in police firing.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered Patel, originally her choice for Chief Minister, to resign and President’s rule was imposed in Gujarat.

On 11 March 1974, Morarji Desai sat on an indefinite hunger strike to demand a dissolution of what he alleged was a ‘corrupt Congress government’. This lent a sense of urgency to the students’ organisation, forcing the Congress to dissolve the assembly in which it occupied 140 out of 168 seats.​

2. JP Movement

Gujarat’s Nav Nirman Andolan was an inspiration for students in Bihar who were angry at rising mess charges, inflation and shortage of essential commodities. Unlike Gujarat, the students who were at the forefront of the agitation were politically linked.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), CPI(M) backed Students Federation of India (SFI) , Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti (CSS), and Sanukyta Socialist party backed Samajwadi Yuva Jan Sabha (SYJS) co-ordinated their activities and invited Jayaprakash Narayan to lead them.

JP, as Narayan was popularly known, was a Congressman who had been active in the freedom struggle. A Gandhian, he had retired from politics, but his deep criticism of the Indira Gandhi government drew him to the student agitation.

JP appointed 26-year-old Lalu Prasad Yadav, the President of the Patna University Students Union at the time, to lead the Bihar Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti (BCSS).

The students’ demand was to improve food supplies to hostels, arrest black marketers and hoarders and provide more scholarships to students. Massive protests were held between August 1973 and July 1974 in Gaya and Patna. Many of these marches were fired upon by the police and at least 70 students lost their lives and hundreds were injured.

But the protesters failed to get the MLAs to resign and dissolve the assembly. Having learnt from her political miscalculation in Gujarat, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi refused to sack the Bihar Chief Minister.

Realizing that the Bihar movement would not yield any political gain, JP went about consolidating and strengthening opposition parties in other states. His efforts continued through the Emergency and culminated in the formation of the Janata Party which brought together several anti-Indira factions, forming the first non-Congress government in the country.

3. Naxalbari Movement

On 25 May 1967, a group of farmers killed a policeman in a village called Naxalbari in North Bengal. This became the clarion call for students at the Calcutta and Delhi University. Charu Majumdar formed the Communist Party of India’s Marxist Lliberation Front or the CPI (ML) and students, some of them from elite families, headed to Naxalbari to liberate the countryside.

Presidency College in Calcutta and St. Stephens and Miranda House in Delhi became hotbeds of militant communism. This invited a brutal backlash from the police. Custodial torture and extra-judicial killings became a regular feature.

Some of the better-known revolutionaries who made it out of their village hideouts went back to teach at Delhi University.

Many of them agree that the government’s cardinal mistake in treating Naxalbari as a law and order situation and refusal to acknowledge the root cause of the problem resulted in the revolution to take on a different character.

4. The Anti-Mandal Protests

The Mandal Commission was constituted by Prime Minister Morarji Desai in 1978 to determine the criteria for defining socially and educationally backward classes and to recommend steps for their advancement. A year later, the one man commission submitted its report and recommended 27% reservation for Other Backward Classes.

A politically contentious report, it remained in the cold storage for ten years. On 7 August 1990, Prime Minister VP Singh accepted the Mandal commission report and the concept of reservation was introduced in Indian polity.

It created an upheaval in the country. A large section of students belonging to upper castes hit the roads in protest. Roads, highways, transport services and businesses were blocked and the country came to a standstill.

With violence spreading across the country, the anti-Mandal protests forced the BJP to specify its stand on reservation and risk alienating a crucial vote bank. But the BJP, specifically LK Advani, decided to explicitly back the students and launched the Rath Yatra to Ayodhya with the twin objective of launching a Ram Mandir movement and galvanize support for the General Election necessitated by the student uprising against the implementation of the Mandal Commission report.