The dire straits of student politics: Which way is the shore?
Photo: Amirul Rajiv
None of this -- functioning student unions, political non-interference, a solid education policy, and elimination of weapons on campus -- will come by automatically. We have waited long for governments to do this for us, but only in vein. Even the current caretaker government, with little (apparent) stake in student politics, is not tackling the right issues in the right manner, and therefore not making much meaningful progress.
Progress is not being made because the debate is happening between the caretaker government and the political parties, not where the issue truly belongs: within the student community. It is time that those ordinary students who have thus far quietly suffered come out, unite and raise their voices against this utterly dysfunctional system. Reforms will only happen when the demands for it will come from within, vigorously and persuasively.
It is not as if students have never protested this system. However, these movements have tended to be catalysed by and masked under other causes, like the July 2002 anti-administration movement following a police raid of Shamsunnahar Hall, and died down when the primary demands were met. While July 2002 was an inspiring saga of ordinary students rising up to protest gross injustice, and ultimately succeeding to oust the VC, most of the seven-point demands, including restructuring of university regulations to eliminate hall-occupation and armed terrorists on campus, never reached fruition.
Nevertheless, the lesson to be learned from the 2002 movement and the long list of others that have happened before and since is that ordinary students not belonging to any political party can unite and strongly challenge the status quo. And that is what is once again necessary. Leadership and organisation of this movement must come from all individuals and groups from various corners of the student community who are disenchanted and marginalised by the system -- the left groups, the cultural associations, the study circles, and so on.
Indeed, they are the only entities that still have a degree of acceptability within the general student community (this is evident in the fact that most post-91 student movements -- including the nineties movements against rapists in Jahangirnagar, the July 2002 movement, the 2003 movement protesting the attack on Prof. Humayun Azad, the 2006 movements on Fulbari and Kansat, etc.) have spontaneously organised themselves under leadership of these groups and actively kept out the mainstream entities like Chhatro Dol and Chhatro League.
If we look back at our history of student politics, the most glorious phases have been those where students have treaded over ideological boundaries and united under common cause. The time has come again when the youth must unite to stop their destiny from being determined by ill-willed conspiracies. Let us unite again to finally make student politics "of the students, for the students, and by the students."
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