The Official Left Disappears from JNU

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) ended its decade-long electoral drought in the Left-dominated Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student’s union elections on Monday by bagging the post of joint secretary of the union. The “official left” drew a blank this year.

The ABVP also bagged 23 of the 42 councillor positions. What is interesting is that these victories came in science and Indic studies departments while the Left dominated the social sciences and languages departments.

The “official left”—the Students Federation of India (SFI) and the All India Students Federation (AISF)–suffered this year as it aligned with the Birsa Ambedkar Phule Students Association (BAPSA). Interestingly, the ABVP’s winner—Vaibhav Meena—is an adivasi student from Rajasthan.

One reason ascribed for the SFI drawing a blank was the split in “Left forces” in what is considered a bastion for that ideology. For many decades JNU was a catchment area for the “official left” and two general secretaries of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury, were former JNU students. The decline in the appeal of the “official left” in the campus has mirrored its fortunes in electoral politics. The party lost power in its traditional strongholds, West Bengal (2011) and Tripura (2018), after a long innings in power there.

In contrast, the ABVP’s appeal has grown in tandem with the appeal of conservative politics over the last decade. But that is only a part of the reason for its success. In JNU, the nature of Left politics often took a turn that appalled ordinary students. The slogan about India being split into different parts (bharat tere tukde tukde honge) or about appealing to separatist sentiment in the name of an executed terrorist, Afzal Guru, did not go down well in the student community except in the extreme fringes of the community.

What is being witnessed in the university is a polarisation between the extreme Left forces and the conservative voices represented by the ABVP. In this crowded field, there is virtually no space for the “official left,” be that of the SFI/AISF or other variety. Again, this is a trend that is visible in Indian politics, but with something of a turn in the story: the extreme Left is being squeezed to non-existence while conservative politics gains traction. It seems the only place where the former has some ideological traction is JNU, a university that was once considered a source area for “progressive” politics but that, over time, mutated into something very different.

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