Rahul Gandhi’s visit was preceded by an enrolment drive and followed by a visit to Delhi by 15 students, reports Riyaz Wani
IN WHAT is being billed as a battle to capture Kashmir’s intellectual space, the Congress is going all out to make its presence felt in Kashmir University, where the Valley’s entrenched political parties — the ruling National Conference (NC) and PDP — are yet to make a foray. Its fallout has the potential to alter the nature of political discourse in the state.
It all began in September, two days before Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi’s visit to the state. Congress activists descended on the campus distributing membership forms. Rashid Chaudhury, president of the Jammu & Kashmir unit of the National Students Union of India (NSUI), the students wing of the Congress, said the membership drives were a deliberate effort to introduce the party on campus. “Our recent drives have been successful. We have received more than 200 applications. We plan to hold elections in December and then we can introduce our members to the media,” says Chaudhury.
J&K Youth Congress President Shuaib Lone echoes Chaudhury’s words. “You see, Kashmir University is the only one in India where we don’t have a chapter. So, it is a priority for the party to have a union there,” he says.
However, Vice-Chancellor Prof Talat Ahmad played down reports of a Congress foray into the university. “If there are membership drives on the campus, we do not approve of them,” he told TEHELKA. “As for politics on campus, I will not allow any party to set up shop here.”
Student unions were banned two decades ago, with a brief lifting of the ban from 2007 to 2009, when Hurriyat hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s visit to the campus called upon students to work for the “freedom movement”. A few months later, the Kashmir University Students Union (KUSU) office was demolished.
But after the Gandhi scion’s visit, the university sent 15 students on a four-day trip to New Delhi to meet senior Congressmen. They were accompanied by the dean of students’ welfare, chief proctor and registrar. The students met Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal, Law Minister Salman Khurshid, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh and Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, Nandan Nilekani.
Students with affiliation to banned unions like the KUSU allege that the trip was organised in a furtive manner with no attempt to take the student community into confidence.
“This is unacceptable. On the one hand, you want university students to remain apolitical and ban student unions, and on the other, the administration abets the agenda of a particular political party,” says a student unwilling to be identified for fear of disciplinary action. “We will resist this strongly. We demand complete and not selective political freedom.”
When contacted, the vice chancellor said the visit to New Delhi was for the benefit of the university, which had received a Rs 40 crore package from the human resource development ministry.
There is a Students Executive Council set up by the administration as a substitute for the students union. “But the council has little role in student affairs,” a class representative, who is a member of the council, told TEHELKA. “We were kept in the dark about the visit to meet Congress leaders and government functionaries in Delhi.”
It is anger like this that makes the prospect of a Congress-backed students union in the university an ambitious idea. But the party has made a start, by hook or by crook, whereas the NC and PDP have yet to decide their opening gambits.
Riyaz Wani is a Special Correspondent with Tehelka.
riyaz@tehelka.com
