“The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilisation”
– Rosa Luxemburg, The Junius Pamphlet

“In the operating room, we examined Juri from head to toe. This beautiful, meek little girl was missing two inches of her left femur along with most of the muscle and skin on the back of her thigh. Both of her buttocks were flayed open, cutting so deeply through flesh that the lowest bones in her pelvis were exposed. As we swept our hands through this topography of cruelty, maggots fell in clumps onto the operating room table”, writes Mark Perlmutter and Feroze Sidhwa, two American surgeons who were volunteering at Gaza European Hospital. These American doctors were writing about their experience of operating a “malnourished” 9 year old Palestinian girl Juri who ended up in the preoperative area of the hospital.

While describing the “topography of cruelty”, these two surgeons with a combined 57 years of volunteering in more than 40 surgical missions in the global south reiterated that “what we saw was unspeakable”. As these surgeons pointed out, UNICEF’s declaration of the Gaza Strip as the most dangerous place for children was hardly unexpected. The brutal reality that the children suffered was a reflection of the true nature of imperialism that ‘imperialism means war’; in this case perpetrated through the hands of its zionist lackey.

According to the official estimates by UN & WHO, by this time around 39,000 people were killed in Gaza Strip. However, The Lancet, a renowned British medical journal, has cautioned that the Gaza crisis’ true mortality rate could be much higher as it was sure to have been significantly underreported, with a possible death toll of above 186,000.The Lancet report titled “Counting the Dead in Gaza: Difficult but Essential” estimated that “this would translate to 7.9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip”. If 7.9% of Indian population died, it would come to around 114 million people. This is the gravity of the terrible tragedy being unleashed upon the people in Gaza.

Considering the gravity of the situation, The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the apex UN legal authority, in its July 19 order ruled, “the State of Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful; the State of Israel is under an obligation to bring to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible; the State of Israel is under an obligation to cease immediately all new settlement  activities, and to evacuate all settlers from the occupied Palestinian territory; the State of Israel has the obligation to make reparation for the damages caused to all the natural or legal persons concerned in the Occupied Palestinian Territory; all states are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by the continued presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”. 

Earlier, in May 2024, ICJ had ordered Israel to “immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. The colonial settler state went on ignoring all these orders with an ingrained character of  pathological perversion. From the reports available from the Israeli local media, Israel soldiers have been openly admitting that they went on shooting and killing innocent Palestinian civilians for fun when they got bored. They also burned civilian homes after occupying them.  For instance, +972, an independent magazine of Israeli and Palestinian journalists have carried testimonies of Israeli soldiers who killed civilians as part of fighting their boredom. “The testimonies paint a picture of a landscape littered with civilian corpses, which are left to rot or to be eaten by stray animals”.

This barbaric attack on Palestine has the total support of US imperialism. Palestine is a living example of Lenin’s insightful formulation that the primary method for resolving financial capitalism’s internal contradictions has become increasingly reliant on imperialist war. Writing his classic pamphlet on Imperialism in 1916, Lenin had exposed the claim made by the apologists of imperialism that “the rule of finance capital lessens the unevenness and contradictions inherent in the world economy”. Lenin categorically argued that “in reality it increases them”.

Writing about Gaza, Arab Marxist Ali Kadri recalls a postulation made by Lenin that “higher debt issuance by imperial powers signals war”. Drawing on Lenin, Kadri explains that “the higher the frequency and amount of credit issued, the more it forces society to be subjected to a higher rate of exploitation to meet future returns”. In a heavily financialised economy, war is the “big industry of capitalism”. The crux is that Israeli war “adds to accumulation by militarism on a global scale”, and thus tries to save monopoly capitalism characterised by the marxist law of the “Tendency of the rate of profit to fall”.

In a press release issued on June 20, 2024, office of the High Commissioner of the  UN Human Rights quoted certain independent UN experts to officially record that the western financial companies like BlackRock, Vanguard, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America etc. might be going on profiting from the war on Gaza. This profit has come from their investment in the western arms corporations like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Caterpillar, ThyssenKrupp, Rolls -Royce Power Systems etc. This proved that the military-industrial complex has leached bloody money from the marauding hunt for profit on the one hand and went on unrolling the war project to intimidate free nations with a view to expand the area of imperialist domination to the central Asia, which is the eye of the gas-basin. Both ways war has become all the more essential for the sustenance of the imperialist system. Its zionist lackey also shares this essentiality. They have become necessary enemies of peace. 

This has become a chronic horrendous lethality that stares us in the face, all the more menacingly; due to the intensification of rabid imperialist hunt for natural resources and fuel, because of the failure of imperialist globalisation and its mantra of neoclassical economics and neo-liberal rule. To escape a catastrophic expansion of the hostilities into a regional war, the world people have to fight against this war project of imperialists and their rabid Zionist lackey for peace; peace that brings freedom and sovereignty to Palestine and begets peace for the world.

1. Palestinians inspect the ruins of a building destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younis in the southern of Gaza strip, on October 8, 2023. Palestinian News & Information Agency (Wafa) in contract with APAimages, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons ︎
2. Palestinians inspect the ruins of Aklouk Tower destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City on October 8, 2023. Palestinian News & Information Agency (Wafa) in contract with APAimages, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons¹ ︎

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I was always in awe of Cuba’s achievements in the field of sports. Globally placed 83rd in population and 104th in size, Cuba was ranked 14th in the world in the 2022 Olympics. This has much to say to the world because Cuba was one of the smallest contingents to participate in the Tokyo Olympics due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For the first time since 1964, a Cuban contingent with less than 100 members had made it to the Olympics. Yet they returned to their homeland, reaping more benefits than they had won at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

The Cuban squad is among the top world athletes and is also the leading team in boxing, wrestling, baseball, volleyball, rowing, and judo. Besides their sporting excellence, what distinguishes them from others is that they carry their country’s socialist ideals at heart. I remember reading once that Cuba is a land of athletes who are also political creatures associating their struggles and victories with their country’s struggles. Hence, one of the most exciting things I learned during our trip to Cuba was their engagement in sports.

The National Sports and Physical Education Institute of Cuba was near where we stayed. We used to see that beautiful stadium complex daily, but time constraints limited us from familiarising ourselves with its interiors; it could have had better amenities. During our journey, we also saw many playgrounds. It needs to be mentioned that every school has well-equipped playgrounds. Cuban volunteers who accompanied us said all the provinces had at least one baseball ground. Fidel’s favourite sport was baseball; the picture of Fidel playing baseball is familiar to the world. Che’s cherished activity of chess is still one of Cuba’s favourite pastimes.

In Sports, Cuba has a ‘Granma’ named Cerro Pelado. In the sixties, the US stepped up its moves against Cuba. After the invasion of the Bay of Pigs, the possibility of another US invasion arose. They were constantly trying to create obstacles to Cuba’s participation in the international forum. It was in this context that the 1966 Central American-Caribbean Games was held in Puerto Rico. 

Despite the challenges, Cerro Pelado, carrying the Cuban sports contingent, set off for Puerto Rico. That trip was one of the first testimonies of the Cuban athletes who had embraced the revolutionary sense that they would not yield to any attempts to isolate Cuba on the world stage. During their journey, they turned the ship into a training centre, unbothered by the US warplanes that circled them. 

“As Cuban athletes, we know how to act, not only in terms of defending our right but a right of all the peoples and for the prestige of sports, which should exist as a link among peoples.”
– Cerro Pelado Declaration,

Due to disruptions created by the US, Cerro Pelado had to be anchored five kilometres from the shore. The athletes reached the coast of Puerto Rico by jumping onto another boat in the bay. Before disembarking from the ship, everyone in the team assembled and unanimously accepted the declaration read out by the President of the National Sports Academy. This later became known as the Cerro Pelado Declaration, which said:

“As Cuban athletes, we know how to act, not only in terms of defending our right but a right of all the peoples and for the prestige of sports, which should exist as a link among peoples.”

All along the way, the valiant Cuban players who came to participate in the Games were greeted with slogans. As the Cuban team lined up for the march past, the entire stadium stood up and cheered for them. When the Games concluded, the team won in baseball, relay and rowing. Besides, Cuba’s Miguelina Kobian and Enrique Figueroa were named the fastest female and male athletes of the Games. 

Since they not only proved Cuba’s athletic potential but also the extent of determination of their nation, Fidel himself went to receive them. He took a boat ride toward Cerro Pelado, which hadn’t yet reached the Cuban coast, to welcome the athletes. The words of praise that Fidel showered, acknowledging the grit of these athletes, help us to gauge how much Cuba valued them:

“It is possible that there is no delegation to which our homeland owes more gratitude than this one for the battle that its members waged, for the triumphs they obtained at the hardest moments, for the dignity that they displayed.”

Cerro Pelado (1966), directed by Santiago Alvarez, is about this Cuban battle in sports. This short Alvarez documentary has recorded this episode from Cuban history without diluting its intensity. 

Another reminder is the training centre named after Cerro Pelado—Cerro Pelado Athletic Training Center—one of the most important sports institutes in Cuba. The meeting of the World Federation of Democratic Youth, which Mayukh Biswas and I attended, was held here. In the training centre, there is a huge metallic art installation of the ship with Che’s face to its right. A text of the famous Cerro Pelado declaration also accompanies this. Furthermore, there is a large plaque with photographs of several individuals organised into three columns. These photos are of the athletes and officials on board a Cuban plane that was bombed in 1976 by a Miami-based anti-Cuban terrorist group. The attack was planned by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the US. Of the 73 people killed in the attack, 24 were Cuban sports team members. The inscription on the plaque—a reminder of the imperialist terror and the remembrance of martyred sport geniuses—goes like this:

‘They couldn’t accept the respect at the Olympics. But they have risen to the glory of being martyred for their homeland.’

These reminders of Cuban resistance at the Cerro Pelado Athletic Training Center also suggest about the upbringing of the Cuban athletes. They grow up playing without letting the sea of forgetfulness engulf their historical experiences.

As we walked and watched the arrangements at the training centre, we witnessed firsthand the Cuban vision of providing wholesome support to the athletes and focusing on delivering the best training facilities. Athletes from different parts of Cuba stay and get trained there. The day we first visited the training centre, the selection trials of junior wrestlers were going on in its indoor stadium. On the same day, what we heard from India was how the President of the Wrestling Federation of India and the state brutally suppressed the athletes protesting against the sexual harassment that they faced. This reality was starkly different from Cuba’s approach of treating their athletes as the country’s wealth!

Nitheesh Narayanan with the staff of the Cerro Pelado High Athletic Centre, Havana.

From the age of four itself, all children in Cuba are given training in various sports. Therefore, those who exhibit special skills will be identified early on and transferred to a sports school at the age of 12. At least one such school exists in every province of Cuba to facilitate learning and sports training.

Before the revolution, sports and entertainment facilities were meant to be enjoyed only by the rich, but today, it is part of the daily life of Cubans. Cuba’s socialist leadership has been able to build a popular sports culture and universal sports infrastructure, thereby rewriting its past, where growth in the field of sports was only accessible to the affluent classes. 

“I’m already rich because of the affection that millions of Cubans are showering.” – Teophilo Stevenson

It must be mentioned that socialist Cuba was unwilling to feed the market interests regarding sports. Following the revolution, professional sports were banned in Cuba. Fidel described the proponents of professional sports as human traffickers selling body and soul. Professional teams circled to hijack Cuban athletes. Except for a few, all Cuban stars kept reminding the world that their lives are not measurable with money. When we think of them, the first face to come to mind is the Cuban legend Teophilo Stevenson—the three-time Olympic gold medallist in boxing. Stevenson embarrassed those who promised to make him rich by paying millions of dollars for leaving amateur boxing and opting professional competitions with the reply, “I’m already rich because of the affection that millions of Cubans are showering.”

In the sixty years since the first Olympics in 1896, Cuba won only four gold medals. But in the sixty years since the Revolution, the number of gold medals won by Cuban athletes was 79. From 1959 to the present day, Cuba has won more than 1,000 medals at the Pan American Games.

Similar to what we have seen in the health sector, in sports, Cuba’s approach is to share its best with other countries. Cuba has sent sports coaches, technicians and teachers to various countries. More than 8,000 Cuban coaches and sports teachers serve in over 50 countries. There are hundreds of sports teachers and experts who have completed their training in Cuba and are working in third-world countries. Cuba has also established the International School of Physical Education and Sports, where more than 1,500 people from more than 70 countries study sports. Coaches, physiotherapists and doctors from Cuba can be seen alongside the teams representing different countries in the Olympics and the Pan American Games. The benefits of paying particular attention to sports medicine have also contributed to the Cuban surge. Cuba has also developed a treatment method to free athletes from drug addiction. 

No sports lover can ever forget Cuba for that it gave back health and confidence to the football legend Diego Maradona at a crucial juncture in his life! With the decision to join hands with Cuba in the field of sports, the day is not far away for the state of Kerala to emerge as a beneficiary of the sporting prowess of socialist Cuba. 

Cuba’s principles of internationalism and how staunchly they adhere to them have permeated their athletes and playgrounds. In April 1959, Fidel said, “When all children find in the city, in the town, an appropriate place for developing their physical condition and dedicate themselves to the practice of the sport of their preference, then the desire of all of us who have made this Revolution will have been met.” Hence, socialism is not just about the economic reorganisation of society. Socialism is a process of building a new life. It includes everything that gives colour to human life, from art, sports, literature, cinema and scientific investigations to everything alike. Socialism enables every human being to become the inheritor of all of these. It creates a world of joy without discrimination

Dr. Nitheesh Narayanan is Vice-President of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) and a former editor of the Student Struggle. He completed his PhD from JNU, New Delhi. Nitheesh is now a researcher at the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research.

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These attempts at either disrupting or controlling the student movement that we are witnessing today can be traced to M.S. Golwalkar, the chief ideologue of the Sangh. His writings on the position of students in the Sangh’s political project and the role that was hoped they would play, are particularly instructive. 

The Student Question 

A grand role was envisioned for students by Golwalkar in taking the Hindutva project forward. Students were to be the ‘servers of the nation’ and were to ‘join the project of national reconstruction with all [their] strength’. This was because it was only they that had ‘the courage to make the project of national upliftment succeed by giving up on personal enjoyment and filling themselves with feelings of national reconstruction’. The concept of ‘national reconstruction’, it must be recognised, is used frequently by the Sangh and can be considered to stand for uniting the Hindu nation against the internal threats to it, that is, Hindu Sanghathan, and the eventual establishment of a Hindu Rashtra. Students were thus, to take up the task of Hindu Sanghathan. Despite, students not being votaries of ‘national reconstruction’, as is noted presently, Golwalkar’s continued faith in their potential to playing a leading role in the work of the Sangh could perhaps be explained by the fact that individual students had played a role in growth of the RSS in the period before independence. They had, first, been important in taking the RSS beyond its original roots in Central India, and second, RSS linked students had also been active in the period after the Quit India Movement. Most significantly, when the RSS was banned following Gandhi’s assassination, students close to the RSS had been of particular significance. The student front of the Sangh, the ABVP, had initially been established to carry out the work of the shaka at a time in which it was banned.

However, these flashes aside, the period during which Golwalkar was writing, was one where there was a dominance of left students’ organisations in campuses and a strong All-India Students’ Federation consisting of a variety of progressive forces. In the universities and colleges of newly independent India, students were demanding their rights from educational administrations and the government through strikes and demonstrations. They were also coming together with sections of the working masses and participating in political protests and agitations. 

This militated against Golwalkar’s imagination of the role students should be playing and he was a constant critic of the contemporary student movement. Golwalkar attacked students’ lack of involvement in ‘national reconstruction’, stating, ‘I will not shower you with lies or false praise. You are called ‘pillars of the nation’ but the nation cannot stand on such pillars’. Students came to be, patronisingly, referred to as undisciplined, ill-behaved and destructive section of the people. Student life, it was claimed, was directed towards ‘relaxation’ and ‘pleasure hunting’.

Explanations of a psycho-social nature for this so called indiscipline were provided. The age of students was purported to be one of the ‘causes’. Given their young age students were supposed to be inherently ‘immature’, ‘inexperienced’ and had a ‘preponderance of emotions’. This meant that they were prone to frequent ‘uncontrolled outburst(s)’. Another explanation was the collapse of ‘culture’ and the ‘institution called home’ that had kept a check on the feelings of students. This ‘home’ which was to provide a family life, grounding students and teaching them proper decorum, traditions and ritual, stood ‘in complete ruin’. Due to this, students were acting in an undisciplined manner. The reasons were, thus, both the inherent nature of youth as well as the collapse of a Brahminical moral system valued by Golwalkar. 

Golwalkar, therefore, treated students as subjects that lacked all agency and had a ‘tendency to get swept away by the surrounding atmosphere’. Due to this, it was possible for ‘any kind of irresponsible activity [to] attract the youth’. Consequently, students were being swept away by ‘destructive revolutionary forces’ and indulging in ‘constant agitation’. The ‘promoters of agitations’, who, wanting to add numbers, took advantage of this and exploited the ‘volatile youthful force’. Chief amongst these ‘promoters of agitations’ were student organisations and unions. These were alleged to be working ‘under the guidance or patronage of one or other of the many political parties’ and because of them students came to participate in large numbers in ‘political agitations’.

The Solutions

Golwalkar, even while stating that because of the ‘atmosphere of destructive revolutionary forces’ student life has been ‘ruined’ insisted that to call students, also claimed that they had an ‘otherwise good mental make-up’ which had been marred by circumstances and were still of ‘great importance’. They possessed a ‘youthful energy’ that needed to be correctly channelised and the real issue was to convert them ‘into virtuous citizens’ who ‘devoted to’ the cause of national reconstruction. This meant solving the problem of student indiscipline and politicisation. The solutions provided were typically authoritarian. 

To begin with, politics for students was to be a strictly academic affair and that too only for ‘elder students’. Politics and political parties were to be studied from an ‘impartial point of view’ and students were to not allow parties or political leaders to ‘interfere’ in student politics. With respect to student organisations and representative unions were to no longer play an active political and agitational role, taking up the issues of students and engaging with broader politics. While student unions were not to be banned, they were to be made toothless and their role was to be completely different. Their purpose, unlike before, was not to be to take up the demands of students but to instead divert students’ grievance and ‘give an opening to the excess of energy which the young possess’. They were to act as ‘healthy channels for developing knowledge, spirit of service, dignity of physical labour, spirit of camaraderie and of community life’. 

Further, in order for students to participate fully in the project of national reconstruction, i.e. Hindu Sanghathan, Golwalkar rejected all ‘superficial thinking’ and ‘superficial remedies’ while endorsing ‘complete change’. Questions regarding educational institutions, the teacher-student ratio, campus issues, hostel arrangements etc. were considered to be unimportant. For Golwalkar, ‘rather than the way the institutions run’  what needed to change was the ‘aim and content of education’. 

The contemporary system of education was characterised as having an ‘atmosphere of pampering the self’ and the primary change which was advocated was that the ‘whole system of education’ needed to inculcate the values of ‘discipline’ and ‘duty’ right from the beginning in ‘all relationships’. It had to be ‘persistently impressed upon the minds’ of students that ‘absolute sense of duty’ was ‘supreme’ and that ‘the individual’s or group’s rights are only co-related to it and must be considered as subordinate to it’. This ‘absolute sense of duty’ was to be towards, what Golwalkar called, the ‘Common Ideal’. Dedication to this Ideal was calculated to ‘induce community of will, of mental and intellectual co-ordination’. The basic aspects of this Common Ideal were ‘[service to] the people with whom we have a natural bond of affinity of ancestry, heritage, tradition, national entity and grateful devotion to the holy motherland which fosters us all and common devotion to which unites us all in on National Personality’. The Common Ideal, if linked with his other writings, could be understood as Hindutva in another name.

Teachers and the institution of ‘home’ were also to play a significant role in these changes. Teachers were to create an atmosphere that was ‘charged with the spirit of learning’ and inspire in students ‘the pious ambition to making one’s mark in the service of the ideal’. The home would also have to provide a ‘peaceful, loving family life’ which followed a ‘virtuous religious life’ and included the performance of ‘traditional rites’. Additionally, it was ‘co-ordinated will, co-ordinated and controlled physical activity’ that made up discipline. Therefore, in orienting students towards discipline and the Common Ideal, military training which had the capacity to produce ‘co-ordinated action on the physical plane’ for students was also a must. This would lead to real discipline and instil in students- the ‘discipline of will’.

It is clear from the above that Golwalkar’s solutions were aimed to de-politicise students, enforce discipline and forcibly orient students towards devotion to a ‘Common Ideal’.

For Golwalkar, it was the ABVP, functioning within the university, that was to act as a vehicle for these changes. Its role would be to guide the students away from ‘all forms of anti-nationalism’ and to draw them ‘away from constant agitation’. In doing so it would ‘inculcate values and knowledge that benefit’ in students and be used to extend the work of the Sangh by increasing the shakhas. 

Conclusion

Students have not always been able to resist the rise of authoritarian and right-wing forces. We have umpteen examples of this throughout the twentieth century. During the inter-war period some students were fervent supporters of Right-wing movements throughout Europe; in Pakistan, from the 1970s onwards a significant number of students were attracted to Islamic revivalist movements; similarly, in Egypt, students were prominent supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood immediately after the World War II; and in Indonesia in 1965 a major portion of the student body was won over to the side of anti-Communism and was heavily involved in the genocide that followed. 

In India, while the ABVP might today be a powerful student organisation, it is by no means the case that students as group have become what Golwalkar had hoped they would – footsoldiers of Hindutva. Students have resisted the ideological and organisational advances of the Hindu Right. This is primarily due to the opposition within the student body led by left and progressive organisations. Given the continued rise of the Sangh and its active efforts to capture the student movement it is important for left and progressive organisations to remain ever more vigilant, resist the growth of Hindutva amongst students and to deny the fulfilment of Golwalkar’s vision.

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Background

Godavari Parulekar, nee Gokhale was born in a progressive family in Pune. The rich and famous Solicitor Laxmanrao Gokhale was a cousin of the great freedom fighter Gopal Krishna Gokhale. He was a social reformer and also an advocate of girls’ education. He encouraged his daughter Godavari to pursue law. But with an intention to make his daughter a successful lawyer like him. Godutai passed the exam, becoming the first woman lawyer in Maharashtra. She could have easily practiced law and become a successful lawyer, rolling in money and all privileges. 

However, kicking away all such prospects as material success, fame, career, and the benefits of future generations, the sensitive Godutai plunged into the freedom struggle. In 1932, she took part in Satyagraha at Mahatma Gandhi’s call, and was thrown into jail for some time by the British. Her father was a Moderate, and hated such agitational methods. He threw her out of his house, disowned her from his huge estate, and left a ‘princely’ amount of Rs 25 for her. She took to social service in the Servants of India Society in Mumbai, organized the working class, served a two-year jail sentence during the freedom struggle from 1940-42, and finally came to the communist ideology, which is the only hope of the working people. In 1939, she married Shamrao Parulekar, another revolutionary like herself, also a freedom fighter and a communist.  

In 1942 Shamrao was given the responsibility by the AIKS to organize peasants in Maharashtra. The Parulekars moved in several districts of the state for three years, and initiated the peasant movement under the red flag of AIKS, first in Thane district, then elsewhere. The first conference of the Maharashtra Rajya Kisan Sabha was held on 7 January 1945 at Titwala in Thane district. Godutai and her comrades along with the progressive cultural group of the Communist Party covered over 700 villages on foot and addressed 160 public meetings for this conference. Shamrao was elected the first general secretary and Godutai one of the joint secretaries of the new organization in Maharashtra. 

Later, she would be elected the President of the Maharashtra Rajya Kisan Sabha for many years. In 1986, she would be elected President of the All India Kisan Sabha in its Golden Jubilee Conference at Patna in Bihar. 

The Plight of Warli Tribals 

Fifteen Warli (the name of a tribe) tribal delegates from the Umbargaon-Talasari-Dahanu area of the then Thane (now Palghar) district attended the Titwala Kisan conference. And within six months, inspired by this conference, the Warli Adivasi Revolt began. It would be written in golden letters in the history of the peasant movement of India. 

Till the 19th century, the tribals in this area were the owners of all the forest land. But with the full backing of British rulers, the landlords and moneylenders robbed their land and forced these original owners to render all services to the landlord for free, reducing them to bonded labourers and debt slaves for generations. The wife of the debt slave was also the slave and mistress of the landlord. Massive rents and illegal exactions abounded. Exploitation and oppression by the government forest department went on relentlessly. The courts, police and administration were completely controlled by landlords. There was no redress anywhere. 

Many heart-wrenching incidents are quoted in the writings of Godutai herself and others. An Adivasi named Rupji was tied to a tree and whipped mercilessly till the flesh of his back split, for just eating a mango from his landlord’s tree. Another tribal named Zipar Jawaliya (who later played a militant role in the Adivasi Revolt and was felicitated by Harkishan Singh Surjeet in the golden jubilee year of the Adivasi Revolt in 1995) was yoked to a plough, replacing a bullock in the pair, for not sending his just delivered wife to work, which was the order of his master. Warli women were tortured and molested in front of their husbands. It was a common thing for them to make obscene remarks to the women who worked for them, to touch them, pinch them, push them and get them alone into the corners to molest. In another incident, an Adivasi was burnt alive in a coal furnace, just because he spoilt some of the coal. Burning alive, burying alive was not rare. 

When the Parulekars moved around in this area, such were the horrendous and brutal conditions of the Adivasis. Poverty, misery and destitution knew no limits. Godutai and Shamrao Parulekar were distraught to see the inhuman condition of the Warli tribals in Thane-Palghar district who were serving their landlords as bonded labourers for generations. Both of them decided to take up the struggle to free these poor tribals from the stranglehold of rich landlords. This revolt was an integral part of the various glorious pre-independence peasant struggles led by the AIKS against landlordism and feudalism, like Tebhaga in Bengal, Punnapra Vayalar in Kerala, Surma Valley in Assam, the tribal struggle in Tripura and the glorious Telangana peasant armed uprising in Andhra.

First Phase of Adivasi Revolt 

Keeping the promise to help in their struggle, the Kisan Sabha held a large convention at Zari village in Talasari tehsil on 23 May 1945. 5000 Adivasi men and women made the venue an iconic one. It was addressed by Shamrao and Godavari, and it gave the clarion call to launch an uncompromising struggle around four main and simple slogans. These were: Do not cultivate the private land of the landlord unless he pays in cash the daily wage of 12 annas. Do not render any free service to the landlord. Resist him if he assaults you. You must all unite. 

Within a day of the Zari convention its message had reached everywhere in the jungle. On the strength of cent per cent unity, the Adivasis themselves broke their century-old chains, and within just three weeks, forced labour was abolished once and for all. Landlords were terrified at the new-found unity and might of the Adivasis, and so the assaults and torture also automatically stopped. The Adivasi peasants refused to cultivate the lands of the landlords free, and demanded wages at rates fixed by the Kisan Sabha. In the face of this revolt of unprecedented intensity, the landlords had no choice but to yield. There was no looking back then.

Second Phase of Adivasi Revolt

After the glorious victory in the first phase, the second and more difficult phase began. The Warlis went on strike demanding a minimum wage of Rs 2.50 for cutting 500 pounds of grass. This time the landlords refused to yield and plotted a conspiracy with the British police force. A false message was sent to the Adivasis that Godutai was going to address a meeting on the night of October 10 at Talwada village; the landlords were planning to attack her; so the Red Flag had directed all Adivasis to reach there with lathis and sickles to defend her. This message went to every hamlet and by midnight over 30,000 Adivasi peasants gathered at Talwada, many of them walking more than 100 km to reach there. At the same time, the police were informed that a huge armed Adivasi mob had gathered for killing the landlords. The treacherous plot worked. Firing by the British regime was its culmination. Five Warlis were killed in the firing. The first martyr of the Adivasi Revolt was Jethya Gangad. The number of wounded was large. 

Among the wounded there was a boy of 12 years of age. And still the gathering refused to disperse. For 15 hours they defied bullets which were showered on them from time to time. Firing failed to influence them to move from the place and it was difficult to guess how long they would have continued to remain there if a Kisan Sabha worker had not arrived there at 3 pm on October 11 and dispersed the gathering.

For 15 hours all the Adivasis had protected the Red Flag which they had hoisted by shielding it with their bodies. As the police van used to pass by the spot and the police opened fire, they crowded round the Red Flag. They thought that the police were aiming to shoot the Red Flag, and they felt it to be their sacred duty to protect it at the cost of their lives. Firing did not and could not have succeeded in dispersing the meeting. A word from the Red Flag for dispersal was necessary for the purpose. They would rather pay any amount of price in life rather than disperse without the permission of the Red Flag.

After this firing, the government let loose a reign of terror. Thousands of Adivasis were put behind bars, beaten and tortured. Their wives were threatened with rape, the right to assembly was banned for months. Shamrao, Godavari and other leading comrades were externed from the area. But in spite of all this repression, the strike went on undeterred. Finally the landlords were forced to concede the demand for fair wages. The second phase of the Adivasi Revolt had achieved victory.

Gains of the Struggle 

In Godutai’s own words, “In this struggle, the Adivasis rose to magnificent heights of courage while the government, landlords and moneylenders sunk to the very depths of inhumanity in their reign of repression. Those who had marched into the battlefield with unlimited power and money, and were aided by armed police and goondas, were made to bite the dust before half-naked, half-starved men and women, whose only weapons were a capacity for self-sacrifice, invulnerable solidarity and unflinching dedication. Out of this battle arose the class-conscious peasant.”

Godutai not only freed these tribals from the landlords, but awakened their pride and self-consciousness as human beings. She also ensured that this movement would not remain individual-centered. She developed thousands of activists, and instilled political awareness among the party members by holding week-long camps on a regular basis. As a result, even in the fourth generation today, Godutai and the Red Flag have retained their relevance. Even today, Thane-Palghar district remains a major center of the revolutionary movement in Maharashtra because of this vision. Otherwise, once the land (or freedom) is obtained, succeeding generations rarely appreciate and value the struggle, hard work, and sacrifices that the previous generations have made. 

Challenges of Today

Of course, the nature of today’s struggle is not the same. Bonded labour disappeared completely. Wages increased substantially. For the first time, thousands of tribals became the owners of their land. With the initiative of veteran leaders like Lahanu Kom and L B Dhangar, educational institutions were started. A new generation of educated tribal activists developed and is now leading the movement. 

Now the struggle is to implement the Forest Rights Act and get forest lands vested in their names. During Godutai’s time, the Congress party, representing the landlords and money lenders, was their direct enemy. But in the changed situation, the biggest threat to the movement is that of the corporate-communal forces led by the RSS-BJP. Warlis (or any tribal community for that matter), who never even had a place in the Hindu varna hierarchy, are now targeted by these fanatics. RSS activists distribute huge amounts of money through various social (?) organizations for festivals which were not even known to the tribals, like Ram Navami, Ganesh Utsav, Navratri etc. They spread superstitions especially among women, and arrange for free pilgrimages to temples. The younger generation is getting influenced and carried away by free drinks, parties and DJs. All these evils will have to be combated by us with imagination and determination. 

Defending our principles and values, and underlining that we are standing tall because of the AIKS and the Left movement has become part of today’s struggle. The AIKS and other progressive mass organisations including SFI have already initiated measures to deal with these new changes. A systematic effort is being made now to get fresh, young, educated activists. But looking at the surrounding situation, this challenge is not easy to meet. To maintain the legacy of Shamrao and Godavari Parulekar, strengthening the peasant struggle and the Kisan Sabha is vital.

Another aspect which fascinates me about Godutai is that she is hardly described as a woman leader. That is simply because she wasn’t so in a traditional way. She was a farmer’s leader. She took not only women, but the entire tribal community into confidence and organized them. In the Warli tribal society, leave aside women’s emancipation, the men themselves were so backward, suppressed and trapped. Tribal men who were draped in a simple waist cloth, had never had an opportunity to sit in a chair in their life. They were sure that a chair was not for them. Fighting for their just rights as citizens was a far cry. Imagine from where Godutai had to start her work!

Today, the area is quite developed. National and state highways touch almost all tehsils, maximum villages have electricity, public transport to major areas is available, mobiles make communication easier. Still contacting our activists in every pada/village is not easy. It boggles the mind how nearly eight decades ago, Godutai could have built a movement, gained, sustained and justified the people’s trust when none of these facilities were there. And her example inspires us to work much harder.

I will conclude this piece with a very heartening memory of Godutai. She was the chief guest in our sixth Maharashtra State Conference of the SFI held at Aurangabad in 1988. In her emotional and equally inspiring speech, she had appealed to the delegates to become full time Kisan Sabha activists after completing their education and work in the (then) Thane district among the Warli tribals. Many of those delegates are working today not only in Thane district but also in other parts of the state. 

Today, the way in which our activists are working in Thane-Palghar district, with very meagre or no compensation, living in remote areas, walking for hours to just attend a meeting is simply amazing. Seeing their persistence and loyalty to the cause, their tenacity and hard work to maintain and strengthen the movement, had Godutai been alive, she might have given them the exactly opposite advice. She would have asked these tribal activists to go to other parts of the state and build a stronger organization. Such is the legacy of the Warli Adivasi Revolt.  

Let us move forward and build a stronger movement so that the next generation gets inspired to fulfill the dreams of Godutai and all our leaders of an exploitation-free society!

Long Live Godavari Parulekar!

Long Live Revolution!

– Prachi Hatiwlekar is the General Secretary of AIDWA Maharashtra State Committee

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In the mid-1980s, as the Sangh Parivar started ratcheting up the communal temperature in India on the issue of Ram Janmabhoomi, many young people, like myself, were perplexed. 

How could educated adults fall for such an illogical argument that mocked rationality? After all, surely it could hardly be contested that Lord Ram was a mythological, not historical figure, and the Ramayana the product of centuries of accreted storytelling genius. For the believer, Lord Ram was an ideal to aspire to in the conduct of their own life, a figure that inspired reverence and piety, a figure that represented the accumulated wisdom and sense of morality of the Indian people. No historical evidence of any credibility had been put forward by anyone that pinned the identity of this mythological figure on any single person who could have been shown to have lived.

How, then, could the Sangh Parivar claim that they knew the exact spot where Lord Ram was born? Moreover, the archeological evidence too did not conclusively show that the base of the Babri Masjid contained the remains of an ancient Hindu temple, much less a temple marking the birthplace of Lord Ram. It all sounded absurd.

And yet, there it was – the Sangh Parivar were riding the Ram Janmabhoomi chariot to regain their footing in Indian politics after their worst-ever performance in the Lok Sabha elections, and it was clear that their rhetoric was gaining increasing traction. Even more alarmingly, the chariot was leaving a trail of destruction and blood in its wake, and the Congress, then in power at the Centre, was increasingly compromising with communalism of both the Hindu and Muslim variety.

I was in college in the mid to late 1980s, and was trying to make sense of the world I found myself in. I was pursuing a degree in modern Indian history, and while I had read books on the emergence of communalism as a political force in the colonial period, most of those analyses seemed to implicitly or explicitly culminate in the Partition. And while communal violence had punctuated the growing up years of my generation, I, like many others, saw communalism as a vestige of the past, that will gradually fade away as we got rid of poverty and lack of education.

The late 1980s were, therefore, a confusing time for us. Up until that time, communalism was combatted by appeals to brotherhood, decency and humanism. It was the unstated, implicit premise of such appeals that communal disturbances, when they occurred, were either because people were misled by vested interests, or because some economic friction or contradiction lay beneath. Somehow, these assumptions did not square with the kind of communalism we were faced with now. It appeared that communalism had moved from being a cottage industry to becoming a vast, decentralized but disaggregated, industrial-scale operation. 

What was rising up before our eyes was clearly not a vestige of the past, but a new phenomenon that, even as it appealed to history and utilized older fault lines, was indisputably modern. Suddenly, new words and phrases began circulating. Hindutva was one, as was Hindu Rashtra. What were these, and how had they captured the minds and emotions of so many in what appeared a very short time?

Two books helped me begin to understand what was unfolding around me. Both were published in 1993, right after the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the horrific communal violence that followed. One was Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags, a brief, 116-page tract jointly authored by Tapan Basu, Pradip Datta, Sumit Sarkar, Tanika Sarkar and Sambuddha Sen on the RSS and the VHP and the conglomeration of organisations around them. The authors were professional academics teaching history and literature, and had used their expertise to produce a text based as much on textual scholarship as fieldwork in a style that was free of jargon, accessible to the layperson. As I read this book, the architecture of the organizational structure of the Sangh Parivar began to become clear to me.

The other book that was formative in my understanding of the Hindu Right was Sitaram Yechury’s What is this Hindu Rashtra?: On Golwalkar’s Fascistic Ideology and the Saffron Brigade’s Practice. This was an even briefer text, barely 25 pages long. The book pulled no punches. It was a frontal attack on the ideology of Hindutva. It was bold, unafraid, uncompromising. It named the most revered RSS leader in the subtitle itself, and showed his ideology to be fascistic by, among other things, showing how much he admired Adolf Hitler and the idea of the ‘final solution’.

Comrade Sitaram’s booklet was a shot of adrenalin in our veins. We had a text that we could read, study, share, and use directly in our confrontations with Sangh Parivar zealots on college and university campuses as well as in bastis and on the streets. It energized the anti-communal struggle. It explained the Indian version of fascist vocabulary to us, and gave us a vocabulary to counter it. An entire generation joined the fight, and each one of us was influenced, whether we knew it or not, by Comrade Sitaram’s intervention. The ideas contained in that booklet spread far beyond its direct readers. They became the common sense of the anti-communal struggle. That little booklet was a weapon.

” In addition to his charm, his sense of humour, his quick wit, it was his defence of the idea of India that won him admirers far beyond the political influence of the Left movement.”

Comrade Sitaram was an eloquent speaker and writer, and he could discuss nearly every topic under the sun, but his interventions against communalism and for a secular and inclusive India are among his most influential. In addition to his charm, his sense of humour, his quick wit, it was his defence of the idea of India that won him admirers far beyond the political influence of the Left movement.

When Prakash Karat asked me to join LeftWord Books when it was being set up in 1998, I was excited to learn that among the people I was to interact with included Comrade Sitaram, since he was one of the founding directors of Naya Rasta Publishers Pvt. Ltd., the company that owns the LeftWord Books imprint. He was an active participant in the meetings of the Editorial Advisory Board, which included, apart from Prakash and Sitaram, N. Ram, Prabhat Patnaik, Indira Chandrasekhar, Aijaz Ahmad, V.K. Ramachandran and P. Govinda Pillai. Comrade Sitaram would read proposals and comment on them; he would propose ideas for new projects we could pursue; he would give feedback on books we published. Above all, his presence meant that the meetings would be full of humour, good cheer and optimism.

Sadly for us, he stepped down from being a director of the company after he became a member of parliament. This was because he himself had raised the issue of conflict of interest when parliamentarians owned or led private companies. This was particularly galling, he argued, if they also wormed their way into parliamentary committees that oversaw the sectors that overlapped with their business interests, as Vijay Mallya had done. Even though Naya Rasta Publishers was minuscule as compared to giant conglomerates that operated across sectors, it was for Comrade Sitaram a matter of principle that as a parliamentarian he should not be seen as having private business interests, even though he had never been paid by the company nor derived any pecuniary advantage from it.

For years, along with my co-editor at LeftWord Books, Vijay Prashad, I had been asking Comrade Sitaram to write a book for us. He would smile and promise that he would, soon. We knew as well as he that this was a false promise, based on the unreal hope that he would get a little bit of leisure to write. As he crossed the halfway mark of his final term as the General Secretary of the CPI(M), I once again broached the topic with him. We wanted him to revisit that important early booklet, What is this Hindu Rashtra?, and update it for our times, taking into account the rise of Narendra Modi and the ascension of the RSS and the BJP to a dominant position in Indian politics. We also wanted him to reflect on the relationship of the liberal centre with the Hindu Right.

On his desk, after his death, we found that Comrade Sitaram had several LeftWord titles that he had been reading. We had hoped that apart from writing for us, he would also get a little more time to advise us on our publishing programme, particularly on our new Hindi imprint, Vaam Prakashan.

His untimely death has made that impossible. It is a loss not so much for LeftWord Books as for the entire generation of young radicals, who are fighting to build a more humane world. Without a doubt, Comrade Sitaram’s reflections on the nature of contemporary communalism would have energised them just as that earlier booklet had done in its time.

What we are going to do, therefore, is to put together his most important writings on communalism and bring out a volume sometime early next year. It can never replace what he would have written, but who can argue with death?

– Sudhanva Deshpande is Managing Editor, LeftWord Books. He is also an actor and director with Jana Natya Manch, and the author of Halla Bol: The Death and Life of Safdar Hashmi.

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Sitaram Venkat Yechury, to give him his full name, joined JNU in 1973, he was a school topper and a university topper.

I haven’t met too many university toppers, so won’t really know how university topper types are supposed to behave. One wood assume that they would be the studious types, spending their time in libraries, not mixing readily with other less serious students and would have a rather private and very limited circle of friends.

Sita, as he came to be universally known very soon, did not act or behave like the studious, serious type and did not keep to himself as one would have expected a university topper to do. He was extremely sociable, mixed well, had a large circle of friends and loved sports and cinema. He played Tennis, represented JNU in a few intervarsity tournaments and won a couple of trophies for the University. 

In-fact when we found out that we had a few cricket and tennis enthusiasts among the students, we went to meet our VC to ask him for a cricket field and a tennis court. G. Parathasarthy was the founding VC of JNU and I was a councillor in the union. I was also in-charge of Sports and Cultural activities in the University.

G.P. as he was popularly known, not only met us, he immediately sanctioned a Tennis court and a cricket ground, we were to learn in this meeting that G.P. had played in the Ranji team from Madras (now Tamil Nadu) and had played hockey and Tennis at college level.

We mention these details here, primarily to underscore the fact that it is barely 50 years ago that student representatives could walk into the office of their Vice-Chancellors with their problems and the VCs were open to suggestions. JNU was that kind of university because of the democratic and inclusive ethos of JNU, built by the strong democratic students’ movement that worked together with the teachers and employees’ association and also because the university administration in the formative years of JNU was open to dialogue with the students, teachers and the non-teaching staff, unlike the many spineless political appointees that are destroying and dismantling the educational apparatus all over the country.

Sitaram loved music, especially old film songs and was very knowledgeable about them. Whenever a film song was mentioned, Sita could, without trying too hard, recall the name of the lyricist, the music composer, the name of the film and the playback singer/s.

It was Sitaram’s interest in Cinema that contributed to Student Struggle regularly carrying pieces on progressive cinema. Sitaram and I spent an entire night talking to Grigory Chukhrai, the director of the classic anti-war film, ‘Ballad of a Soldier’ about his cinema and about post revolution cinema in the USSR.

Sitaram’s capacity to be interested in a range of cultural questions and developments and his ability to remember many of these things in relation to individuals came in very handy when he got active in the SFI and especially in the JNU Students Union. He not only knew the name of every student, at least all the hostellers, and JNU was in those days, primarily a residential University, but he also knew how to involve them in different activities that SFI was constantly engaged in.

 Sita also knew the names of most of the security staff, the mess staff and the large number of others that served in the University administration, aside of course from all the senior officers that he had to deal with on a regular basis, because everything that concerned the students of JNU also concerned the JNUSU and he was constantly interacting with a large  cross-section of the University community, and he knew all of them by name.

Knowing all the names and recalling them at the right moment was not merely something cultivated, that most political workers and public figures work at, this was something that came naturally to Sita, because of his genuine interest in people and in their work.

Ravindra Kalia, one of the founders of the Jan Natya Manch, who had met Sita in the 1970s, was to meet him again, after a gap of several decades, at a meeting of the CPI(M) and the moment Sita saw him he asked “Arrey Kalia, where have you been and how are you?” Kalia was beside himself with wonderment and said to NK Sharma, another founder of Jan Natya Manch, “He remembered me after so many years!”

Sita had a sharp memory and it showed when he was addressing a meeting, speaking in a seminar or intervening in a debate in parliament, he could quote relevant data and statistics to reinforce his arguments and they flowed effortlessly, he rarely, if ever, carried notes with him. 

One reason for Sita’s popularity among the student community, decades after leaving the university and student activism, was perhaps the way he had impacted student politics all over the country in the immediate post emergency situation.

One iconic image from that time is Sitaram leading a JNUSU delegation, standing in front of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, reading out to her a charge-sheet that accused her of being complicit in all the atrocities inflicted on JNU under her chancellorship and therefore being unfit to be the chancellor of JNU.

This image was published all over the country and even those who had not heard of SFI, of JNU, its student activism and of Sitaram, suddenly sat up and took notice.  Sita was elected president of JNUSU thrice, one of these times he had lost a vote of no confidence in a general body and the entire council resigned. SFI decided to field the entire panel once again and they won once again.

The manner in which he won back the confidence of the general body that had voted him out less than a few weeks earlier, goes to show how persuasive he could be when arguing in support of a position and also of the fact that his audience trusted him as someone who was honest and had the courage of his convictions. Sita was to very soon become an easily recognisable face all-over the country and this has to be a rare achievement for a student leader.

Sita spoke with clarity, he did not use heavy jargon, he did not try to impress his audience with his scholarship. He was able to communicate complex ideas in a simple and easily understood manner and that was perhaps the reason that people were never in awe of him. They approached him as one of their own and that is how Sita met them, never like a leader but like an equal and this left a lasting impression on whoever he met.

No matter how busy he was, he was never in a hurry, he was a very good listener and remembered what he had heard in the classroom, in a meeting or a rally and that is why he remembered names, details, places and who said what and when.

Over and above all this he had great felicity with languages, he could converse with ease in Telugu-his mother tongue, English, Hindi and Bangla. He also had a nodding acquaintance with Tamil and a few other languages. It has been said that once Comrade Harkishan Singh Surjeet, Comrade Jyoti Basu, Comrade Basavapunaiah and Sitaram were having dinner together, Sitaram was talking to Com. Jyoti Basu in Bangla, to Com Basavapunaiah in Telugu and Com. Surjeet in Hindi. Com Jyoti Basu quipped, be careful of this man, he is talking to the three of us in three different languages, only he knows what he is telling each one of us. Everyone had a good laugh.

The fact that he gave everyone a patient hearing, at times caused him to be late for meetings, but he also had a disarming smile and your anger at his being late evaporated the moment he smiled and said ‘sorry yaar, koi aa gaya tha, mein phans gaya’ (sorry, someone came and I could not get away).

His approachability and accessibility, his easy manner, the absence of the aura of leadership, his capacity to lend his ear and to listen sympathetically all this contributed to his popularity, even among those who were political opponents.

Of all the tributes that have been paid to him and all the articles that newspapers and periodicals have so far carried have talked about his friendly and open manner, his accessibility and his ability to bring everyone together on a common platform to work together for a common cause.

Several commentators have underlined the central role, Sitaram played in knitting together the India Alliance. The only true tribute to the memory of Sitaram will be to ensure that this broad platform forged to defeat the forces of fascism continues to stay together.

The Student Federation of India, an organisation that launched Sitaram into the political arena and an organisation that he later led so effectively can justifiably be proud of having been an important part of his life. 

– Sohail Hashmi, Founding member of SFI in Delhi, formerly secretary of SFI JNU, Secretary Delhi State SFI, member of SFI, CEC and later SFI Secretariat.

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The first conference of the All India Students’ Federation was inaugurated by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in Lucknow on August 12, 1936. With that a great chapter was opened in the history of India’s organised student movement.

But when we go searching for the earliest roots of the movement we will have to go much further back than that. Students who initially got themselves organised in Study Circles and debating societies attained enough maturity and awareness by the turn of the century to partake in the national movement. When in 1905, Lord Curson hacked Bengal into two; students in Bengal and outside came to the scene of Agitation. For the first time students in large numbers and collectively were participating in the national struggle. Still students in all nooks and comers of the country came into the mainstream of the national struggle only in 1919-1922. In response to the call by Gandhiji to rally in the Non- Cooperation movement, students, leaving classes in schools and colleges, took to the streets. A second wave of student advance was in 1927-28 in connection with the boycott of the Simon Commission. All this while there were also attempts to found an All India Organisation of students. In fact special conferences of students had been convened with the Congress Conference of 1927 and ’28 with this purpose. But the move did not come to fruition till the middle of the 30’s.

Students who leaped Zealously into the Civil Disobedience Movement led by the Congress at the beginning of the 30’s were frustrated with the failure of the movement. The execution of Bhagat Singh and comrades enraged them. They lost faith in the Congress means and methods of struggle for the country’s liberation. It was at this time that the brilliant advances scored by the Soviet Union through its first five year plan captured their attention and imagination. And they were also reading Press reports on the Meerut conspiracy case. Socialist ideas were already of growing appeal to them. When in 1935 the Congress Socialist party was formed, students made conscious studies of socialism, at the same time closely looking at the anti- fascist movements growing to the world over and the role of communists in them, beginning to think of and seek an alternative path. That culminated in 1936 in the formation of the AISF. The founding leaders of this movement were Viswanath Mukherji,. M. Basava Punniah, P.B. Ranganckar, Prem Narayan Bhargava, Probodh Chandra and others.

A very important question rose before this conference. Will the goal of student movement be realised with the attainment of freedom? Or is there any other aim beyond that? The conference found a definite answer to this question. More than attaining the country’s freedom, the social order should be changed. In the society built after freedom there should be no unemployment or illiteracy.

Still there stayed differences regarding how the society was to be re- organised. That was only natural too. For, the AISF was a common platform of students who were Gandhians socialists, as well as communists. These different ideologies and consciousnesses soon came to conflict. When at the AISF Conference in Madras there came a resolution greeting the new Society constitution the group led by the notorious anti communist, Minoo Masani opposed it.Still the organisation didn’t split. But a split became unavoidable in 1940 Meanwhile the same year Mohamad Ali jinnah floated the Muslim Students Federation.

Despite all these differences and splits there was no ebb of students involvement in the National struggle They delved deep into the movement and contributed glorious chapters to its history.

At one stage of the second World War the fascist powers unleashed an attack against Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union were to succumb to this attack, all national liberation struggles would be weakened: If the Soviets came out of the War victorious, they would gain might and momentum. With this perspective the A.I.S.F. declares that the war had become a people’s war thus linking India’s fight for freedom with the Soviet Victory of defeat in the War. But to the anti-imperialist passion of students the immediate aim was to send the British out of the country. So the AISF had to face bitter opposition from students. Further it brought about a big split in the movement. A section broke away to form the students’ Congress. Thus the united front of students disintegrated to disappear In fact after this the student’s movement Was not able to retrieve the prestige of Image It had during the first six years of the AISF. Today most of the student organisations are but the tributaries of political parties.

 With the attainment of freedom an old question Rose again before the student community. What should be its aim now on? Those who had argued that the role of the student movement should end with the country’s freedom, now began to argue that it should make its contributions to the building up of free India. The Congress leadership,holding this view,called upon the student community to eschew the path of agitation and struggle.  The very same leaders who had appealed to students to boycott schools and colleges now placed before them the new slogan that students should keep off politics. The struggle to reconstitute the society had become unwanted for them,once they were up the top layer of power. But students were not prepared to toe the line with this opinion.The Congress leadership, seeing this, decided to split the movement and enlist one fragment with them.Thus was born the National Students’ union of India.

Among those held fast to the view that after freedom the programme of the student movement was to strive and struggle for the reconstitution of the Social order, for a society free of unemployment, illiteracy and destitution there arise another question: How to realise this aim? One section said in co- operation with the Congress, the other said no, only opposing the congress.

The Congress went up the echelons of power raising big expectations in the masses; but before long those expectations, like a glass house, came down in shivers. Unemployment assumed monstrous dimensions and shape before the people. Illiteracy rose by leaps and bounds; education proved out of reach for the poor man’s sons and daughters. Life Not only did not improve, but grew unbearable. Still the difference on the question how could the reconstitution of Indian policy be accomplished stayed through the 50’s. The AISF leadership stood by the line of allying with the Congress. At the same time students, from their own life experiences saw that the policies, strategic as well as tactical, were to be resisted tooth and nail. It was at this juncture that reactionaries and communal forces broke into Universities, Colleges and Schools to rally students behind their interests. Thus was born the All India Vidiyarthi Parishad.

Those who advocated Co- operation with the congress in the restructuring of the social base adopted a national chauvanstic stand at the time of and on the question of India – China border conflicts.The AISF leadership neither condemn the arrests of student leaders against the background of the confrontation nor demand their immediate release from behind the bars.Further they were gearing up to wreck the democratic functioning of the organization. In such a situation in seven states student organisations came up closing accounts with the reactionary leadership of the AISF In Bengal BPSF, Andhra APSF, Punjab PSU and Kerala KSF. These federations took upon themselves the task of governing threads with the post independence student movement organising a real and genuine movement in free India.

By the mid sixties the economic crisis worsened and popular discontent knew no bounds. This discontent had its reflection in the fourth general elections in 1967. For the first time since independence congress rule fell in many states and its majority at the centre dwindled. These objective conditions that reflected the peoples discontent created the need to give a new fresh orientation to student movement. The leaders of the like minded organizations in the States reacted favourably. In 1970 they met in Calcutta and resolved to form the students federation of India. 14 member preparatory committee was set up for the ground work for the foundation of the organization with Biman Basu as convener. The commitment in October the same year and decided to hold the first Conference of the SFI in Thiruvananthapuram. Accordingly the conference was held from 26 Dec. to 30th Dec., 1970. It was inaugurated by Com. A.K. Gopalan. The conference was attended by 624 delegates and 127 observers and it elected a 29 central executive committee with the C.Bhaskaran as president and Biman Basu general secretary. The conference concluded with the biggest students’ rally Kerala had seen.

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Since the budget is not merely numbers but a vision document and priority notice of the government in office that directly affects all sections, it needs to be publicly and seriously scrutinized by the people of the country. Education spending is essential for sustainable national economic growth and social stability. It boosts workforce productivity, creativity, and competitiveness, while also promoting equity and reducing poverty and inequality. Investing in education builds a stronger and more conscious society. Therefore, adequate public funding for education is a basic necessity of society and a duty of the state. It becomes essential for students to audit the Union Budget. 

The Budget 2024-25 lacks a vision for understanding national issues but is focused on destroying many foundations of the country, including education. The BJP-led government’s clever tactic of merging many schemes into one makes it difficult to track actual expenditure on specific heads and hold the government accountable. But even with this merging tactic, they have brutally slashed funds for all sections of students. Reading this budget exposes the BJP-led government’s desperate desire to see students starve, suffer, and drop out of education. They have not spared any level, from Anganwadi to universities, nor any categories – SC, ST, OBC, EBC, and non reserved categories are all affected. It aims to ensure that the implementation of the Ambani-Birla Committee (2000) recommendations, which pushes education in India exclusively for the interest of the rich and highly privatised, is carried out. This write-up is incomplete, as detailing every anti-people measure from this government would require an extensive discussion. However, highlighted a few key examples for a basic understanding.

What Does the Education Sector Deserve from a Union Budget?

The Kothari Commission (1966) identified three important facets that would bring about the desired educational resolution: internal transformation to relate education to the life needs and aspirations of the nation, qualitative improvement so that standards are adequate and internationally comparable, and the expansion of educational facilities broadly based on human resource needs with an emphasis on equalization of educational opportunities. The Commission recommended allocating 10% of the central budget and 6% of GDP for education. For decades, progressive student movements, including the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) and many education experts, have been advocating for these measures, including the required GDP and budget shares. However, both the central and state governments currently spend around 3% of GDP on education, with the major share coming from the states. Furthermore, there has been no notable increase in education spending observed so far.

The estimated education budget for 2024-25 is ₹1,25,638 crore, with India’s nominal GDP projected at ₹326.4 lakh crore, meaning only 0.38% of GDP will be allocated to education by the central government. Despite being undemocratic and problematic, even the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP)- the BJP-led government’s vision document for education- emphasizes that 6% of GDP and 10% of the union budget allocation are vital for a high-quality, equitable public education system necessary for India’s future growth. But the BJP-led government chose to continue withdrawing support for education.

The budget allocation for the Ministry of Education in 2024-25 reflects a reduction of 7.6% compared with the revised estimate for 2023-24. This is not conducive to achieving the so-called or pretentious goals of the NEP. On one hand, the government is eager to implement the NEP nationwide; on the other hand, the reduced budget allocation reveals the government’s true stance-its support for education through the NEP is merely rhetoric that conceals destructive practices within the same policy.

Assault on Anganwadis and School Education

Despite pressing issues affecting India’s children, Anganwadis-vital for providing nutrition to young mothers and children and for early childhood education linked to future academic success- faced a 1.5% budget cut, decreasing from ₹21,523 crore in 2023 to ₹21,000 crore in 2024-25. This reduction indicates that the government does not prioritize enhancing the infrastructure and capacity of Anganwadis, despite their essential role in improving nutrition.

The School Gross Enrolment Ratio is dropping at an alarming rate by the time children reach higher secondary levels. The intervening years between primary and secondary levels are crucial, and emphasis is needed to control this drop. The analysis of infrastructure status clearly indicates that both public and privately managed schools need improvement to increase national totals. The lockdown due to the COVID pandemic had far-reaching implications, with data beginning to point out the push of children from school education to work; this systematically pushed students out of education, which is a concerning matter. The 2024 budget does not tackle these urgent issues, lacking specific projects or a focus on enhancing infrastructure and learning in government schools. The budget for school education does not demonstrate a significant increase, with an allocation of ₹73,008.10 crore for 2024-25, reflecting a 6.11% rise. Nevertheless, with an inflation rate of 4.5% projected by the Reserve Bank of India, the real growth rate is only 1.61% from the 2023-24 budget estimate and a mere 0.8% growth compared with the revised estimate for 2023-24. Overall, the increase in the school education and literacy budget is less than 1%, with the allocation rising from ₹72,474 crore in the revised estimates for 2023 to ₹73,008 crore in the 2024-25 budget.

Regarding a few specific examples, pre-matric scholarships have seen a drastic cut, which seems aimed at escalating the elimination of disadvantaged sections from schools. The slight increase in the PM-POSHAN scheme (which includes the mid-day meal program) is being praised by many sections, as it rises from ₹11,600 crore in the 2023 budget allocation to ₹12,467.39 crore in the 2024-25 budget. However, this is still a reduced amount compared to the 2022 allocation of ₹12,680.97 crore, which means students starving in schools or dropping out has not become a priority for the government. Thus, it cannot be described as an actual increase. Another example is that the total allocation for development heads has also been reduced by almost 35%. It is estimated that over 70 million children in India complete primary school without foundational literacy and numeracy skills. Inadequate school infrastructure contributes significantly to these poor learning outcomes. A report by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resource Development revealed that nearly 44% of government schools lack access to electricity. Hence, ensuring a common school system of public education and free, compulsory quality education is a basic responsibility of the government, but the budget clearly states that it is not a priority for the BJP-led Union government.

Gifting Higher Education to Corporates

In this budget, the BJP-led Union government has focused on unleashing an attack against common students in higher education. They have cut down almost all possible schemes that may support students pursuing higher education. At a headline glance, the Department of Higher Education received an allocation of ₹47,619.77 crore, marking an increase of ₹3,525.15 crore, which is 7.99% compared with the previous year’s budget estimate (3.49% when considering inflation). This allocation is also 16.81% lower than the revised estimate of ₹57,244.48 crore for 2023-24.

The drastic reduction in funding for the University Grants Commission (UGC) in the Union Budget 2024-25, which saw a cut of nearly 61% from ₹6,409 crore to ₹2,500 crore, is poised to have severe implications for research initiatives in Indian universities. This drastic decrease raises concerns about the future of higher education and research in the country. With the funding slashed, institutions are likely to face severe constraints in their ability to run the system. This will hinder not only the initiation of new research but also ongoing projects, particularly in fields requiring substantial financial backing. Higher education institutes require robust infrastructure, including laboratories, libraries, and access to paid journals. The budget cuts will likely lead to reduced investments in these essential facilities, making it challenging for universities to support high-quality research activities.

The cuts will force universities to increasingly rely on self-financing models, including tuition fees and private donations, to fund master’s and research initiatives. This shift could create a disparity, where only institutions with financially sound students can afford to maintain robust research programs. As a result, institutions serving economically disadvantaged students will further struggle to keep up, widening the educational gap.

Public and private institutions continue to hike their fees by up to 30% every year. It is quite clear that fee hikes at the university level are meant to repay loans from the Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) or find funds to run the university. Additionally, the cost of equipment for scientific research and laboratories has increased manyfold. Custom duties for lab chemicals have jumped from 10% to 150%. Chemicals worth ₹10,000 now cost ₹25,000, plus GST. Last year, the GST on equipment and chemicals was increased from 5% to 18%.

The reduction in UGC funding is expected to disproportionately affect students from lower-income backgrounds. As institutions turn to self-financing, tuition fees will rise significantly, making higher education less accessible for these students. Progressive student movements in our country have been raising concerns that such financial barriers could force many students to discontinue their studies, particularly those who depend on scholarships and government support.

The BJP-led government is keen on destroying social sciences studies and research in India through various political, administrative, and financial interventions. To accelerate this, support to institutes of excellence in social sciences and humanities has faced a decrease. But not limited to social sciences, the IITs, IIMs, and IIITs are also facing significant fund cuts from this year’s budget allocation for the Ministry of Education. Continuing the withdrawal of support for education, the internationalization of institutes, the Study in India scheme, and support to educational institutes outside India have also faced drastic fund cuts.

However, two types of funding in higher education have seen increases: one is the increase in funding for central universities, and another is the funding for deemed-to-be universities supported by the government. Even though inadequate, an increase in central university funding is a welcome step. But there must be close scrutiny on how and which sections will benefit from this increase. The increase in funding for deemed-to-be universities is nominal or reflects a reduction when considering the Union government’s takeover of new institutes under this section since last year.

Looking at another example, scholarships for college and university students and the Special Scholarship Scheme for Jammu and Kashmir have been merged into the PM-USP scheme. This scheme also includes an interest subsidy during the moratorium period on educational loans taken by students. Announcing a round amount for many schemes clubbed together is a tactic that hides the actual reduction. Another interesting example is the increase in the total allocation for Central Sector Schemes/Projects for Higher Education from ₹1,540.27 crore to ₹1,813.27 crore. But the reality is that the budget has reduced or not increased funds for all heads under the umbrella, except for World Class Institutions, which saw an increase from ₹1,300 crore to ₹1,800 crore. This is for just ten institutions from the public and private sectors that the government wants to focus on. Once again, this is an example of attempts to create fancy headlines but in reality, help private players take over.

Elimination of the Socially and Financially Backward Sections from Education

Looking at the budget allocation for education from various ministries, there are fund cuts everywhere. If a student from SC, OBC, EBC, or DNT sections wants to pursue education, their post-matric scholarships are facing fund cuts and will receive lesser amounts. For those who want to do research in India, National Fellowships for SC, ST, and OBC, and for those pursuing education abroad, National Overseas Fellowships for SC, ST, and loan interest subsidies for OBC students’ overseas studies have altogether seen significant fund cuts.

The PM Girls Hostel scheme is facing an 80% cut from last year, and the Boys and Girls Hostel scheme under the PM Yasasvi umbrella is also reduced. This means the BJP government is determined to make sure that students dependent on hostels are suffering or are indirectly asked to drop out of education. Looking at the PWD sections, not only are scholarships for PWD students reduced, but support to national institutes for PWD is also insensitively reduced.

Given the lack of adequate support for infrastructure for research and innovation, how does the support for schemes open to all stand? The PM Research Fellowship has been drastically reduced, making less support available for outstanding researchers in national and premier institutes in India. Now, considering student entrepreneurs, the funding for the Startup India initiative is also reduced.

One Crore Internships- Like Seriously?

One of the biggest headlines after the budget was the dramatic announcement of internships. Over five years, one crore students will receive one- to two-year internships in 500 top companies with a ₹5,000 per month stipend from the government and ₹6,000 from the companies. In this context, one must recall recent past experiences. For example, BJP-led governments under Modi promised the creation of 2 crore jobs per year. This implies that at least 20 crore jobs should have been created in the past ten years. But reality speaks otherwise; unemployment is skyrocketing, and the ILO report states that youngsters account for 83% of our country’s unemployed workforce. In the eleventh year of BJP rule, they now focus more on announcing internships rather than job creation in the past. In layman’s terms, the new announcement means 2 million internships per year—4000 interns per company per year. Creating this many new openings is herculean and unlikely to be achieved. The government may start counting existing internships as part of the new announcement, which might help them provide some numbers for future propaganda.

Secondly, let’s assume it is ideally implemented. If so, companies will be in a position to get a huge number of underpaid workers without labor law protection or unions to resist exploitation. The government will be paying half the nominal stipend to the workforce, which may drive corporates to not recruit certain sections of employees, especially non-managerial positions. The immediate effect will be on graduates—they will be less required since a large number of interns are available to work without security. This means a government is paying and encouraging corporates to create fewer employment openings for graduates. This is nothing but a more diluted Agniveer scheme from a different ministry.

In summary, based on our experiences, it is unlikely to be implemented as announced and could remain a fancy headline. But it creates a threat to job opportunities and security after graduation.

One major discussion that may arise is the lack of adequate skills earned by students at their graduation. Many voices from the job market are flagging this issue. This is the pretended context that the ruling government keeps talking about regarding skill development and job opportunities for youngsters. If students aren’t being skilled at universities, what is the actual solution? It certainly is not providing some crash courses to mold them for the short term. It must be strengthening the universities and increasing support to educational spaces and their facilities; there are no shortcuts.

In a nutshell, with the Union Budget 2024-25, whether you are studying in India or abroad, the government is attacking you. If you are a student from a struggling background or someone facing discrimination in accessing education, the people in power have decided to further haunt you. If you want admission in a good educational institution, all ways are paved to increase fees, making it a challenge to join. If you seek to conduct intense research, support is minimal; if you need to initiate a startup, support is nominal; and finally, if you need a job after education, there is less security and opportunity now. The government is keen on diverting attention from the real issues and needs of students. With the state’s increased withdrawal, the burden of running universities and even paying faculty and staff is shifting to the shoulders of the students. The largest stakeholder of education has become the primary victim of the government’s anti-people policies. The Union Budget presented by the BJP-led government is atrocious and must be opposed.

–Ramadas Prini Sivanandan is a member of the Central Executive Committee of the SFI, and a research scholar in Developement Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. The author relied on the Union Budget 2024-25, The Status of Education 2022 published by the SFI CEC, the response of the Students’ Federation of India to the Union Budget, and various government and news reports to prepare this note.

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Central Executive Committee 

Press Release

Date: 27/09/2024

The Central Executive Committee of the Students’ Federation of India expresses its shock on the tragic incident happened in the DL Public School in Hathras, where a Class 2 student was murdered as part of a black magic ritual to bring prosperity and fame to the school. SFI demands that the culprits who are behind such cruel act should be brought in front of law and should ensure exemplary punishment for them.

The incident points towards the incompetence of the Uttar Pradesh Government to ensure law and order. There are reports that the accused in the case had planned the human sacrifice ritual earlier also with another boy which was foiled when the boy raised an alarm and ran away. The Government and the authorities were unable to identify and take action against the accused at that point of time, which led to another attempt that took the invaluable life of a child.

It is clear that the motives behind the crime is rooted in superstition. The Modi government at the centre and the Yogi Adithyanath government in the state holds responsibility for such crimes since they are the prime responsible in spreading unscientific things. The National Education Policy (NEP) brought by the BJP is constantly contesting the scientific values in education. Along with this, the BJP leaders in the state and centre are continuously indulged in spreading unscientific things and thereby tampering the scientific consciousness of the people. This undoubtedly creates an environment suitable for such heinous crimes. The only way to counter this is by nurturing scientific temper in the society and the schools through proper scientific education.

The SFI demands strict action on the incident. We also call upon all the progressive sections in the country to Rise against the cultivation of superstition, spread of anti-science ideas and attack on reason by the communal forces.

Released by

V P Sanu (President, SFI)

Mayukh Biswas (General Secreatry, SFI)

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The Central Executive Committee of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) celebrates the revocation of the ban on the Progressive Students’ Forum (PSF) and the revision of the anti-student Honour Code by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), a university headed by the union education minister Mr. Dharmendra Pradhan as chairman. This victory comes in direct result to the organised students’ resistance, and marks a milestone moment for the student movement and an inspiration for the student mobilisations in other deemed to be universities.

Following the arbitrary suspension of Ramadas Prini Sivanandan, a Dalit PhD scholar and SFI Central Executive Committee member, the ban on PSF, imposed on August 19, 2024, designated the organization as an “unauthorized and illegal forum” and accused it of “misleading students” and “defaming the institute.” The ban on PSF was more significant as it represented the most active student organizational experiment among deemed universities in India, which strongly opposed the anti-student policies of both BJP-led union government and university administration. The new Honour Code, introduced shortly after, explicitly prohibited students from engaging in “political, anti-establishment, or unpatriotic discussions, demonstrations, or dharnas.” Both measures were met with widespread resistance from the student community. These attempts were a direct effort to suppress students questioning the BJP-led government’s policies.

Following the ban on PSF at TISS, the SFI Central Executive Committee had called for a nationwide protest against the same and appealed to all sections of society to intervene in defense of campus democracy. The response from other student organizations, farmers’ groups, trade unions, and civil society was immense. We acknowledge that these achievements are crucial steps forward; however, it is essential to remain vigilant. The SFI applauds the courage and determination of all students at TISS, especially the members of PSF, who mobilized to challenge the authoritarian actions of the BJP-led union government. In solidarity with all students fighting for their rights in other universities, we celebrate these significant victories while reaffirming our commitment to continue fighting for academic freedom, social justice, and the protection of student rights.

Released by
V P Sanu (President, SFI)
Mayukh Biswas (General Secretary, SFI)

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