Since, the BJP came to power in 2014, it has unceasingly attacked education and higher educational institutions attempting to stamp its authority on them. This has included appointing lackeys of the Sangh in positions of power in educational institutions, cutting back on financial support programmes, gradually implementing the NEP leading to a commercialisation and saffronisation of education as well as a destruction of campus democracy, and targeting of left and democratic forces and organisations within the student body both institutionally and through its student front the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). While the anti-student character of the Sangh is apparent, this must not be taken to meant that it considers students to be unimportant. Students have always been a politically important and influential section in India and the Sangh has and continues to be interested in gaining as wide a student support as possible, establish its control over the student movement, and orient it towards Hindutva politics.
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.