SFI During Emergency: Prakash Karat Remembers
Prakash Karat
Four and a half years after the formation of the Students Federation of India (SFI) in December 1970, the Indira Gandhi government declared internal Emergency. It is a testimony to the emergence of the SFI in these initial years as a militant student organization, that the government targeted it in the general crackdown against the opposition. The years 1973 to 1975 had witnessed a wave of students’ struggles around the country for affordable education, in which the SFI played a leading role in many places.
I had become the President of the SFI in June 1974 and, within a year of this, the attack on the SFI was launched. Nine of the Central Executive Committee members, including the secretaries of Kerala, Assam, Odisha and Presidents of Tripura and Odisha were jailed under MISA. Among them were Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, Manik Sarkar, Janardan Pati and Uddhab Barman [the first two later became members of the Polit Bureau and the latter two became members of the Central Committee of the CPI(M)]. Four other CEC members were wanted and had to go underground. Over 60 cadres of the SFI all over the country were detained under MISA. I happened to be in Calcutta when the Emergency was declared on June 25. I had gone there for some work as the SFI headquarters was in Calcutta in those days. I remember, being called by Pramode Dasgupta, the state secretary of the CPI(M) and advised not to go to New Delhi railway station by train, but get off at an earlier station in order to evade the police in case they were looking for me. Subsequently in Delhi, I was asked to function underground to continue the SFI work.
During the period of the Emergency, Kerala was the state where the SFI continued to mobilise students to protest against the Emergency. Hundreds were arrested in these protests, including state leaders like M. A. Baby and G. Sudhakaran. Over 600 cases under the Defence of India rules were filed against SFI activists in Kerala.
In JNU, where I had been the Students Union President in 1973-74, my successor SFI leader D. P. Tripathi was jailed under MISA and so were some others. However, the students kept up their protests throughout the Emergency. For my generation of student activists, this was the first experience of having to work underground. We were able to set-up a Centre to bring out bulletins about the resistance to the Emergency and other information.
The SFI lost some valuable comrades in this struggle. Mustafa, a 19-year old student from Mannarkad, Kerala, died due to lack of medical attention while in jail; Charanjit Kaur, a young woman activist, was shot dead by anti-socials in Punjab. The SFI office-bearers/CEC met in a clandestine fashion twice in this period – once in Calcutta and the other time in Delhi. P. Sundarayya, the General Secretary of the Party, who was underground at that time, attended the meeting in Delhi and gave us valuable instructions on how to continue our work. It was a thrilling experience for the student leaders.
The SFI’s role during the Emergency in the struggle against the Emergency raised the prestige of SFI among the students all over the country. It enabled the SFI to make rapid strides in the post-Emergency period.
Prakash Karat is a Politburo member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He was SFI’s All India President between 1974 and 1979. Karat was also the third JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU) President.
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