Archives: EMS On Student Organisation Before And After 1936
EMS Namboodiripad
I belong to the generation whose student life ended before the birth of the Student Federation. The Student movement in our days was an inseparable part of the national movement headed by the Indian National Congress.
As early as in the beginning of the century, the students and youth in our country, as in other countries of the Orient (China, Egypt, Turkey, Persia etc.) had been drawn into the anti-imperialist movement. They were getting impatient with the moderate, compromising stand adopted by the conservative leadership of the freedom movement, opposing “militancy” to what they characterised as the “mendicancy” of the elders. There was however no question of students and youths organising themselves independently, they worked as integral parts of the freedom movement.
The generation just before mine was called upon by Mahatma Gandhi to boycott educational institutions and devote themselves to the service of the motherland. My generation was not given such a call but were asked to devote themselves to the “Constructive Programme” of the Congress, such as the propagation and study of Hindi, the non-observation of untouchability, the popularisation of Khadi and so on. My days in school and subsequently in college were thus spent in carrying out the Constructive Programme of the Congress, while we devoted our energies, as serious students, to complete our education.
students of the generations before mine had become national revolutionaries, renouncing the “peaceful and constitutional” methods of the Liberals as well as the “non-violence” of Mahatma Gandhi. A few of them turned martyrs by organising individual militant actions against the representatives of the British Raj and their agents. Those (like me) who did not adopt this path however admired the courage and heroism of the martyrs and slowly veered round to left positions in the freedom movement.
The formation of the All-India Student Federation in 1936 was a turning point in the evolution of the student movement. Even at this stage of course, it was an integral part of the anti-imperialist freedom movement. The range of activities of the new organisation however was more varied than those of the students of earlier generations, they were organising themselves to find solutions for their own problems of life and study in the educational institutions. They were also coordinating their activities, as a section of the community, with other anti-imperialist mass organisations like those of the peasants, the working class, the teachers and so on.
They were guided in this by the concept of anti-imperialist united front, with the Indian National Congress being the organisational form of anti-imperialist unity. The trade unions of workers, the kisan sabhas and such other mass organisations including those of the students were to be collectively affiliated to the Indian National Congress.
The Student Federation therefore was an organisation in which boys and girls subscribing to various ideologies and owing allegiance to various parties and organisations (such as the Communists, the Socialists, the national revolutionaries etc.) had to work together. Nobody was therefore kept out of the Student Federation (or of any other anti-imperialist organisation for that matter) on the ground of ideology or political allegiance.
This article was first published in the souvenir of sixth all India conference of SFI held at Vijayawada in 1986, and then republished in the 1987 April issue of Student Struggle.