Student Struggle In The 80s-90s: Talking To Nilotpal Basu
Nilotpal Basu, Aseed Karim Hussain
Nilotpal Basu was General Secretary of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) from 1986 to 1993. During those years, he also served as an Editor of Student Struggle. In this interview with Aseed Karim Hussain, Basu talks about the role played by the journal at the time.
Aseed Karim Hussain (AKH): Student Struggle has been working as the mouthpiece of the SFI for the past five decades. It is a matter of pride that it has documented the organised student movement across India and over many years. Can you explain how Student Struggle was the organisation’s tool during your days as a student?
Nilotpal Basu (NB): The Central Committee Office of the SFI was shifted from Kolkata to Delhi after the All India Conference at Patna, Bihar, in 1979. Sitaram Yechury served as the Editor of Student Struggle for quite a long time. Following the Vijayawada Conference in 1986, I was elected as the General Secretary, and from then on, I started serving ‘double duty’ as both the General Secretary of the organisation and the Editor of the journal.
During those days, it was the only source of information about the organisation for its activists working in different regions of the country. This urged us to make every issue the best one. Student Struggle served as a magazine designed to provide intellectual input to activists across India. All issues contained regular reports on the SFI’s events, campaigns, and protests. We were able to respond to each emerging political situation by publishing topical articles on it and by asserting our stand.
Contemporary politics and student movements were hot topics in most of our issues. However, the main attraction was the Opinion pieces that experts wrote. Renowned intellectuals and journalists contributed on a wide range of topics, and this made each issue very popular. For instance, Novy Kapadia was one of the most famous sports journalists of the time. Student Struggle published several articles by him, particularly on football.
We believed that our primary duty was to disseminate facts. In 1986, the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, introduced the National Education Policy (NEP), and in the following three years, the SFI agitated against this anti-student document, and as part of this, Student Struggle too published several articles explaining the issues of the document. This was also the year of the Golden Jubilee of the organised students’ movement in India. The SFI, along with the All India Students Federation (AISF), celebrated the anniversary in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Adding to the celebrations, Student Struggle brought out a special issue on the history of the student movement – drawing a clean outline of the entire movement, from pre-independence times to post-Independence and its moves against fascism.
AKH: You were part of the SFI’s leadership at a time technology was not as advanced as it is today. Who all were on the journal’s Editorial Board at the time, and how did you all coordinate with each other?
NB: One of the major differences between those days and today is that the current leadership of the SFI has the luxury of using digital platforms for the promotion of the journal. The decision to go online has been an extremely effective one and I’m certain that this has aided in reaching out to and staying in touch with more student activists across India.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, we did it the hard way. We had to send the material through the printing press, and proofreading had to be entirely done by us. Conventionally, the Editorial Board of the Student Struggle comprises comrades working at the All India Centre and a few comrades from different states. However, our team also included many other comrades who helped us from collecting articles, editing them and designing layouts when it went for printing & publishing. Many of our issues were praised for their excellent choice of photos, illustrations, and cartoons. We used to print the magazine at Progressive Printers at Noida, NCR. Later, we shifted it to a printing press at Punjabi Bagh, New Delhi.
At the time, our activists in many campuses from across the country would eagerly wait for our issues. It was not an easy job, of course, because we had to send registered copies via post, and we secured the journal’s registration at a registration office. If we fail to meet the deadline (of publishing), distribution will get affected. If so, we would then have to make use of other ways of distribution with the help of available networks. Nonetheless, we accepted every challenge, tried our best to overcome them, and ensured that Student Struggle reached our activists and other students without fail.
AKH: One of the most salient features of Student Struggle back then were the excellent reports on matters of both international and national importance penned by prominent public figures, including Safdar Hashmi. Could you tell us about this experience?
NB: Student Struggle can undoubtedly be used as a significant resource by scholars researching on the organised students’ movement in India. It was and still is an organic component of the country’s students’ movement. All of us at Student Struggle adhered to the words of Vladimir Lenin: “Organ is not merely a campaigner, but an organiser.” We would have frequent Editorial Board meetings; we reviewed news headlines and aligned our contents accordingly.
Yes, Safdar Hashmi used to write for us on various cultural issues, and as I mentioned before, Novy Kapadia would write about football, along with eminent leaders like M. Basavapunnaiah, Farooqui and Viswanath Mukherjee who would write about the political scenario. We kept in touch with all these people even after the publication of the issues.
AKH: The year 1991 was when three major historical events took place in India, i.e., “Mandal-Mandir-Market”. Internationally, the collapse of the USSR was a crucial moment that marked the 90s. How did the SFI, with the use of Student Struggle, respond to all this, especially since these events would have had a direct & significant impact on Indian students?
NB: I was the General Secretary of the SFI when all of this took place. Yes, these events definitely had a huge impact on the students’ movement. First was the collapse of the USSR, which substantially weakened the Socialist Bloc of the world. The second was the implementation of the Mandal Commission Recommendations. Following this was the outbreak of the Mandir movement.
On the one hand, we had a setback internationally. On the other, there was a virulent eruption of communal violence in India. Student Struggle focused on publishing a considerable number of articles to keep up morale and prove that socialist governments or socialist societies were not a failure. Through the journal, we upheld our belief that scientific socialism will be successful and that it will continue to be the SFI’s basic principle. Social justice in relation to the Mandal Commission was dominant, and the journal took up the issue. The popular phrase was “Mandal-Kamandal”, indicating social justice and communal violence. We resisted communal violence to the core.
Even during the late 1980s, the SFI resisted the sectarian movements that arose in India, like the Khalistan movement, the All Assam Students Union (AASU) movement in Assam, etc. Through Student Struggle, we asserted that the SFI stood for the nation’s integration and rejected the idea of sectarianism. The SFI thus had a history of asserting its ideological stand through Student Struggle, and this helped us to go ahead with confidence during the turbulent 1990s.
AKH: Did the organisation take any measure to improve the quality, circulation and reach of the journal during your time in office?
NB: As the organised strength of the SFI was rising every year, we increased the circulation of the journal. However, there were newer issues emerging among the unorganised student community. The growth of communalism and individualism on Indian campuses was the major issue. The immediate task in front of the SFI and Student Struggle was to respond to this evolving volatile situation and ensure that things were alright.
This is part of a series of articles by and interviews with former Student Struggle Editors.
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