Reject NSUI and its corporate culture!
So we are told that tonight we have a ‘tryst with destiny,’ interestingly at PSR OAT, with commercial musical bands sponsored by corporate firms and aided by inherently anti people Indian state. NSUI has yet again proved its character of being distasteful. Its audacity to call a corporate funded commercial musical band on the ‘independence day’ is worth criticism. At a time, when students are fighting for increasing MCM and strengthening the GSCASH, NSUI’s nasty attempts to undermine the gravity of the issues and to break the unity of students is condemnable and shameful. They are never part of any students’ struggle. Being stooges of the oppressive ruling class of the country, they can never be so. Their degenerate politics is flaunted only in distributing ‘free Biryani’, celebrating the charitable rise of MCM of Rs.500 and now organizing a Rock Band musical night. NSUI is trying every gimmick to divert the students from real and concrete issues and problems.
Being the stooges of the ruling class, NSUI is duty-bound to impose its notions of ‘independence’ and ‘destiny’ on others. Since the transfer of power in 1947, for majority of masses, the ‘independence’ held little meaning, which reverberated in subsequent slogans, poems, literature (ye azadi jhoothi hai-desh ki janta bhookhi hai; ye daagh-daagh ujala ye shaguzida sehar, ye wo sehar to nahin jiski arzoo lekar etc). This is afterall ‘independence’ for a handful of landed class, dominant brahmanical castes, imperialist and comprador ruling class of this country. For NSUI and its masters, ‘celebrating’ this day with corporate funded bands becomes a necessity. But the cacophony of their corporate bands can never hide the fact that the oppressed masses of India, the adivasis, dalits, religious minorities, women and oppressed nationalities of Kashmir, North East etc have been always fighting against never ending oppression, displacement, caste atrocities and discrimination, deprivation, starvation, death, genocide, massacre, fake encounters, custodial deaths, capital punishment, violence against women, army operations, occupation, plunder of their recourses and crushing their democratic rights and so on. The masses fought against British colonialism and their heroic resistance continues till date, in the face of severe and continued repression.
In the course of this struggle for liberation and for a just and equal society, they have developed their true democratic culture which contains both the dream and design for a future society which will be just and egalitarian. They fight, in their songs too, against feudal-Brahmanical-imperials values and customs which are being promoted by the ruling classes and the powers that be, of the country. These cultural activists are regularly repressed, arrested, tortured and incarcerated by the state. In past couple of years we have seen arrest of activists of political cultural group Kabir Kala Manch, Sudhir Dhavale, Jeetan Marandi, Seema Azad, Utpal Bashke, Vishwa Vijay, arrest and torture of students associated with Mashal cultural organization of BHU, arrest of well-known writer Kanwal Bharti etc. All these writers, artists, cultural activists are striving to fight this sham of democracy and freedom.
Progressive and democratic students of JNU always stood for these progressive and democratic cultural activists and writers and rejected commercial, corporate funded cultural activities in campus. NSUI is now trying to bring such corporate culture, which they practice in other campuses shamelessly. They are putting up huge glossy and ugly hoardings all around the campus, to project their upcoming ‘youth leaders. We would like to simply remind them that such ridiculous show of wealth has always been rejected by the progressive students of JNU.
That NSUI today dare to do such blatant shameless flaunting of wealth, is because of the continuous implementation of the undemocratic Lyngdoh Recommendations, that replaced the progressive JNUSU constitution. The stated aim of Lyngdoh was to curtail ‘money and muscle power’ in students’ politics. But in reality Lyngdoh simply provides breeding grounds for such retrogressive and reactionary forces like NSUI to grow, while curbing and severely restricting the real democratic spaces and culture of campuses. The administration too has been emboldened and is becoming increasingly authoritarian and ignoring genuine students’ issues. The revisionist Left forces in the campus like AISA/SFI/DSF because of their own bankrupt politics is refusing to address the fundamental problem of Lyngdoh and their continuous capitulation and betrayal of the struggle against Lyngdoh will lead into further depoliticisation, that will embolden regressive forces like NSUI and ABVP and their degenerate culture. The progressive culture of JNU has been painstakingly built by students’ struggles for years. If we do not fight Lyngdoh and its agents, we stand to lose all that!!
Revolutionary Cultural Front
