Questions of minority, agency and voice: student protests in India in 2016 (original) (raw)

Politics Against (De)politicization: The Basis and Crisis of Contemporary Student Movements in India

Left History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Historical Inquiry and Debate

In the context of worldwide student protests against neoliberal economic agenda and depoliticizing market rationality, the essay seeks to understand the basis of ongoing student protests in India. On the basis of a case study of a radical left student organization from the state of West Bengal, India, the essay demonstrates that the dynamics of student protests in India is rooted in resistances against a state-sponsored depoliticization. The resistance is also against a structure of domination, legal and extra-legal that sustains such depoliticization in campuses as well as in the society at large. Borrowing framework from the studies in subjectivity, the essay argues that the basis of Indian student protests is anchored in a historically grounded subjectivity where students have often been called upon as a young citizen, responsible to the nation and people. At the same time, the crisis of these protests is born out of the lack of having a contemporary form of the said political su...

Student activism, caste, and politics in North India

Tranforming Universities , 2022

This paper examines the interlinkages between student movements and mobilizations in contemporary north India, especially after the implementation of the Mandal Commission Report in the 1990s, which has changed the demographics and social compositions of Indian universities. By focusing on Allahabad University, this paper also explores how and when individual and collective movements instigate student mobilization and to what ends. In Allahabad, student mobilizations present a combination of student activism and identity politics and involve everyday forms of social service and ‘civilized’ forms of protest.

The Paradox in the Politics of “Jai-Bhim Lal-Salaam”: The Language of Student Protest in India

Lapis Lazuli: An International Literary Journal, 2018

“Jai-Bhim Laal-Salaam”, both rhetorically and historically a paradox, brought forth a promise of representation. Amidst, a political paradox unveils: A Dalit usurped, and the Left touched by the untouchable. Finally, the paper posits that riddled between these paradoxes, is the Dalit body of Rohith Vemula, with some provocative answers.

Cultural Politics of Historically Marginalized Students in Indian Universities

Critical Times, 2020

The university space, the most endangered zone in Indian democracy in the present, is witnessing the ideological churnings, contradictions, and emergent possibilities of affinity among radical voices contesting culturally hegemonic practices. Student activism in general and anti-caste activism in particular offer a complex interplay of caste, gender, culture, and politics in the university space, traditionally defined as neutral. Envisioning a democratic, socially just, and genuinely secular nation, historically marginalized students challenge and critique hegemonic narratives. This article argues that anti-caste activism on campuses invokes the democratic space of universities, where ideological meanings are constructed and deconstructed to unveil the suppression of historically marginalized voices in contemporary network society. The dominant culture and politics are actually rooted in the iron laws of ancient hierarchies intrinsically opposed to the self-historicizing and well-in...

Performing Exclusion, Pretending Assimilation: A Study of Dalit-Bahujan Student Politics in India

Rawat Publications, 2021

This paper sets out from the premise that cultural expressions, in the form of slogans, have political ramification. Hence, it seeks to interrogate the coupling of ‘Jai-Bhim’ (Ambedkarite salutation) and ‘Lal-Salaam’ (red-salute, a Marxian salutation), that brought Left and Dalit politics together. The premise of this uncanny convergence was the suicide of Rohith Vemula. In his death Vemula becomes the harbinger of change for both Dalit and Left politics. Hence, this paper seeks to critically interrogate the rhetorical coupling of Ambedkarite and Marxist politics in ‘Jai-Bhim Lal-Salaam’; questions the necessity for such an alliance to understand the reasons behind the resurgence of Dalit students’ politics; attempts to understand the politics of exclusion and assimilation vis-à-vis the politics of ‘Jai-Bhim Lal-Salaam’; and to critically examine if places of higher education are also spaces for the marginalized to articulate resistance.

"Real, practical emancipation"? Subaltern politics and insurgent citizenship in contemporary India

Th is article explores the articulations of citizenship in subaltern politics in contemporary India. Departing from Karl Marx's acknowledgment that, despite its limitations, political orders founded on the modern democratic conception of citizenship had propelled " real, practical emancipation, " I argue that citizenship has to be understood as simultaneously enabling and constraining radical political projects and popular social movements. I fl esh out this argument through a detailed analysis of Adivasi mobilization in western Madhya Pradesh, India. My analysis shows how the Adivasi Mukti Sangathan, a local social movement in the region, democratized local state-society relations by appropriating basic democratic idioms and turning these against local state personnel and the violent extortion they engaged in. Drawing on James Holston's work on " insurgent citizenship, " I argue that claims making around such democratic idioms infl ected citizenship with new and potentially emancipatory meanings centered on local sovereignty and self-rule. I then detail how this mobilization provoked a substantial coercive backlash from the state and discuss the lessons that can be gleaned from this tra-jectory in terms of the possibilities and limitations that citizenship off ers to progressive popular politics in India today.

Dissenting Differently: Solidarities and Tensions between Student Organizing and Trans-Kothi-Hijra Activism in Eastern India

SAMAJ: South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 2019

This article charts emergent solidarities and tensions between transgender activism and leftist and feminist students’ collectives in and around the city of Kolkata in West Bengal, India. The article examines how these alliances disrupt hegemonic forms of leftist and LGBT activism, challenging both the primacy of class in leftist political organizing and single-axis identity politics based solely on gender or sexuality. The article further argues that these coalitional formations manifest a tension between the subversion of established political structures and the persistent reinscription of gender/class/caste hierarchies within activist spaces, corresponding to governmental forms of activism that seek to delimit proper conduct for participants. However, these tendencies cannot prevent unpredictable deployments of political discourses and strategies that disrupt hierarchies and enable convergences or collaborations across ideological or organizational divides. Thus, these unstable coalitions raise uncertain and unexpected possibilities that disrupt linear or teleological trajectories of political mobilization.

Towards a Common Voice?: An Introduction to Movements and Campaigns in India

The paper presents a brief overview of the main strands in social sciences theorising on movements. It discusses the debates on new social movements and non-party political formations in India. In the context of the contributions in this volume on movements and campaigns, it examines how contemporary struggles have redefined classical notions of power, oppression and liberation. It also explores how these struggles grapple with 'difference', how they strategise their relationship to the state, to development and to the realm of the cultural and the symbolic. Finally, the paper looks at the need for a coming together of struggles and movements on broad agendas.