Depriving The Students

There is no good reason why elections to DUCSU, or any other public university’s students union, cannot be held. There never was.

“A proud tradition in student politics” is part of the staple that Bangladeshis upto a certain generation would hear about and learn about growing up. Menon, Rob, Tofail, the Language Movement heroes, the names almost roll off the tongue. These days, it is less likely that our elders pass on anything positive to future generations in terms of their outlook on students dabbling in politics. Indeed, in an age when the most prominent student organization engaged in politics, namely the Bangladesh Chhatra League, the ruling party Awami League’s student front, inspires more fear and apprehension than almost any other organized force in the country, most parents are more inclined to ensure their wards keep off the road of student politics. And it gets scarier when they announce plans to spread their tentacles to the country’s schools and colleges.

It wasn’t always this way. And the biggest irony of all is that the qualitative decline we have witnessed in student politics coincides almost precisely with the advent of democracy in Bangladesh, that came with the overthrow of the autocratic regime of General H.M. Ershad in 1990 and the first free-and-fair elections that followed in April 1991. Adding to the irony, the decline came on the back of a period that Anu Muhammad, the activist professor of economics at Jahangirnagar University, describes as “the most glorious and united phase” of Bangladeshi student politics.

At this stage, it is useful to try and define what is meant by student politics, for there is a distinction to be made between what it is usually taken to mean, and how it has actually manifested in Bangladesh, even in its glory days.