It is welcome to see once again People's Democracy (PD) comment on the JNU Students Union polls.

For the past two years the matter remained eclipsed from its pages as AISA `controlled the students' union for the past three years'. But this time around, when the SFI presidential candidate Battilal Bairwa scraped through marginally to grab the coveted post, it chose to offer a few lessons to others. Well, so says the title of the article in the October 27 issue of PD - 'Lessons To Be Learnt'.

True, it is important to draw lessons after one of the major Left students' bastions has fallen to the communal forces of ABVP. And more so when the left and liberal democratic tradition of the campus is under attack. But this can't be done through a facile argument based on inverted logic.

The PD analysis says that the rise of AISA in the campus, provided 'fertile ground for the growth of reactionary forces like the ABVP'. This it is claimed has been corroborated from the past experiences of the student union elections in Banaras Hindu University and Allahabad University. To put records straight, ABVP never grew as a reaction to the upsurge of AISA in the campuses at the height of right reaction in the Hindibelt. Rather, reactionary student politics either directly under ABVP or supported by it, had been growing from much before. Can one forget the anti-Mandal backlash of these reactionary forces that swept through these campuses? In fact, it was only a revolutionary left student organisation like AISA that arrested the growth of these reactionary forces specially after the impetus these forces got from the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Coming back to JNU, it was during the heydays of SFI, for the first time in 1991 that ABVP scored major victories in the union elections. AISA had then just started work in the campus.

Regarding the functioning of the past AISA unions, their criticism is coterminus with the point ABVP has been raising in the campus i.e. the elected AISA leaders 'preferred to stay in Bihar to conduct so-called revolutionary activity at the grassroots' at the expense of campus issues. As a result, the article points out, students were alienated from politics and Left politics in particular. PD's contempt for the revolutionary struggles of the rural poor in Bihar is not surprising. But while criticising AISA students' involvement in political propaganda campaign among the peasants of Bihar during elections, the PD throws overboard a principle vital to any left students' organisation.

AISA has never failed to consistently intervene on campus matters be it raising demands for better facilities for students or settling important policy matters of the University in favour of students. One case in point is the succesful AISA-led movement to thwart the administration's attempt at privatising the University in September 1995 which set a new model of struggle against privatisation in higher education.

Lacking a concrete political agenda that could appeal to the Left and democratic student population of the campus, the ABVP raised a high pitched battle against AISA, counterposing the latter's revolutionary student politics on national and international issues to the campus issues. In fact, using the fact that 'their party' is in power in Delhi, ABVP sold the lure of 'getting things done'.

The Left and democratic political culture of JNU did not grow in isolation in the confines of its campus. It was due to the active interest and the participation of the student community towards broader Left-democratic student movement taking place in the country and extending its solidarity with the revolutionary struggles of workers and peasants. It is understandable if rank reactionaries try to dilute this revolutionary potential of the student community by highlighting and counterposing against it the demands for more buses on campus etc. But in their blind hostility towards AISA, SFI joined the depoliticisation chorus causing immense damage to the Left and democratic campus tradition.

The role of revolutionary student politics doesn't end with halting the advances of ABVP in this or that campus or winning this or that union elections. It is for PD to reflect upon how many SFI students are taking to labour organising and how many go to the villages to take up organising rural poor and compare their poor record with that of AISA instead of talking condescendingly about 'so-called' revolutionary struggles. Perhaps they can learn a lesson there. The need for students to come out of the narrow confines of campus issues and plunge into bigger political battles thrown up by the emerging national crisis has been never so pressing than at present. For this reason if the campus issues do take a back seat for a while, there is no need to feel defensive about it and that too to the point of being unprincipled. Convincing the students about this is an important part of their radical politicisation. A bitter lesson might be awaiting those who bury the principles.

-Siddartha