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ROUND 200 students and youth activists gathered at Ramnagar in Nainital district of Uttarakhand from all over India to participate in a workshop organized by All India Students Association (AISA) and Revolutionary Youth Association (RYA) on 2-3 July. The workshop was inspired by a widespread need to equip young activists with the theoretical grasp and framework needed to respond to the present phase – probably the most challenging phase ever for the student-youth movement in our country. In the face of the twin offensives of imperialism and communal fascism, young activists were eager to arm themselves with Marxist principles of studying social phenomena, to learn to recognise the historical trajectory of fascism in its communal version in India, and to develop a sensitive, integrated approach to questions of gender. Above all, they wished to grasp the dynamics of student-youth movements, learning from the rich experiences of the past, in order to devise strategies for student-youth intervention which is so urgently needed today.

The streets of Ramnagar as well as the Khatri Sabha Bhwan premises had been festooned with banners and posters by the AISA activists of Uttarakhand. The workshop began on 2 July 2003 with a presentation on communal fascism. Comrade Pranay Krishna, former JNUSU president, took up this session, explaining the difference between communalism, fundamentalism and fascism. He examined the case for whether the RSS brand of politics in India could be said to be ‘fascism’, in the light of Marxist theory of fascism. He traced the growth of the communal ‘virus’ which can be found even in mainstream Indian nationalist thought, and which has come to ‘infect’ the common Indian psyche today, creating fertile ground for fascism. He also traced the growth of fascist organizations in India – which were modeled on Nazis and supported British colonialism, and which advanced in independent India taking advantages of the compromises and vacillations of bourgeois and social democratic political formations. He linked the ascent to power of communal fascism in the ’90s, to the liberalized economic policies of the same decade.

The next paper was by Comrade Arindam Sen, Director IIMS, titled “Grasp Marxism as Our Guide to Action”. He said, “Marxism is the evergreen philosophy of praxis and revolutionary transformation… In a word, it is our guide to action.” He began with elaborating the “building blocks of Marxism” – i.e., its “three sources and three components” identified by Lenin. Comrade Arindam told his young audience that reading of the classics and grasping the principles of Marxism must be combined with learning to apply these principles in what Lenin called the “concrete analysis of concrete conditions” of our own society

He then went on to explain the theories of state, and imperialism – two key themes in Marxist theory. Drawing upon Lenin’s views supplemented with observations of Marx and Engels, he outlined the Marxist perspective on “The State: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow”. He then briefly discussed the anarchist approach and the NGO viewpoint of the state, as well as the state in the age of globalisation.

He led his listeners through a basic understanding of imperialism, via four sub-topics – imperialism as Lenin saw it, imperialism after Lenin, globalisation and the latest phase of imperialism and imperialism and the US Empire.

The students enthusiastically plied both Comrade Pranay and Comrade Arindam with questions, and their papers were followed by lively discussions which spilled over beyond the class itself.

This was followed by a brief outline of a Marxist approach to the question of gender, presented by Comrade Kavita Krishnan, President of AISA. She briefly talked about how Marxist view the origins of women’s oppression, and discussed what a Marxist approach should be to the tangled questions of family, marriage and morality. She discussed the position of women in capitalism, and the impact of liberalization on Indian women. Also, she suggested reasons for what enables fascist ideology to police women’s freedom as well as mobilize women on a fascist plank. Lastly she suggested some of the issues – sexual harassment, gender discrimination in employment, equal wages, dowry – that could be taken up by the student-youth movement.

Finally, Comrade Lal Bahadur Singh, Secretary of RYA, presented a paper on the ‘Student Youth Movement – Challenges and Possibilities’. His paper traced the trends within the Indian youth movement before and since Independence, and also explored the possibilities in today’s situation. He also closely studied the experiences of the PSO and AISA in Allahabad, in order to discuss the dynamics of youth radicalism and political assertion. As he said at the outset, he left his paper open ended – and participants from Bihar, Delhi, Kolkata, Uttarakhand and Balia, in a sense ‘completed’ it by sharing insights from recent experiences of movements and organization building.

Of course, the workshop also had all the festivity of a youth camp, with people staying up all night listening to the songs and plays of their comrades from Garhwal and Kumaon, women comrades from Muzaffarpur, others from Assam, Karbi Anglong, Jamia and Delhi Universities, Orissa and Jharkhand, Allahabad, Banaras and Patna.

All in all, students and teachers both learnt much from the workshop, and resolved to commit themselves to building a nationwide student youth movement with renewed energy and enthusiasm.

— Ravi