This post continues the ongoing debate on Kafila occasioned by the charge made by Prof. Ranabir Samaddar in the DNA Newspaper about what he thinks is the ‘elitist’ character of the students movement that is continuing at Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

Guest Post by Anindya Sengupta

Now Ranabir Samaddar has done it. This charge of elitism – as evident in his article’s title ‘Elitist Protest in Jadavpur’ – is not new; it was in the air right from the onset of the movement, evident in numerous threads of comments in social networks. But when such labelling, as is regularly dished out by a Trinamul Congress backed Bengali daily like Khobor 365 Din, finds an echo in left-wing scholars, it hurts. It was almost a relief that Prof. Samaddar didn’t repeat the accusation that these rebelling students are a doped and debauched lot.

Looking up for the word ‘elite’ in the dictionaries yielded this among many: “A group or class of persons enjoying superior intellectual or social or economic status”.

Jadavpur University is an elite institution, no doubt about it if we consider the university to be one of the advanced centers of learning in the country, but does that necessarily render its students elite? Are the demands of the students’ elitist? Are the hokkolorobis elite in their class character and as participatory subjects? Are the students – facing litigations and possible police cases – ‘enjoying’ any privilege in this protracted war for justice? They are certainly producing their own enjoyment in their rites of political passage, but these enjoyments – if one bothers to watch carefully – do not stem from a status gained either by the institution they belong to or the families they come from. Social scientists could do a demographic survey of the students involved, of the students who were beaten up on the fateful September 16 night. I can recall one particular student who was admitted in a hospital for a number of days, and who requested us not to inform his parents living far from the city, not only because they would worry about his health but they might also do so about the cost of his treatment.

What we get from Prof. Samaddar’s hurriedly written report might be called ‘Fictofacts’: facts that present no empirically verifiable data and the language used betrays a fiction of prejudice.

Fictofact 1: “The university administration and the students failed to reach any agreement on this, leading to escalation of protests.”

There is no question of failure since the talks to reach an agreement didn’t happen. The students demanded it, the authorities never accepted. This is a movement which struck disagreement on the very first note – disagreeing with the sexist, politically conformist response of the authorities regarding the August 28 incident of a girl and his male friend being manhandled by residents of the boys’ hostel where the complainant went to relieve herself.

Fictofact 2: “On September 16, agitating students gheraoed the vice chancellor.”

This desperate measure was taken after the Vice-Chancellor refused to talk with the students for more than 150 hours; the Internal Complaints Committee failed to present its report and allegedly asked the complainant inappropriate questions on an unscheduled visit to her home.

Fictofact 3: “In the early hours of September 17, the police was called in by the VC to rescue him and other senior members of the administration.”

‘Rescue’ is a fictional operative because no one was threatened: demands to engage in dialogue and demand for commitments from the administration are not life-threatening. The students were using standard leftist slogans with which as a veteran academic administrator Prof. Samaddar should be only too familiar.

Fictofact 4: “Helped by a sympathetic big media, one slogan became famous: Hok Kolorob (written as Hokkolorob; in English, let there be noise).”

‘Sympathetic’ is a strange adjective to use. Did big media make “Hokkolorob” famous, or was it the social networks and public demonstrations? And are all newspapers sympathetic to the movement? I have read reports in at least three newspapers (two from big houses and one vernacular daily mentioned previously), which have incessantly slandered students and teachers of the university. At least a couple of TV channels did the same.

Fictofact 5 is classic: “It is clear that the agitating students belong to an articulate class. They defeated the government and the university administration hands down in spreading claims, demands, and messages. The populist government representing the inarticulate lower classes could not cope with the clever eloquence of the educated class.”

I have – being less enlightened – never heard or read about “articulate class”. Class with means of articulation? Class gifted with agency of articulation?

“They defeated the government and university administration… [who] could not cope”. Last time I was awake I heard that the Vice Chancellor has been made permanent and not a single step has been taken to pay heed to the agitating students. Prohibitive High Court orders have been issued, a PIL has been initiated against the current students’ agitations. “The populist government representing the inarticulate lower classes”: I consider this a government elected by a degenerate hyper-articulate middle class and I present this as an opinion, not as an objective description.

Prof. Samaddar then presents an extended criticism of the “Kalighater moyna” slogan [Kalighater Moyna/Ekhane Esob Hoyna – Pay heed Kalighat’s myna/Your ways are not allowed here]. This couplet – one among numerous new slogans coined in a frenzy during this movement – has been particularly notorious because Kalighat is the residence of the Chief Minister and the place is also infamous for one of the oldest brothels of the city; the ‘myna’, presumably, implies sex-workers. Admitting the innuendo in the slogan (scathing humor has been an important component in hokkolorob slogans and rhymes), a student explained that “Myna” is used as a metaphor (of “talking birds, [known] for their ability to reproduce sounds, including human speech, when in captivity”, source: Wikipedia) – referring to the VC being a parroting stooge of the ruling party. But Prof. Samaddar reads belittling of the lower classes by the JU elites in this single slogan, selected carefully from a large repertoire offered by the movement to prove his point. In fact, this one was used rarely in the demonstrations. The rebuke is followed by a rather strange digression about Kalighat as a signifier in Bengali literature!

Fictofact 6: “In this situation, uncomfortable questions have been dubbed as reactionary, only serving the ruling party’s interest.” Which questions? Who is doing the dubbing? The movement has been criticized by Sugata Marjit, to which Supriya Chaudhuri responded – both articles were published in Times of India. Dipesh Chakrabarty’s suggestions about political distraction in student-life has been responded to by Gautam Bhadra (both in Anandabazar Patrika). Chakrabarty’s observations regarding better handling of sexual-harassments in the US campuses has been refuted by Anustup Basu (in Ei Samay). Not in a single article have I read anything reflecting what Prof. Samaddar suggests. Such impatience, on the other hand, has been regularly shown by the Chief Minister, think only of the television talk-show where she ‘dubbed’ a student from Presidency University asking a simple critical question Maoist. And she has done with the peasant Shiladitya Chowdhury too, if Prof. Samaddar thinks there is a point in the inarticulate CM attacking an elite Presidency girl.

One might describe the concluding paragraphs of Samaddar’s article as instances of ‘opinionegation’: when opinion is presented as a negation of facts, often presented in the form of poignant questions.

Opinionegation 1: “From 1989 onwards students and youth from Beijing to Cairo to Kiev to Kolkata and now Hong Kong have been demanding freedom. Everywhere the freedom cry has been singularly void of social content.” Referring only to the concerned movement, does he find the ‘hokkolorob’ cry ‘void of social content? Demanding measures against gender-discrimination and guarantee of safety of women in the campus is a vacuous cry for asocial freedom?

Opinionegation 2: “But who now speaks of the poor students in ordinary colleges, schools, and distant towns? What is the innate virtue of any student mobilisation when shorn of any vision of social equality?” Opinion 1 (repetition): social equality is not inclusive of gender equality. Opinion 2: freedom of thought and action of the academic community from repressive measures of state and administration and political control is not inclusive of social equality. Ordinary colleges and schools in distant (from where?) towns are peopled with poor students, and JU is infested with the affluent. Prof. Samaddar can check out our fee structures and compare them with, e.g. WBUT colleges and other private institutions. And he completely ignores the fact that the September 20 procession in the heart of city, in which nearly 50 thousand students marched in torrential rain, represented many ‘ordinary’ colleges and even schools.

Opinionegation Classic: “What do the chattering classes represented by the activist students want? Why are they so opposed to the coarseness of the lower classes? And if they are loyal to the cause of the latter, why are they so silent on policies and issues of the Central government affecting the lower classes?” “Chattering” is possibly an extension of “articulate” (a strange displacement of the ‘moyna’ metaphor). When were our students ‘opposed’ to ‘the coarseness of the lower class’? Their ‘chatter’, as far I have observed, has accommodated ‘coarseness’, often ribaldry and sarcasm into a heady mix of rejuvenated political language, sometimes even annoying the seniors. The biting satire of the recently departed Nabarun Bhattacharya has been a primary source of inspiration.

Our students didn’t launch a political party. The movement is contextual, making concrete demands. It has of course successfully given birth to a youthful language of dissent which is capable of articulating all sorts of protest. Certain local actions do reflect a global trend. Our students have been ambitious and focused, aware and pragmatic – and this is my opinion, not a fact I present.

The final paragraphs of Prof. Samaddar’s article – using the more familiar epithet “neo-liberal” instead of “articulate” – voices a strangely ominous fatalism: “there is no escape from this destiny”. When the protesting students will be coopted into the “order” once upon a future, he sighs, “the lower depths will remain”. A few paragraphs above, he wrote in the previously mentioned digression: “Typically, the poet Samar Sen had written lines, by now famous, marking Kalighat forever as the site of the lower depths” [emphasis mine].

Holy Arkham! It means that when the hokkolorobis return home, all dissipated after their fashionable revelry, Kalighat will remain, and the ruling court there will still send flurries of talking birds to the seats of higher education!

What happened with the brutal police attack at Jadavpur is only an extension of what is persistently going on in many institutions. Daily and sometimes violent interference of the ruling political party is proving to be extremely debilitating for the academic health of the state. In most cases, the voice of protest has been stifled. In this context, the response of JU students has been thoroughly liberating, promising and refreshing for the general political health of the youth. I am not sure if the time of an appraisal is ripe, but a mistimed judgment – resulting from a seasoned Marxist’s application of templates of the past to events which probably are pointing towards a new political and cultural future – only serves to expose the obsolescence of familiar yardsticks.

“The social war continues”, as Prof. Samaddar says.

 Anindya Sengupta is Assistant Professor at the Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University.