The mob-lynching of the 20-year-old student, JS Siddharth, in the hostel of the College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences in Pookode, Wayanad, has pointed to yet another brutality associated with the Students Federation of India (SFI). Though members of other student organisations like the Kerala Student Union (KSU) and Muslim Students Federation (MSF), too, are alleged to have been involved in the violence against Siddharth, SFI's leading role can hardly be denied. The involvement of its top office bearers among the key accused and their dominance on the campus can never be ignored. Even if politics had no role in the incident, as claimed by the SFI, can it be absolved from responsibility? Nevertheless, it defies common sense that in this age of pervasive camera phones and hypervigilant social media, the world had no clue about the barbarism until a week passed after it occurred on the campus shuttlecock court and in front of more than 100 fellow students.
The ruling CPM is primarily responsible for the rampant criminalisation that has pervaded its student wing in recent times. It has now become routine for members of CPM and its connected organisations, figuring in almost all the serious crimes breaking out in Kerala, especially during the last eight years the Left Democratic Front (LDF) has been in power. They range from murder, arson, looting, cheating, atrocities against women, sleaze, moral policing, or drug-peddling to real estate crimes. The Left has many times in the past been accused of indulging in violence or election-related offences like booth-capturing or rigging. But it has never been tainted by activities mentioned above on a scale as witnessed now. There was even a time not in the distant past when the Left workers and leaders enjoyed a moral high ground in people's minds as incorruptible and unselfish compared to those of other political parties. The argument that it is only a sign of our changing times when far more serious crimes are common than in the past and that they manifest in today's every institution, including political parties, only partly explains the phenomenon. It's also more than a coincidence that Siddharth's lynching occurred even as the Kerala High Court's doubling of the sentences against the accused in the state's most brutal political assassination was being pronounced.
Certainly, the affairs inside the CPM once again prove the British historian Lord Acton's famous dictum: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The CPM's unprecedentedly long innings in power is the prime reason for its present lumpenisation and criminalisation. It has only been exacerbated by another recent phenomenon: the over-centralization of authority within the organisation. This has effectively killed the concept of 'democratic centralism' enshrined in the party constitution and rendered even the party's supreme body, the Politburo, ineffective in checking the tail wagging the head. Though uncommon in the Indian Communist movement's history despite having had powerful leaders at the helm, the examples of dictators like Stalin or Mao and the disaster they wreaked on their respective parties and countries are fairly well known. Many observers feel the Kerala leadership's authority remaining unchecked is also a sign of the party's terminal weakness because it survives only here and hence, even the Politburo is beholden to it.
On seeing what is happening in Kerala's CPM, one cannot help feeling surprised or even have some respect for its counterpart in West Bengal. There, it took more than three decades in power to degenerate and be ousted from power in 2011. It has been more than a decade since then and there is still no sign of a comeback despite Bengal's century-long radical political and cultural traditions.
However, what took more than three decades in Bengal seems to repeat on a fast-forward mode in Kerala within a decade. Yet, even when excessive criminalisation and lumpenisation were evident in Bengal's CPM, its leaders never faced anything like the grave allegations being now thrown at the Kerala leaders.
The internal rot that besmirched the Bengal Left has been vividly portrayed in the 2021 book, 'Gangster State', by Sourjya Bhowmick. It narrates how a vastly criminalised SFI was one of the key manifestations of the CPM's degeneration. The story of its nefarious activities in Kolkata's legendary Presidency College, like the brutal violence inflicted on rivals, the extortion, collusion of teachers, rigging of elections, and other forms of wanton violence, reads exactly like what has been happening in many of the colleges in Kerala. The book shows how a student movement, once fired by a radical anti-establishment ideology, selfless sacrifices, and other virtues that fought for the rights of students and also the oppressed, degenerated into crass criminalism.
It would be grossly baseless to dismiss the latest incident as isolated. There has been clearly a method to this madness, as shown by the number of recent incidents. Not just their rivals but allies like AISF, or even the son of a CPM member have complained of being assaulted by SFI activists.
Look into these major incidents starting from 2016.
January 2016: SFI worker assaults diplomat T P Srinivasan for the pro-private sector reforms in education recommended by a committee he headed.
February 2017: Police case against many SFI activists of University College, Thiruvananthapuram, accused of moral policing and assault by two female students.
September 2017: Case against eight SFI activists, including its Idukki district secretary, for assaulting policemen in Thodupuzha.
August 2019: Two SFI leaders were arrested for committing fraud in the Public Service Commission's selection tests for Civil Police Officers. Both were accused in a stabbing case also at the University College.
October 2021: SFI leaders accused of assaulting and threatening to rape an AISF woman worker on the Mahatma Gandhi University campus in Kottayam. She also charged SFI leaders with using casteist slurs against her.
June 2022: SFI activists ransack Rahul Gandhi's office in Wayanad. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and LDF convenor EP Jayarajan condemned the incident, and SFI disbanded the Wayanad district committee.
March 2023: A teacher in the Government Law College, Thiruvananthapuram accused SFI activists of assaulting her.
September 2023: Son of a CPM female leader complains that SFI activists attacked him in the Sanskrit College, Thiruvananthapuram.
Not that SFI has only been the predator and never the victim of campus violence. In fact, only SFI has lost two lives in Kerala during the past five years. In July 2018, Abhimanyu, an SFI activist in Ernakulam's Maharaja's College, was stabbed to death by PFI workers. In January 2022, Dheeraj Rajendran an SFI activist from Kannur was stabbed to death by KSU workers in the Govt. Engineering College in Kuyilimala, Idukki. In December 2022, Aparna Gowri, the district joint secretary of SFI and a student of the Government Polytechnic in Meppadi, Wayanad, was brutally assaulted by KSU and MSF workers. This January witnessed Nasser Abdul Rahman, an SFI activist, being stabbed by KSU-Fraternity workers in Maharaja's College.
Being a victim also cannot absolve SFI from being responsible for the growing criminalisation of college campuses. As Kerala's most influential student force, it has to take the lead in stamping out this despicable culture of violence. But has it done anything yet?
Many blame the politicisation of the campuses as the cause of increasing violence. But, on the contrary, it is the growing 'apoliticisation' of society or campuses that leads to wanton violence, communal mobilisation and patriarchal assaults against women. Indeed, most student organisations continue to swear by political ideologies, and SFI has been at its forefront. But, what has been witnessed in the past few neoliberal decades is the hollowing out of ideology from the organisation. While ABVP or PFI continue to be driven by their communally-driven ideologies, the secular camp appears to have abandoned their ideologies. Nationally, Congress is on a soft-Hindutva slippery slope. The Left, even as it opposes Hindutva, is willing to break bread with any communal outfit on the other side, even at the cost of its secular credentials.
When was the last time we saw an SFI programme driven by the ideology it swears by? What has the SFI or other secular organisations done to block the youths from being sucked into the ideological depths of communalism? The LDF's being in power for long has also deprived SFI of its lifeblood: agitations. But besides agitations, SFI once used to address other issues like the falling quality of education, employment opportunities, etc. It was at the forefront to organise cultural functions like festivals of cinema or literature. The international film festival organised by the Kerala University Students Union led by SFI under Suresh Kurup or the Sargasamvadam, a grand literary festival put together by Calicut University Union led by KSU were landmarks of the 1970s. Today, no student organisation has time or inclination for such activities. In their absence, they keep indulging in violence and hooliganism to prove themselves.
It is a shame to hear about SFI's ways of keeping every other student organisation from functioning on campuses. But, it is equally shameful of KSU and AISF leaders to lament that they cannot function because SFI does not let them!
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