PaRCha - JNU - AISA - 1999 ID-1614
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ALL INDIA STUDENS' ASSOCIATION (AISA) 14/11/99 .
The saffron agenda is back at work again. And this time the agenda has a motley crowd of 24 coalition partners and a 70-member .
jumbo ministry, to push it through. Of course, this will all be backed up by the dozens of network organisations of the Sangh Parivar. And work began in right earnest from day one. The nation was greeted with back-breaking hike in diesel prices, the Papal visn was used to incite virulent anti-Christian bashing and ASS academicians and fabrica~ of saffron version of Indian history have been made heads of research establishments like ICHA and ICSSR. .
The nation is in for another term of saffron suffering. All efforts at arresting the saffron advance even from the limited and .
immediate point of view of keeping the NOA away from power have also miserably failed. Lefts' formula of combating communalism with their United Front has also taken a severe beating. The much cherished concept of the United Front has had many riding principles since the experiment started almost a decade back. So much so that we have had a new 'use·n·throw' principle every time an election was near. It started with the 'outside' support of the Left Front to the National Front government in 1989. The principle then was to keep out the scam· tainted, corrupt Congress. And the CPI·CPI(M) found itse~ with strange bedfellows -one remembers the warm sunny day when Com. Surjeet held the hand of Atal Behari Vajpayee in a unity rally in Brigade Ground in Calcutta ! .
Adecade later and after paying ample rhetorical reverence to the politics of Third Front, the CPI-CPI(M) finally turned the tragedy of 1989 into a farce in 1999. Sitting in the lap of Congress, the Left now tells the nation how it intends to take the saffron bull by its horns. More often than bourgeois mainstream parties, the CPI·CPI(M) has proven the liberal dictum that in politics there are no permanent friends and foes. One wonders, that if principles are as incredibly malleable, will it play the same game of switching friends with foes with its own support base -the working class. Anyway, lets traverse along this U·tum that our comrades covered in this last decade. The NF experiment collapsed immediately after the VP Singh govt. was voted out of power. If it failed to establish a consistent and sustainable Third Front, it also failed to stem the rise of the BJP due to its utter lack of principles and programmatic bankruptcy. In fact, the experiment, by legitimising the BJP, led to adramatic jump In BJP's seats from 2 to 84. .
Come 1996 and the air was rife again to revive the dead horse. A new experiment started with the United Front. The entire genesis lay in the 1g95 post-poll situation; power-sharing and not a shared history of struggle or a shared vision of a secular democratic alternative was the cementing bond that held together the diverse national and regional parties in a single front. Behind the offensive discourse of 'coalition era', 'politics of consensus' and 'new federalism' lay aseries of sordid compromises on the part of the official left. .
Uncritical endorsement of every misdeed of the so-called secular allies a Ia Laloo Prasad and Mulayam Singh, backdoor collaboration with the Congress, shameless surrender to the neo-liberal pro-imperialist economic package of the erstwhile Congress government and its glorification in the guise of a common minimum programme, still bigger betrayals in the course of its implementation with systematic exclusion of every positive promise made in the programme. .
But attempts were made by the veteran EMS to theorise the UF as a progressive alliance between the working class and the forward looking bourgeoisie. To quote EMS from the People's Democracy (July 21, 1996): "It is the merit of the Deve Gowda government and the 13 party UF on which it is based that it is a coalition government of genuinely democratic forces. Coming together under its leadership are political forces of two types : one, the radical and secular democratic forces which represent essentially progressive secttons of the bourgeois classes, the Left and the Left-of-the-centre parties. However, the UF faced an ignoble exit and that too by Congress machinisation. But what was more disgraceful was that the exit from power of what the CPI(M) called the ·~ruly secular and democratic .
alliance", also triggered its simultaneous disintegration. And on the unclaimed corpse of the UF (to which even the official architect Com. Surjeet didn't even bother to write an epitaph)the ~edcoalition rode to power. .
And what happened to the progressive boutgeoisie of Com. EMS? The regional secular messiah-TOP, DMK-are today the firm defenders of the saffron agenda. And whatever was left of others, the ilk of Laloo Yadav, complained of developing spondylitis by repeatedly requesting 'madam' to lead their pack. Today the whole concept of a Third Front (or the ubiquitous United Front) which has been subjected to the overriding imperative of somehow keeping BJP out of power, has only become an apology for forging some sort of an effective political alliance with the Congress. .
And what the leaders preach, some cadres are bound to follow, albeit a little less clandestinely. Isn't surprising then that what Com. Surjeet has been doing through the backdoor at national level, his trusted follower on the campus did so through the frontdoor, Joining the Congress after having been elected JNUSU President twice from an SFI platform. .
Friends; if student politics on this campus Is an extension of the politics at large, the demarcation between the two lines seeking salvation from the saffron menace has to be made more clear. AISA seeks to extend the agenda of abolition of saffron terror on the campus to the terrain of a vigorous and broadbased student mobilisation in the field of mass action. .
And as the campus has seen under the last three Unions headed by the SFI·AISF, restricting this agenda merely to the narrow confines of number game in the Union elections without backing up wrrh a militant and consistent movement against the saffronites has only given more space for the latter to grow. The SFI·AISF which leaves no opportunity to frenziedly tell us how the ABVP ghost threatens us day .
in and day out-is answerable to the campus why despite all its high saffron bashing, it has failed to restrict the ideological and numerical growth of the ABVP on the campus. . . . , The status Quoist surrenders of the SFI·AISF·Ied JNUSU have alienated the democratiC sect1ons of the students, who are clamouring for the forces of change. .
VOTE FOR THE VOICE OF CHANGE ! .
VOTE FOR AISA II .
.
SLL&CS PANEL SSSPANEL SIS PANEL.
CENRAL PANEL .
VIJAY KUMAR YADAVENDU-PRESIDENT FAKHRUDDIN All AHMAD DEBARATI GUHA ANURAG RANJAN GARIMA MANI TRIPATHI .
LAISHRAM LEINKGPA CHERI JACOB.K..
MANISHA SETHI-VICE·PRESIDENT R. JOHN SURESH VIPIN KUMAR.
P.K. ABDUL ARHIMAN-GEN. SECY. INTESHAR AHMAD .
KAVINDRA KUMAR DALAL TAAUNA BANSAL.
UDAl VEE:R SINGH-JT. SECY. .
OAISER AHMAD VIVEKKUMAR .
Sd/-KAVITA, CONVENOR, C~NTflAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE, AISA, JNU .
.
.
PaRCha - JNU - AISA - 1999 ID-1614
.
.
.
ALL INDIA STUDENS' ASSOCIATION (AISA) 14/11/99 .
The saffron agenda is back at work again. And this time the agenda has a motley crowd of 24 coalition partners and a 70-member .
jumbo ministry, to push it through. Of course, this will all be backed up by the dozens of network organisations of the Sangh Parivar. And work began in right earnest from day one. The nation was greeted with back-breaking hike in diesel prices, the Papal visn was used to incite virulent anti-Christian bashing and ASS academicians and fabrica~ of saffron version of Indian history have been made heads of research establishments like ICHA and ICSSR. .
The nation is in for another term of saffron suffering. All efforts at arresting the saffron advance even from the limited and .
immediate point of view of keeping the NOA away from power have also miserably failed. Lefts' formula of combating communalism with their United Front has also taken a severe beating. The much cherished concept of the United Front has had many riding principles since the experiment started almost a decade back. So much so that we have had a new 'use·n·throw' principle every time an election was near. It started with the 'outside' support of the Left Front to the National Front government in 1989. The principle then was to keep out the scam· tainted, corrupt Congress. And the CPI·CPI(M) found itse~ with strange bedfellows -one remembers the warm sunny day when Com. Surjeet held the hand of Atal Behari Vajpayee in a unity rally in Brigade Ground in Calcutta ! .
Adecade later and after paying ample rhetorical reverence to the politics of Third Front, the CPI-CPI(M) finally turned the tragedy of 1989 into a farce in 1999. Sitting in the lap of Congress, the Left now tells the nation how it intends to take the saffron bull by its horns. More often than bourgeois mainstream parties, the CPI·CPI(M) has proven the liberal dictum that in politics there are no permanent friends and foes. One wonders, that if principles are as incredibly malleable, will it play the same game of switching friends with foes with its own support base -the working class. Anyway, lets traverse along this U·tum that our comrades covered in this last decade. The NF experiment collapsed immediately after the VP Singh govt. was voted out of power. If it failed to establish a consistent and sustainable Third Front, it also failed to stem the rise of the BJP due to its utter lack of principles and programmatic bankruptcy. In fact, the experiment, by legitimising the BJP, led to adramatic jump In BJP's seats from 2 to 84. .
Come 1996 and the air was rife again to revive the dead horse. A new experiment started with the United Front. The entire genesis lay in the 1g95 post-poll situation; power-sharing and not a shared history of struggle or a shared vision of a secular democratic alternative was the cementing bond that held together the diverse national and regional parties in a single front. Behind the offensive discourse of 'coalition era', 'politics of consensus' and 'new federalism' lay aseries of sordid compromises on the part of the official left. .
Uncritical endorsement of every misdeed of the so-called secular allies a Ia Laloo Prasad and Mulayam Singh, backdoor collaboration with the Congress, shameless surrender to the neo-liberal pro-imperialist economic package of the erstwhile Congress government and its glorification in the guise of a common minimum programme, still bigger betrayals in the course of its implementation with systematic exclusion of every positive promise made in the programme. .
But attempts were made by the veteran EMS to theorise the UF as a progressive alliance between the working class and the forward looking bourgeoisie. To quote EMS from the People's Democracy (July 21, 1996): "It is the merit of the Deve Gowda government and the 13 party UF on which it is based that it is a coalition government of genuinely democratic forces. Coming together under its leadership are political forces of two types : one, the radical and secular democratic forces which represent essentially progressive secttons of the bourgeois classes, the Left and the Left-of-the-centre parties. However, the UF faced an ignoble exit and that too by Congress machinisation. But what was more disgraceful was that the exit from power of what the CPI(M) called the ·~ruly secular and democratic .
alliance", also triggered its simultaneous disintegration. And on the unclaimed corpse of the UF (to which even the official architect Com. Surjeet didn't even bother to write an epitaph)the ~edcoalition rode to power. .
And what happened to the progressive boutgeoisie of Com. EMS? The regional secular messiah-TOP, DMK-are today the firm defenders of the saffron agenda. And whatever was left of others, the ilk of Laloo Yadav, complained of developing spondylitis by repeatedly requesting 'madam' to lead their pack. Today the whole concept of a Third Front (or the ubiquitous United Front) which has been subjected to the overriding imperative of somehow keeping BJP out of power, has only become an apology for forging some sort of an effective political alliance with the Congress. .
And what the leaders preach, some cadres are bound to follow, albeit a little less clandestinely. Isn't surprising then that what Com. Surjeet has been doing through the backdoor at national level, his trusted follower on the campus did so through the frontdoor, Joining the Congress after having been elected JNUSU President twice from an SFI platform. .
Friends; if student politics on this campus Is an extension of the politics at large, the demarcation between the two lines seeking salvation from the saffron menace has to be made more clear. AISA seeks to extend the agenda of abolition of saffron terror on the campus to the terrain of a vigorous and broadbased student mobilisation in the field of mass action. .
And as the campus has seen under the last three Unions headed by the SFI·AISF, restricting this agenda merely to the narrow confines of number game in the Union elections without backing up wrrh a militant and consistent movement against the saffronites has only given more space for the latter to grow. The SFI·AISF which leaves no opportunity to frenziedly tell us how the ABVP ghost threatens us day .
in and day out-is answerable to the campus why despite all its high saffron bashing, it has failed to restrict the ideological and numerical growth of the ABVP on the campus. . . . , The status Quoist surrenders of the SFI·AISF·Ied JNUSU have alienated the democratiC sect1ons of the students, who are clamouring for the forces of change. .
VOTE FOR THE VOICE OF CHANGE ! .
VOTE FOR AISA II .
.
SLL&CS PANEL SSSPANEL SIS PANEL.
CENRAL PANEL .
VIJAY KUMAR YADAVENDU-PRESIDENT FAKHRUDDIN All AHMAD DEBARATI GUHA ANURAG RANJAN GARIMA MANI TRIPATHI .
LAISHRAM LEINKGPA CHERI JACOB.K..
MANISHA SETHI-VICE·PRESIDENT R. JOHN SURESH VIPIN KUMAR.
P.K. ABDUL ARHIMAN-GEN. SECY. INTESHAR AHMAD .
KAVINDRA KUMAR DALAL TAAUNA BANSAL.
UDAl VEE:R SINGH-JT. SECY. .
OAISER AHMAD VIVEKKUMAR .
Sd/-KAVITA, CONVENOR, C~NTflAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE, AISA, JNU .
.
.