Picture Credits: Unknown

Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, a stalwart of the Left movement in India’s Hindi-speaking regions, passed away at the beginning of the year due to Covid-19.

Affectionately called ‘Ganesh Da’, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi joined the communist movement through the student movement, the freedom movement and the peasant movement. He started his eight decade long public life with the All India Students’ Federation (AISF) and joined the Communist Party in 1942.

Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi was born in 1924 into a zamindar family of Rajauli, which is today in Bihar’s Nawada district. His uncle Gaurishankar Singh was one of the prominent leaders of the Bihar Congress. Leaders like the revolutionary peasant leader Sahajanand Saraswati and Jayaprakash Narayan came regularly to his house. Newspapers like ‘Janata’ and ‘Chingaari’ were read at their home. In this environment, socialist ideas had an influence on him.

Participation in freedom movement since school years

Due to these reasons, he started participating in revolutionary activities from his school days onwards. Regarding that period, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi said:

“There was a lot of controversy over the flag hoisting at the school in 1938. By then the AISF had been formed in the school. There was no college there. We had to go from village to village to tell them about how the country would be free. Then [I] became aware of landlord oppression, that if a man beats another man, it is not right. The British headmaster threw me out of the school. As a result, a strike was staged, it lasted for long. In the end, they had to compromise but I got a TC (Transfer certificate) and moved to Patna. I got admission in the Rajaram Mohan Seminary School here. At that time there was revolutionary fervour everywhere. The slogan ‘Neither a brother, nor a pie’ would echo.

Gandhiji only later fought against the British in the Second World War, he rather lagged behind the communists. Today Gandhiji might seem great to us, but at that time he seemed to be a puppet of the Britishers to us. There was a strike in the school. I was expelled from here too. Finally Rajendra Babu (Rajendra Prasad, the first president of the country) intervened, and the issue was resolved with an agreement on ‘Forget and Forgive’ basis. From there I came to the Patna Collegiate. Ali Ashraf, Surendra Sharma, Harikishor Mehrotra were the leaders there. Patna Medical College was our place of resort.

The AISF conference was held in which the slogan “People’s War” was passed. The party’s pamphlet came out by the name “Forward to Freedom”. We went to the secretariat with around fifty thousand students. Firing happened. I was hit by tear gas and I fell. The boy, Umakant, who was at the forefront of the secretariat martyrs, was from our school. During this period, seeing my participation in revolutionary activities rising, my father got me married. He hoped that marriage might bring some ‘improvement’ in me”.

When even his mother did not vote for Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi

After he was married, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi started a rebellion at his home when he used to walk to the bus stop to get his wife to take the bus. In the then feudal environment, his family members did not like it. Despite being born into a zamindar family, he started taking part in Swami Sahajanand Saraswati’s anti-zamindar peasant movement. Swami Sahajanand admired Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi so much so that he wanted him to contest in the first general election to be held in 1952. But Sahajanand Saraswati died in 1950. Ganesh Da contested the 1952 election from the Kisan Sabha. His uncle also contested in that election. The people of his family were so irritated with communist politics that even his mother did not vote for Ganesh Da.

Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi was in school when the famous peasant revolt of Revda started. He used to often mention in his speeches about the oppression of the landlords. “The landlord there was very cruel. The land of Bhumihar, Kurmi, Koiri and Dalit started to be auctioned due to non-payment of Malguzari (a type of land revenue arrangement) during the 1930s crisis. The landlord was so cruel that he would say that if there is no cow’s milk in the house, then milk your women and bring it.

He took active part in the students movement after the 1955 firing on students by the police and the administration. Dinanath Pandey, a student of Bihar National College, Patna, was killed in this incident  and the then Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru had to come to Patna to intervene and pacify the student protesters

First Chief Minister of Bihar, Shrikrishna Singh said ‘you scare me’

Sharing an experience he heard from Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, the renowned critic of the fifties Bhagwan Prasad Sinha says, “In view of his influence and political status, the Communist Party assigned him the task of managing the election campaign of the communist candidate Bhola Prasad who was contesting against the then Chief Minister Dr. Shrikrishna Singh (A congress heavyweight). He was entrusted with the responsibility of protecting the votes of the poor from the domineering feudal elements in the Barbigha- located Teus village (in the Sheikhpura district of Bihar) to which Shrikrishna Singh belonged. Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi arrived on the eve of voting. A dominant family in the village was known to him. He used this [acquaintance] in favour of the communist candidate. At the time of voting, he went to the booth and confronted the feudal elements directly. The effect of this was that seeing the bloodshed, his relatives too came to the booth and hence the booth was protected”. Probably for the same reasons, as Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi himself said, “The first Chief Minister of Bihar, Shrikrishna Singh used to make me sit far and wide. He used to say that you scare me”.

Picture Credits: Unknown

Member of the Legislative Assembly for the first time in 1977, took command of the party at difficult time

When the CPI split in 1964, Ganesh Shankar was among those who joined the CPI(M). Ganesh Da became a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for the first time in the 1977 elections after the National Emergency. When it was declared that he had won, the people of his family who had never paid heed to him appeared in the frontline of the victory procession. Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi became MLA twice. He later became a Member of the Legislative Council. From 1980 to 2005, he was the state secretary of the CPI(M) in Bihar, and also a member of the CPI(M)’s Central Committee, the highest decision-making body of the Party, for nearly 30 years. The CPI(M) in Bihar experienced several splits between 1964 and 1980. First the Naxalites parted ways, then in 1973, the Marxist Coordination Committee (MCC) was formed under the leadership of the famous leader AK Rai. In 1980, another faction broke away under the leadership of the then state secretary Siyawar Sharan Srivastava to become the Marxist Communist Party of India (MCPI). Ganesh Da took command of the party during this difficult time.

He not only kept the Party intact after this, but also expanded the CPI(M) significantly. The Party waged a massive land struggle. Many important activists died in that land struggle. The murder of Ajit Sarkar came as a shock to the Party. CPI(M) State Secretary Awadhesh Kumar describes that difficult period: “Ganesh Da’s hold on the poor and common people was strong. As soon as the news of the assassination of Ajit Sarkar, MLA and leader of the Bhumi Mukti Andolan, came on 14 June 1998, a team of the Party under the leadership of Ganesh Da reached Purnia. I was also a member of that team. Purnia was closed and the entire population, especially the tribal and landless people were on the streets in anger. The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) was in power and there was anger against their government. Lalu Prasad Yadav wanted to come to Purnia and wanted to pay tributes to Ajit Sarkar. Lalu ji, being in a dilemma about the public anger, called up Vidyarthi Ji. Vidyarthi Ji convinced Lalu Prasad and asked him to come. Lalu Ji came and paid tributes and made announcements and returned”.

Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi was very affectionate towards his comrades. Awadhesh Kumar recalls: “I had to go to attend the Youth Festival in Moscow in 1986, but there were some problems within the organisation. I was in the SFI state office at Annie Besant Road, Patna. As Ganesh Da got to know he came directly [to the office] and said, you have to go to the Moscow Youth Festival. Go. Once you are there go to Kremlin and shower flowers on the dead body of comrade Lenin. And later he told me in depth about Lenin and the Russian Revolution”.

Class Outlook should not have been allowed to be dismissed during the Mandal movement

By 1990, the presence of the CPI(M) in the Legislative Assembly also increased. There was also representation of the CPI(M) in the Parliament from Bihar. It was the time of the Mandal Commission. Looking back at that period, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi said that the class outlook should have been taken care of. “Those who are poor among the backward should get the benefit of this [the recommendations of the Commission], but our weakness is that we could not make this line effective. If we had succeeded in creating a class outlook among the downtrodden and Dalits then the vested self-interest that is foiling the Mandal movement wouldn’t have unfolded. They would not have succeeded in using caste sentiments”.

Ganesh Da remained committed to Marxism throughout his life. When the publication of Janashakti resumed in the pandemic, Ganesh Da joined the meeting and spoke about the importance of the party newspaper. He remained fond of Marxist books until the end. He used to buy and read new books and would inspire others to read them. CPI(M) Central Committee member Arun Kumar Mishra says, “Ganesh Da was eager to read new books till the last moment of his life, just as a child is eager to play with new toys. Of late whenever we got an opportunity to talk, he would discuss one or the other book and would recommend reading it”.

Ganesh Da was a rare example of a person upholding Marxist principles and communist behaviour. It is for this reason that people from all streams of the Left had an affinity for Ganesh Da. In his last years, curious activists, journalists, sympathisers of the Left movement all reached out to him to know about the past of the communist movement. They would hear stories about veteran communist leaders such as SA Dange, PC Joshi, BT Ranadive, EMS Namboodiripad, and Pramod Das Gupta.

Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi with his fellow comrades (Picture Credits: Unknown)

In his long political life of eight decades, Ganesh Da saw many ups and downs. But the dream of establishing a society without exploitation never disappeared from his eyes. However, the way to establish socialism is not easy either. During this time, he spent nearly six years in jail. He never received a pension although he was a freedom fighter.

Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi’s family had also been involved with giving up of his land and to be divided among the agricultural workers. Though, when there was a delay in the land redistribution he visited Shubhmurthy, who was the chairman of Bhoodan Yagya Committee. He said “I knew Vidyarthi Ji since the days of the Bihar movement. His father and uncle had donated a lot of land as part of Bhoodan. He was over eighty years old when I was the chairman of the Bhoodan Committee. He came to my office with a walking stick and requested that we properly distribute the land they had donated. Due to many disruptions in distribution, it was delayed, but he kept coming to the office from time to time. He was active while the entire list of landless workers were prepared in the village. It was under his chairmanship that I distributed the Bhoodan certificates among the women agricultural workers. Even at that age, his passion was worth seeing, it was very inspiring”.

Ganesh Da also led many land movements in his district of Nawada. Some of the important ones are Rajauli Dhab, Kumharua, Dhamani, Dibour, Hamza Bharat of Satgir and Sirdala, Nad, Kebal and Khatgyangi.

Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi was widely respected in administrative circles. Rajyavardhan Sharma, a popular IPS officer of Bihar, recalls, “We heard his name in our student life. During the Jayaprakash movement, we heard many stories about Vidyarthi Ji, that he was born into a zamindar family and got a very good education, but later he became a communist against the hopes of his family. Despite hearing so much about him, I did not have the opportunity to meet him until 1986. I was transferred to Begusarai, which was called the Leningrad of Bihar, in July 1986. In 1986, some people of his party were beaten up by the miscreants and the opposition party members and some were prosecuted. Because of my own fault I remained unable to explain the matter to him in detail. But he was impressed by the decision and quick action taken by me. After that, he got confidence in me. In April 1987, a huge meeting of opposition parties was organised. The main agenda was to attack and question the administration. He came to see me before going to the meeting. We spoke on the issue which caused misunderstanding. He listened carefully to me, was satisfied and went to the meeting. It was a matter of pleasure for us that he did not attack us in his speech. He was a true communist living a simple life. Today’s youth can hardly believe that he had abandoned the comforts of his life for the cause of the common people. But at the same time there is a sad side to it that after 1990 and in the first decade of this century, some people attacked him on the basis of [his upper] caste [background].

Those who got land were not politicised

After leaving the post of the state secretary, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi gave an interview to a newspaper. With regard to the functioning of the Left movement and the parliamentary deviation, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi said in an almost cautionary note, “It is a fact that parliamentarism has prevailed among our people. People want to at least become a mukhiya or a cabinet member. Earlier, if there was some murder or something, people would themselves start protesting, demonstrating, gheraoing etc. Now however, activists ask, what will happen with the sit-in demonstration? They ask us to talk to the Collector or SP and get the matter resolved. A daughter is raped in front of her father and he wants to compromise and get some compensation instead of fighting. Why is the spirit of fighting diminishing? Even the families which got land after our hard work and struggle, have now shifted to the RJD (a regional political party in Bihar)“. Giving the reason behind these developments, he says, “It is because we had not politicised them. We did win one battle by giving them the land. But we did not do the work of getting in touch with them every day, getting them acquainted with Party literature, and constantly raising their level of consciousness. [We] did not make them communists. We did not develop their class consciousness and make them members of the Party. We did talk about taking the class aspect forward at the time of reservation, in fact a decision was also taken on paper, but we did not take these things to the public. The result of [us] not being able to intensify the class struggle, had been that the problems within the Left parties increased. Casteist influence impacted us too. Opportunism grew among the workers, that if they are in the RJD they would get to become MLA and MP, while if they stayed in CPI, CPI(M) and CPI(ML), nothing will happen. Feelings of this sort arose”.

Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi often used to say that the path of change is long. In the above-mentioned interview, Ganesh Da made a very insightful comment about the Left: “There is no shortcut for change. There is only one way to change – struggle. If we do not bring class forces into our side, then change will not happen. If leftists together make efforts in this direction, change will definitely come”.

Picture Credits: Unknown

(The article has been written by Anish Ankur, a cultural activist and a journalist in Bihar).

Illustration by:- Nipin Narayanan

The story of a woman-dalit agricultural worker without formal education who rose up to be a leader of the communist movement

– Nitheesh Narayanan

On 24 January 1970, a group of goons of the Indian National Congress and other groups who were part of the then right-wing government of Kerala attacked KS Ammukkutty — a 36-year-old leader of the Kerala State Agricultural Workers Union. She was on her way, along with a few other women comrades, to the place in Alakkode, Kannur district, where communist leaders had come for a discussion with the local landlord during a militant land struggle. The goons lurking in the forest grabbed her by the hair and trampled her. Beaten all over the body, she was left unconscious. Many thought she would not survive. It took almost one year of intense care and treatment for Ammukkutty to return to normal life. “I was lying unconscious for many days. I could not move from bed for months. It pained throughout the body and it took six months for me to eat even a bun,” the 86-year-old Ammukkutty recalls. The injuries it caused lasted long, perhaps for a lifetime.

It was on the 24^th day of the Surplus Land Struggle called by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] along with the Karshaka Sangham (Kisan Sabha, or Peasant Union) and the Karshaka Thozhilaali Union (Agricultural Workers Union) that Ammukkutty was attacked. One month before, on 13^th and 14^th of December 1969, she had participated in a convention called by the agrarian movements at Alappuzha to announce a massive struggle to take over surplus land and distribute among the landless peasants and agricultural workers.  Prior to this conference, a procession of peasants and agricultural workers from three parts of Kerala had reached Alappuzha. Kerala’s second EMS Namboodiripad ministry (1967-69) had passed a bill which guaranteed land to all the landless peasants in the state. But the government had stepped down from power after having lost the majority in the legislative assembly, and the bill was pending on the table of the President of India for approval. In the Alappuzha convention, the leaders of the Agricultural Workers Union and the Peasant Union declared, ‘approved or not, the bill will be in force from January 1^st of 1970’. This became known as ‘The Alappuzha Declaration’.

Ammukkutty, who returned from Alappuzha to her region Alakkode — a hilly forested area in Kannur district — began preparations for the struggle with her comrades. Across Kerala, activists of the Agricultural Workers Union entered large areas of land held by landlords. Planting the red flags they kept with them on the surplus land they entered, the activists declared that the land belonged to the poor peasants and agricultural labourers. Ammukkutty and her comrades took over 56 acres of land which was under the authority of Alakkode Raja (king), the landlord. The leaders of the surplus land movement were brutally attacked across Kerala. At some places they could resist with stronger organisational capacity. But there were places like Alakkode where the Communist Party was in its nascent stage. KS Ammukkutty was one of the early workers of the Communist Party from that area. She was a threat to the right-wing. But Ammukkkutty was not someone who bowed down in the face of physical attacks. She emerged stronger and rose up to organise the agricultural workers across the state.

KS Ammukkutty is now 86 years old. She is called Ammukkuttiyechi, with ‘chechi’ (elder sister) added to her name, by everyone. Saddened by the way the world has been turned into due to the pandemic, Ammukkuttiyechi is at her departed sister’s house. Amidst a life among medicines and routine health check-ups, Ammukkuttiyechi loves to talk for long, to whoever visits her, about the old days when the oppressed were awakened. ‘Awakening of the Man’ was the title of the book by Godavari Parulekar — a stalwart communist leader who led the heroic Warli Struggle in the Warli Adivasi (tribal) region of Maharashtra.

Ammukutty was just 13 when her family migrated to Karthikapuram of Alakkode (in the then Malabar district) from Kottayam (in south-central Kerala) around late 1947. The Dalit family reached the hilly forested area after the Alakkode Raja offered them some land to settle down. Theirs was one of the early families that migrated to the region. There were around five migrant families settled there at that time. It was a predominantly Adivasi (tribal) settlement. Ammukkutty’s family lived in a bamboo shed, after clearing a small area of the Karthikapuram forest. Though they were offered land to cultivate, they were not given complete ownership of the land. The offer was under the condition that a share of whatever they produce will go to the landlord; and this share would be decided by the landlord, not the peasant. In short, poor migrant families like Ammukkutty’s remained almost as agricultural workers, not peasants who own land and produce enough to survive on their own.

Ammukkutty studied only till Standard 5, when her family was staying at Kottayam. She did not go school after coming to Malabar. Also, there was no school in that hilly region. Amidst extreme poverty and hunger, Ammukkutty also went along with her parents to work for the landlord. The work of one person would have added a little more to their earnings.

“I went to work due to starvation. We all had to earn in order to live. If there is no salt, we had to go to Chapparappadavu, which is kilometres away. Isn’t this a forest where elephants and other animals wander during the day time? We lived here, after clearing some forest area.  Hunger is important, right? And we used to earn a meagre amount of money from work.  So, we thought, if one another person also goes to work, it would add to our earnings.”

Going for work was also a very difficult and risky task that time. The labourers were forced to work continuously for 12 hours a day. When Amuukkutty recalls those days, we wonder how a 13 year old girl survived all those hardships!

“I had to go to work at seven in the morning. There is no work in case you reach one minute late. It lasted till evening seven o’ clock. It will be night by then.  In order to reach home, we had to walk through the forest. There was no electric torch. We used to walk holding the dress of the people walking in front of us holding the flambeau. Once we got trapped in front of an elephant. Luckily we escaped.”

Communist leaders used to come to those hilly areas from other parts of the district to organise the Adivasis. Once the migration had begun slowly, they also reached out to the migrant peasants and attempted to mobilise them against landlordism. Not all migrant families joined them. Many of them were given land by the landlords by evicting the Adivasis. Adivasis had no right over the land or on what they cultivate; they were subjected to extreme oppression. Pacheni Kunhiraman and AV Kunhambu were among the leaders who would come and call the peasants and agricultural workers to in front of some Adivasi hut for meetings. Since there was no transport facility, the leaders walked many kilometres to reach the area by foot. The leaders would stay at an Adivasi hut after the meetings as there was no option to return at night. In the meetings, the leaders would explain, in the Adivasis’ own languages and usages, the truth behind their hardships and reasons for why they are being exploited.

Some migrant families bought the land by paying the landlord and settled down. But the purpose behind giving land to poor immigrants was to exploit their labour. Ammukkutty’s family belonged to this section. Being at the bottom of the caste ladder, their condition was similar to that of Adivasis in terms of social status. And the extremely rigid landlordism ensured that there was no obvious difference between the poor peasants and agricultural labourers. Ammukkutty started working for the landlord at the age of 13, and began to understand the exploitation faced by poor peasants and workers, by virtue of being one among them. During that time, when the leaders of the Karshaka Sangham came to that area, she eagerly went to listen to them. She began to contemplate what they were saying, along with what she saw and experienced every day, and realised that whatever they were saying was true.

“I didn’t study political philosophies. It is my experience. Do you know how the conviction about the truth of that life came? The peasants who worked under the landlords and the exploitation they had to face; we also experienced a part of it. Our Pacheni [Kunhiraman], AV [Kunhambu] and [KKN] Pariyaram [leaders] came to the hill and explained, to the majority of Adivasis and handful of migrants while they leaned against the pillars of their huts, the need to form and organise a group of farmers. Then I thought, this is also my own direct experience. Since then, I have kept in my heart the belief that only my party can raise voice against those injustices. That belief will be there till my death.” Though none of her family members had any political background, Ammukkutty gradually became a communist, a warrior whose life was devoted to the liberation of the oppressed. 

The peasants were met with enormous exploitation by the landlord. There were oppressive taxes imposed on them. The landlord could grab anything from what a tenant cultivated. There was no need of any permission, and the peasant was not even informed. Many a time, the tenants were left with absolutely nothing after they pay the rent that is the landlord’s share. Faulty measurement by the agents of the landlord made the situation awful. The famers were subjected to huge debt, which made them even more subjugated to the landlord.  The plight of the agricultural workers was not any better; it could only be worse. They were forced to work from sunrise to sunset. The wage was very minimal, with which they could ensure only their physical existence. Most of them were Adivasis who were denied even the status of human beings. Poor peasants who could not survive with what they get after paying the lease amount to the landlord had to send their family members as well to work.  The workers were paid paddy once a week and chaama (millet) during the rest of the days. Male workers were given ¾ seer (about 0.92 kg), while female workers received half a seer (about 0.62 kg). However, if Friday or Tuesday turned out to be the days when the paddy had to be given as coolie, the workers received nothing. There was a reason. It was believed that paddy should not be taken from the Patthaayam (the large bin in which paddy was stored) in those particular days. It was believed that doing so would diminish the fortune of the Patthaayam. Therefore, during those days the workers returned without receiving any payment.

“Weren’t we the ones who filled the Patthaayam and brought fortunes? We did not know it then. Such a consciousness had not developed during those days,” Ammukkutty says. The first attempt was to bring them to a different consciousness that would not have to serve the interests of the oppressor. It was not easy to organise the peasants. There was already a consciousness among them that they were inferior to the land‘lord’. Therefore, the attempt was to break this notion and seed class consciousness in them through small meetings in which leaders spoke for long, explaining the oppression they were subjected to. The theory of class struggle was being inculcated to its warriors in their own language, and connecting it to their own lives. That was the universal applicability of the theory of class struggle.

“Gradually Karshaka Sangham activists were winning their demands one by one. The times had changed from a period when they had to drink porridge served in the pit beneath the courtyard of the landlord to that of getting the porridge at the yard itself. The next demand was to receive better food in the verandah of the house itself. And we achieved that too.” Ammukutty recalls how the organised agricultural workers, who hitherto used to live like slaves, started winning all their demands.

A major demand was to increase wages. For the first time, the agricultural workers began demanding better wages according to the work they were doing. Financial liability was a major factor which forced them to remain silent and be obedient to the landlords. It struck down all movements and any chance of upward mobility.

“What all struggles we had carried out demanding wage increase! There was a period of struggles when we didn’t even have time to sit or stand anywhere. What sorts of struggles! People’s marches, vehicle processions, dharnas (sit-in protests) in front of offices, etc. Each right is acquired step by step.”

The tenants also protested against oppressive taxes and kallappara — a fraudulent measurement system using which the landlords or their agents collected more paddy than the actual amount from the tenants. The tenants also began questioning various restrictions and threats targeting them. Ammukkutty, an agricultural worker since the age of 13, emerged as the leader of her class; a beloved comrade of the Adivasis and agricultural workers.

Both the Kerala Mahila Federation (Kerala Woman’s Federation) and the Kerala Karshaka Thozhilali Union (Kerala Agricultural Workers Union) were formed in 1967. Ammukkutty was part of both. She participated in the formation conference of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) which was held in Chennai in 1980. She was a district-level leader of the women’s movement.

One of the major campaigns of the Mahila Federation was for public distribution of the most essential goods. Food was the central concern. It took up other issues as well. For a woman, entry into public life was a difficult task. A lot of impediments awaited her in every step. Being a Dalit woman and an agricultural worker, she faced multiple challenges.

“The pressure and abuses of all social inequalities await women. What is the most difficult thing for women is that people always like to talk about and make fun of her chastity. This is seen as the easiest way to subdue her, both in family relationships and in politics. She would survive anything else. But this way of talking makes her exhausted.  Our women comrades felt extremely bad seeing and hearing such things. But they survive such difficult times through reading, public meetings, classes, camaraderie, and the like. Isn’t experience our teacher!”

“I had to travel day and night. On some days I had to sleep in party offices, and sometimes at the houses of different comrades all across Malabar. My movement stood with me, always,” says Ammukkuttiyechi. It was under the leadership of Ammukkutty that a women’s march was organised, for the first time in Kerala, to a police station. The march was in protest of police raping women at the Nehru Trophy ward in Alappuzha. Ammukutty was then the secretary of the Alakkode panchayat (village council) committee of the Mahila Federation.

Ammukkutty learned more than what years of formal education could teach one. “Experiences from the struggles for our rights, mobilising the downtrodden, and the senior party leaders — I gained my knowledge and consciousness from all these,” she says. Ammukkutty speaks of class struggle and class consciousness with extreme clarity and vigour. She gained rich knowledge through night study classes, party committee meetings, and reading Marxist literature available in Malayalam. “I am physically weak now, and troubled by illnesses. Still I cannot start my day without reading ‘Deshabhimani’ (the daily newspaper of the CPI(M)) in the early morning.”

The most significant struggle in the life of Ammukkutty is the one mentioned at the beginning of this article, the Surplus Land Struggle. The second communist ministry of Kerala passed an amended land reforms legislation which ensured land to all agricultural labourers and tillers in the state. The bill abolished both tenancy and landlordism. It gave the right to the agricultural worker to purchase his/her homestead land from the landowner on easy terms. It also conferred to the tenants the ownership of the land that they were cultivating. The bill gave the right to the government to take possession of the surplus land and to distribute it among tenants and landless agricultural labourers. But the Left government was toppled by a united front stitched together by the Congress party with an organised plan to prevent the implementation of the bill. The bill was before the president of the country to get approval. It was in this context that the Communist Party called for a two-day convention in Alappuzha following which a massive rally and public gathering of peasants and agricultural workers took place. Ammukkutty was a delegate to the convention. Important leaders of the communist movement in the country, including P Sundarayya, EMS Namboodiripad (EMS), AK Gopalan (AKG), and Hare Krishna Konar participated in the convention. In the public meeting, which saw the participation of around half a million people, AKG declared, “Whether the president gives his approval or not, we will claim our right for the land.” Thus the movement began on 1 January 1970.

“The party suggested that if any of those people who threw stones at this struggle, who became false witnesses against us, or who filed false cases against us do not own a piece of land, they should be given at least half an acre land from the surplus land we take over,” Ammukkutty remembers the call from the party leadership. The struggle went on for a few years, and most of the time Ammukkutty was bedridden following the brutal attack she was subjected to in the first month of the struggle itself. But, with unyielding spirit, she remained an inspiration to the movement throughout. “It was this struggle, the struggle for the right to land, that provided courage to the lakhs of agricultural labourers, who faced both social and economic oppression, to stand up,” she says.

No one from her family, including parents and siblings, visited Ammukkutty when she was bedridden. Her father said in pain and anger, “She was beaten up because she went there heeding the words of the scoundrels (the communists). I have never beaten her. Now she is getting beaten up by others.” 

“It was my comrades who treated me. Boys would stay at night to give me medicine and the women comrades would stay with me during daytime. I could not even digest a bun during the first six months. They did it consciously, targeting me.” Five decades have passed. But Ammukkutty remembers those days as if those incidents happened just yesterday. 

As soon as she regained her health, Ammukkutty started moving around with her comrades to build the movement further. She had also been in underground for two months, following the political witch hunt by the right-wing and the ruling classes. Nothing could stop her. She emerged stronger and stronger after every challenge she was met with. Ammukkutty became a district-level leader of the Kerala Agricultural Workers’ Union, and began going to different corners of Kannur district. Agricultural workers were mostly former ‘untouchables’, and in some areas many of them belonged to former slave castes. This explains the lethal pairing of social and economic oppression.

Ammukkutty was elected as the vice president of the Kerala Agricultural Workers Union. The organisation had grown to 1.2 million members by then (the early 1990s). In 1996, she was elected to the working committee of the All India Agricultural Workers’ Union (AIAWU) in the fourth all-India conference held at Khammam (then in Andhra Pradesh). Thus she rose to be a leader of two million agricultural workers enrolled in the union.  She remained in the supreme committee of the largest organisation of agricultural workers in the country for more than a decade before stepping down due to severe health issues which paralysed her movements. Currently Ammukkutty’s organisation has a membership of more than 7 million agricultural workers in the country.

Ammukkutty tells an interesting story about a member of the royal-landlord family she went to work for when she was young.

“There was a lord. On the third day of work, the lord said that the child is not in a position to work and therefore there is no need for her to come to work.  Still I did not stop going to work. Gradually I became as efficient a worker as my elders were.”

Captain Kerala Varma was the person who suspected that the child Ammukkutty could not work. He was a member of the Cochin royal family. He was married to the sister of the Alakkode Raja. He was not interested in living in royal comforts. He was the first one to join the military service from the Cochin royal family. He was dismissed in 1949 after seven years of service for alleged links to the Indian National Army (led by freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose) and the communists. He must have come to Alakkode in between.

“Let me proudly say one more thing. After many years, I think in the 1990s, a special convention of the agricultural workers union was being held at the Ernakulam town hall. EMS had come for it. The next day, when his photo appeared in the newspaper, I was seen sitting next to him. After seeing this, the lord came to the convention venue. He and his family were living in that district. He came to take me to their home. I couldn’t go due to organisational engagements. It never happened. He died about ten years ago”.

A few days after she was elected to the working committee of the AIAWU, Ammukkutty received a letter. It was from Captain Kerala Varma. “Comrade, I am proud more than anyone else that you were elected to the all-India leadership of thirteen and a half crore downtrodden people. I have the right for that [to be proud]”.

Ammukkutty travelled across Kerala while she was the state leader of the movement. She was in charge of building the organisation in Wayanad district, a region in Kerala with a large Adivasi population, for nine years. “I was asked by the state committee to supervise the union’s works in four districts — Kasaragod, Kannur, Wayanad and Kozhikode,” she recollects. At a time when there was no transport facility in most of the areas, she travelled from one place to another and from one district to another to invigorate the movement.

People used to ask, partly as a joke and partly in due seriousness, whether there is any house left in Kannur district where Ammukuttiyechi had not stayed. There were continuous journeys during the initial decades of the organisation from one place to another to mobilise and organise agricultural workers. There was no chance of getting back home on the same day during those times. Ammukkutty would stay at the house of some comrade of hers after the meeting, and then moved to the next meeting place the next day. “It was a period when our movement was in the initial stage. We had no time to either rest or to even go home. We also lacked money to conduct the activities, for travel, stay and so on. There was a time when two people shared one curry and ate rice,” she says.

“She fought different battles together. I remember working with her in the district committee of the agricultural workers union. A comrade who loved everyone, lived in simplicity and with extreme commitment to the cause. She was there in organisational meetings to guide the movement, and also in public meetings, with her simple way of speech to convince the people to rally together,” remembers MK Kunhappan, an 88 year-old communist who was a comrade of Ammukkutty in the movement of agricultural workers.

Ammukkutty was the candidate of the CPI(M) in the Panchayat elections of 1980. She contested to the Udayagiri panchayat in the first elections held after the formation of that panchayat. The beloved comrade Ammukkutty won with a stunning margin. This was repeated in the next election as well. The party also put her at the top of administrative bodies of cooperative institutions. She was a director of the Alakkode Cooperative Bank, and was in a leading role at the Karthikapuram Women’s Cooperative Society. 

Ammukkuttiyechi always reminds the new generation about the sacrifices of the communist martyrs who laid down their lives fighting the odds in society and for the betterment of the future generations. “We should also keep in our mind how did we become what we are now. People who sacrificed their lives in the streets, forests, fields and factories thought that the next generation should not go through such inhumane treatments.” She sounds even stronger as she says this.

“We used to talk politics, about our struggles and slogans, and about injustices in society in workplaces, bus waiting shelters, tea shops… wherever at least four people gathered. We must bring that habit back,” Ammukkuttiyechi tells the youngsters.

And she underlines for the communists of today: “The former generation was fighting the odds of that time. They made this place liveable for all. Keeping those in mind, we have to identify the challenges of our time, prepare slogans and launch struggles to overcome those.”

Comrade KS Ammukkutty is as contemporary as her vibrant past.

Aishe Ghosh raising slogans at the students-youth protest at Mandi House, Delhi, against the central farm laws on 03/02/21. Picture Credits: Samim Asgor Ali.

How did you become a part of the students’ movement? What drew you to student politics?

I am from Durgapur in West Bengal. I grew up in a place where I witnessed left politics from my childhood onwards. My father was sympathetic to left politics, and I used to talk to him about politics and government policies that affected our lives. Unions played a major role in Durgapur, so I got to see them in action. This provided the backdrop to my own direct experience with unions and political activity.

I came to Delhi to study at Daulat Ram College. There, I understood what it meant to have a union and the importance of unionisation for students. Things that appear to be unrelated to politics – such as fees, the syllabi of our courses, and our accommodation – began to appear to me as indeed very political. How much students must pay to study is not an apolitical decision; it rests on the values of the government. In a capitalist society, education becomes a commodity; but in a truly democratic society, education should be free. Even the question of accommodation is a political matter. Lack of concern for the living conditions of students shows disregard, by the government and by the college administration, for the well-being of students. In private colleges, where education is fully commodified, students are treated like consumers, and education is a commodity that is bought by the highest paying consumers. Isn’t the government complicit in this commodification when it starts withdrawing from the task of providing education?

If everything is determined by politics, I learned, my participation in politics becomes essential. It is in the realm of politics that issues such as fees and living conditions, the syllabus and the orientation of study are debated. I joined politics to take my views forward, and to work to make things better.

Unions give their members a platform to raise their voices. We have found in our experience that if students want to raise issues that trouble them, there is no substitute for a students’ union. The same goes for workers, who need workers’ unions, and for teachers, who need teachers’ unions. Each section has its own set of issues, its own demands. These unions are places where students, workers, and teachers raise their issues, which are then – in discussion – further developed. It is important that students’ unions support teachers’ demands, and that teachers’ unions support student demands. This solidarity is important.

You have been a student at both Delhi University and at Jawaharlal Nehru University. What has been your experience of student politics in both these universities, and how do they differ?

My college in Delhi University – Daulat Ram College – was not affiliated to the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU). But I did experience the work of the DUSU in colleges affiliated to it. DUSU has been mostly dominated by right wing student organisations, such as the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). Students did not see their representatives, nor did the representatives hear from the students – except during the period of the election campaign. During elections, right-wing student organisations would come to us to distribute chocolates or to give us treats from Domino’s Pizza or Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). This was to buy votes. Their interest was to win elections, not to work for the students.

In our college, there was an incident when the ceiling fell. This should have provoked general outrage, since it could have seriously hurt the students. When we raised this issue in a protest, we were immediately branded as ‘Leftists’. A similar process took place when we protested the sudden rise of our annual fees from Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 16,000. These escalating fees affect not only undergraduates but also masters’ students, who – in some colleges – have to pay as much as Rs. 30,000. There is no uniformity in the fee structure. There is also no mechanism to hear the grievances of students when these fees are arbitrarily raised. Even these basic demands – for better living conditions and for reasonable fees – evoked from the right-wing student organisations and the administration the idea that we are somehow dangerous students. The union did not come to ask us about our problems, nor did they lead any protests. It was the college students who protested against administrative policy, not the union led by a right-wing student’s organisation. Their entire focus is on winning elections, by hook or by crook.

Things were very different in JNU. I got there in 2016. The Jawaharlal Nehru University Student’s Union had a totally different culture. It is not merely a vehicle for students to win elections and then have ambitions for higher office. The point of the JNUSU is to work for the good of the students, from minor to major issues. The JNUSU gets involved not only to fight fee hikes, but also in issues such a defective tap in a bathroom. Each of these issues must be addressed by the union because each of them impacts students. The union has to make it possible for students to study without hindrance – if you cannot bathe or you cannot afford to finish your degree, you are being adversely impacted by administrative inaction (in the case of the tap) or action (in the case of the fees).

One of the key problems in any university campus is safety, particularly for women students. If I feel uncomfortable going about my business on campus at night, and if I face any sexist behaviour, I have always felt that it was my right to approach any office-bearers of the union. Of course, the Left office-bearers are more sympathetic because they have a greater commitment to gender equality.

 The sharp contrast between the two streams of politics – the right and the left – can be seen in Delhi University and in Jawaharlal Nehru University, as well as in universities across India. In JNU, thanks to the left culture of politics, the student organisations of the left work amongst the students and raise student demands before the administration. In Delhi University, on the other hand, right-wing student organisations whose leaders are only interested in their individual careers are dominant.

You mention the left culture of politics in JNU. How significant is left culture in shaping campus life in JNU?

Democracy is about people. Democratic institutions must be able to represent the voices of all people. For that, a democratic culture is necessary, a culture of debating, listening, courteousness and conviviality. For us, a university must be a place to incubate the culture of democracy. That is what the history of JNUSU has been – to model a form of democracy for a university campus. The JNUSU sees all those who live and work in the campus – the students, the teachers, the non-teaching staff, the workers, the families of the teachers – as ‘citizens’ of the university.

The democratic institutions in JNU shape the character of the university. We have a student-run Election Committee to conduct our students’ union elections. This makes an enormous difference to our confidence in our election process. This year [2019], the administration interfered with our elections – it was a clear-cut attempt to shape the outcome of the elections.  But despite pressures and harassment, our Election Committee stood firm and did not surrender to the administration. They upheld the student mandate. This demonstrates to the students that our democratic institutions should be protected, and that they are the backbone of our campus democracy.

The culture of JNU includes the dhaba culture. Dhabas are roadside teashops, and the dhabas in JNU are spaces where students – and others – sit and talk, even through the night. Here we discuss everything – from our intellectual lives to our student lives to our political world. Sometimes even the teachers join us. Ideology of course plays a role in our discussions, but this dhaba culture is very open to all views. It is like the Greek agora: a meeting place of minds to learn from each other and to push each other in a progressive direction. Democracy needs such places of interaction. JNU also has the poster and parcha (leaflet) culture, where our different student organisations put out our competing views on the walls and in leaflets to educate other students about the issues before us. If you don’t have something like the poster and parcha culture, you do not have a way for students to transmit their ideas to each other. These posters and parchas are the newspapers of an Indian university campus. If you can’t sit and talk or if you can’t distribute a parcha, you cannot pretend to have a democratic culture.

Thanks to the now over four-decade efforts of the JNUSU, we had a healthy culture on campus where students had the space to discuss things with each other, and to disagree with our teachers too. Part of this culture was the creation and strengthening of important student institutions. One of them is General Body Meetings, where everyone can come and make their arguments, criticise the elected union representatives, and debate and discuss the issues of the day. This sort of General Body Meeting strengthens the union. It strengthens democracy. It prevents the union from becoming a bureaucratic group that merely works with the administration. We represent the students, so the students must have the right to be part of our deliberations.

One of the most important institutions in our campus was the Gender Sensitisation Committee Against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH), which had among their members student representatives, teachers’ representatives, and individuals from outside who are experienced in assisting women in cases of sexual harassment. As a student at Delhi University, I used to feel unsafe while walking on the campus roads after 6 pm. This was despite the various top-down attempts by the college through curfews and so on to create a safe environment. At JNU, however, I never had to think of my safety, even if I were on the roads at midnight. The existence of GSCASH made me feel secure that the students had either committed themselves to a non-sexist campus or that GSCASH would help students who were not prepared to make such a commitment. GSCASH ran sensitisation programmes to help students understand how to make the campus non-sexist. From my very first weeks at JNU, I felt that a sense of security prevailed because the students and teachers – through our own institutions such as GSCASH – worked to create a campus environment that did not allow anti-social behaviour against women.

All of a sudden, the present university administration decided to replace GSCASH with a new system – the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC). This Committee is not democratically run, but administration-run, and as a consequence of ICC not being part of the democratic culture of the university, there has been a deterioration of faith in the institution and a weakening of democracy in our campus. No woman feels comfortable to go and register a complaint with the ICC because of the way that the administration-run body has functioned. There was a case of sexual harassment by a faculty member. Eight complaints against him were filed with the ICC during March 2018. The courts said that he cannot enter the laboratory, and that the university must find new supervisors for the students who registered the complaint. But the ICC shielded the faculty member. This is a good example of the slow demise of the democratic culture in the campus. When we had GSCASH, we felt we could file complaints and that the student representatives would make sure to address them in a collegial manner. Now there is no-one taking the students seriously, and the students have no faith in the newly formed administration-run institution. This is one important example of why we need to safeguard these precious institutions and work to strengthen the democratic culture of our universities.

JNUSU’s march to Save Public Education on 12/08/20; Picture Credits- unknown

One of the points you raised in the beginning is the issue of fees. As the JNUSU president you led the anti-fee hike movement in JNU, which culminated in the violent attack against you and other protesting students on 5 January 2020. Could you tell us why you believe that the issue of fees is so significant?

The issue of fees is not only restricted to India. There have been protests from Chile to South Africa. In fact, in South Africa a few years ago, there were protests known as ‘Fees Must Fall’. Students were saying that they could not remain students if the fees were raised. Education, health care, and the care of the elderly are important indicators of the overall culture of a society. To make them unaffordable to large sections of society is to undermine our commitment to basic values of decency and progressiveness.

Students in India have long demanded an affordable fee structure so that pursuing higher education is not just the dream of the few, but that it can become a reality for the many. Most of us who do not come from affluent backgrounds cannot afford to pay high fees to get our advanced degrees. JNU’s fee structure – with a two eighty-three-rupee fee – provides a model. This modest fee is not only for the tuition, but it pays for a range of hostel and library facilities as well as other essential parts of student life. This affordable fee is one of the main reasons why JNU attracts students from diverse backgrounds including from marginal and vulnerable sections, and why the composition of students in the university is not confined to the upper class that can afford high fees. To get a PhD degree from an internationally renowned university without burdening our parents is possible for most students of JNU because of the affordable fee structure.

Alongside the affordable fee structure are stipends and other research fellowships that are important to students. To draw in students from different – particularly marginalised – backgrounds should not be seen as a gift to such students. It must be seen as an attempt to create a richer democracy in our society. When people from marginalised backgrounds get access to education, they articulate the problems of discrimination that they face.

When the JNU administration changed existing rules and arrogated to itself the right to arbitrarily increase fees without consulting the students’ or teachers’ bodies, we in the JNUSU initiated the anti-fee hike movement. The movement was to ensure that higher education stays affordable to the many students who come from diverse backgrounds to the campus. It was to ensure that the campus stays representative of the diversity of the country, unlike those institutions with very high fees.

The government is trying to destroy the affordable fee structure and the stipends as part of an overall neo-liberal attack on social spending. The government wants to turn education into a commodity. To buy and sell education is to ignore the rich culture of democracy created on our campuses. This culture of democracy is the JNU model. We have to fight to assert our right to an education, which includes this culture of democracy.

How do you view the present government’s attitude towards scientific enquiry and research?

Logical reasoning and scientific temper have been severely attacked by the BJP government. They want to replace these approaches to thinking with falsehoods, with irrationality, and with myths. There are open attempts to replace history with mythology. This began decades ago with the debate around Babri Masjid, the 16^th century mosque in Ayodhya, which the majoritarian communal right-wing claimed was built on an ancient temple. Facts were irrelevant. The point was to shout loudly and make your scream into reality.

Ministers in the current government have been making ludicrous remarks about medicine, such as ‘if you put your hand on a cow, you will be cured from cancer’, or ‘cow urine can cure most diseases’. It is perfectly legitimate to study the cow for the purpose of science, but this is not the purpose of the government of India’s Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (AYUSH), whose minister – Ashwini Kumar Choubey – believes cow urine can cure everything. His conclusions come before any studies. This is one more example of the growth of unreason, and it demeans the legitimate work of scientists who are working on cures for ailments of all kinds. This is a serious problem. It is part of the larger weakening of legitimate scientific research. Those who do scientific research in India often do not have laboratories and funds for their experiments. Last year, scientists went out to protest this policy of starving them of funds. Meanwhile a government minister mocked mathematics and gravity. This is their attitude to the essential work of science and scientific inquiry. They have an anti-science attitude.

The BJP government sees research as a threat. Part of this threat is to its own ideology. Over the years, serious social science research has uncovered, for example, the history and agenda of the BJP’s parent organisation: the fascist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). This research has shown that the RSS had no significant role in the freedom struggle, that it had strong ties to Italian fascist movements, and that it has been party to terrible anti-social riots for its almost hundred-year existence. If more research is done on the RSS, more will be uncovered. The government prefers a mythology of the RSS than a history; it can control the former, while the latter can expose it. Starving social science and history and feeding mythological studies gives this government an advantage in the battle of ideas.

I got a fellowship of Rs. 5000 per month to pursue my M. Phil. My hostel bill came to around Rs. 3000 per month. This left me with Rs. 2000. This has to include my expenditure for research. Not a single academic journal specific to my research is available at the university library. How is a student supposed to conduct research when neither the library has the basic materials, nor does the fellowship allow her to buy them with such a meagre amount of money? This is JNU, one of the most renowned universities in India. The situation is worse elsewhere.

This government – it seems – has specially targeted JNU. Why do you think this vicious targeting on JNU is launched?

The JNU students’ movement always fought for student issues, but never confined itself to student issues alone. We raise our voices against a range of oppression and exploitation, and thereby question those in power. Between 1975 and 1977, when the Indian government declared an Emergency and suspended fundamental rights provided by the Indian Constitution, JNU students courageously fought for civil liberties, even as the police arrested students and tried to crush dissent. The students spoke for millions in the country during that period. This is a culture that has been maintained on the JNU campus.

Over the tenure of this government, we have seen many protests against the rise of intolerance, and the brutal use of the state machinery to crush dissent. The students’ movement of JNU has stood with those who have been attacked by the BJP, whether it be Dalits (oppressed castes) or the people of Kashmir. Those who are leading the present government knows that JNU is not just a campus, but it is also one of the places of resistance to their rule. The BJP government has therefore tried to repress our voices. In 2016, a ‘Shut Down JNU’ campaign was launched to demoralise and sabotage us. What kind of issues were we raising at that time which so irked the BJP and its followers? We had taken up the question of research fellowships, which had been scrapped. We believed it was a good thing to have fellowships for research. Apparently, the government did not agree. We took up the case of the ‘institutional murder’ of Rohith Vemula, a student at Hyderabad Central University who died because of intolerance to him as a student from an oppressed caste background and because of the slow death of institutional support for students. Once more, it appeared as if the government was indifferent to the suffering of students like Rohith.

Rather than take up these basic issues and have a discussion around them, the RSS and BJP branded JNU as an ‘anti-national’ institution. The phrase anti-national is chilling. It suggests that any dissent – even over research fellowships – can be branded as treason, and those who raise these issues are marked for various kinds of retaliation, including violence. This is the very opposite of the spirit of democracy. JNU’s culture is a culture of democracy. This is what the government found intolerable.

What led to the 5 January 2020 physical attack on you and on other students? What was the role of the administration and the Delhi police in the rampage?

Before I talk about the attack on this specific day, I want to go on record on how we have been treated throughout our anti-fee hike movement. Our peaceful long marches outside the university were brutally attacked by the Delhi Police, which works directly under the central government’s Home Ministry. The administration has initiated actions against us without any preliminary enquiries. In fact, some students received hostel eviction notices. All these things were happening simultaneously as the state and the administration tried repeatedly to break our movement. When those attacks did not succeed, ABVP members tried to divide the students. Even then the ABVP could not mobilise enough students in favour of the fee hike, after which they started physical scuffles with the protesting students and the union members who were leading the anti-fee hike strikes. On 5 January 2020, masked RSS workers from outside the campus attacked JNU students. It was an orchestrated attack by the members of ABVP-JNU and the RSS supporters among JNU teachers. After the attack, we gathered photographic and other evidence and exposed the role of ABVP leaders and that of RSS supporters among teachers (who also hold administrative positions) in organising the mob attack on JNU students.

The intention behind these attacks was two-fold: (a) to generate fear among student activists, and (b) to change the discourse from fee hikes to violence. The ruling party-backed mainstream media immediately started broadcasting how the violence happened on a campus with left-wing organisational leadership, even though in truth the perpetrators of the violence were members of right-wing organisations.

The violence could not have happened without the support of the administration and the Delhi Police. In fact, it was a well-coordinated strategy. A huge group of masked men were allowed to enter the campus with iron rods, hammers, and other weapons, and without security guards to stop them at the gates. Ironically, I had repeatedly asked the police officials for their intervention when the situation on the campus was getting tense. But they did nothing. Moreover, the masked goons were given full protection by the police as they were leaving the campus in a rally celebrating their victory. Can all this happen without orders from top officials and the university authorities?

How has this attack impacted you as a person?

After the beating (they beat me with iron rods), when I was in the hospital severely injured, I thought that I would die. Since then, I have received many dangerous threats and much abuse.

I was definitely traumatised by these acts. However, I feel I am not alone in this fight. Today, I have a voice that I must use to amplify the voices of all students. There is now more public recognition of what I have been saying. Now more people want to hear my voice. This gives me much strength and courage. I feel privileged by the extent of solidarity I have received because of the attack on me. I am aware that this is because I am the president of the JNU Students’ Union, and because JNU is in Delhi. There are many such attacks, often more brutal, which are happening in other parts of the country every day. People are getting killed. The media pays no attention to them; nor does our society. If people in those struggles have the courage to continue to fight despite the trauma inflicted on them, then I too can continue the fight. We are inspiring each other in this difficult time. And I am certainly not alone.

JNUSU Elections 2019 – March by United Left in JNU after the filing of nominations for JNUSU Elections 2019. Picture Credits: Amit Kumar

How do you see your growth as an activist and a leader of the students’ movement?

When I came to the JNU campus, I saw a few comrades leading the union. At that time, I could not imagine myself in that position. But after I got elected, every single day was a learning experience. I have realised that it is a huge responsibility to be in the leadership of the union. But I knew that I had the support of the students and thus never felt alone. I grew up as an activist. No one can teach you how to be a good students’ union president; it is only through day-to-day experience that one learns the duties and responsibilities of a leader and can then deliver results. Often one needs to have the presence of mind to take an immediate call and respond on issues as and when they arrive. I can say for sure that the person I was before being elected to the post of students’ union president is not the same person I am today.  I am sure that I will continue to grow as an activist and as a person by the time I complete my tenure as JNUSU president. Each day I learn something new from the movement and the people around me.

This interview with Aishe Ghosh was held over a period of time between September 2019 and January 2020.

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