When campuses turn killing fields

It would be incorrect to say student politics has never really played a positive role in Kerala. The likes of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, former Chief Ministers Oommen Chandy and A K Antony are prime examples of where one can reach after proving your mettle in student politics. But when you factor in the lives lost in violent clashes between warring student outfits, the demands of parents and college managements that politics be kept out of campuses find merit. The SFI claims 33 martyrs on college campuses, 12 of them in the past eight years, giving a sense of the bloody trail. KSU claims seven martyrs and ABVP eight—three of them on a single day in 1996.

Back in the ’60s, student organisations used to fight collectively for their rights, and the pattern continued through the ’80s. It was in the ’90s, however, that political parties began provoking violence on campuses. Campus killings became a part and parcel of student politics. True, the Kerala High Court in 2006 gave absolute power to college managements to keep student organisations out. Nevertheless, most campuses continued to see political activity. And it did not help when some students took a stand against college managements that began harassing students in the name of suppressing protests.

This provided an opportunity for a few hard-line religious fundamentalists to get a foothold on campuses. Soon enough, alliances were established between student outfits of political fronts. The gory murder of Abhimanyu, an SFI activist in one of the state’s oldest colleges, Maharaja’s College, puts focus on how fundamentalist organisations are looking at campuses for recruitment. Links are now emerging between those who carried out the killing of Abhimanyu and those behind the infamous palm-chopping case. The sad reality, and a chilling thought for many parents, is that Abhimanyu may not be the last victim of the bloody intrigues of mainline political parties and efforts of fringe outfits to gain prominence.