VIOLENCE on college campuses is neither new nor particularly rare in West Bengal. However, the intensity of such violence has risen to unprecedented levels in recent times. As the State heads for the crucial Assembly elections of 2011, the line that separates student politics from politics in general seems to get more and more blurred with each passing day. Violence on college campuses is getting increasingly indistinguishable from the general unrest in the State.
Two recent incidents highlight the dangerous trend. On December 16, Swapan Koley, a second-year B.Com student of Prabhu Jagabandhu College in Andul, Howrah district, was fatally assaulted and thrown into a nearby canal by members of a rival students' union. It was the last day for filing nominations for union elections in the college. A group of boys, allegedly belonging to the Trinamool Congress Chhatra Parishad (TMCP), attacked Koley, a popular Students Federation of India (SFI) activist, with rods and bricks, apparently in reprisal for an earlier attack that he had allegedly led on TMCP supporters.
According to some reports, Koley, bleeding from the head, ran out of the college compound and sought shelter in the home of a local Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader, Partha Pal. Pal was not at home, and his wife could not stop the assailants, who chased him to the terrace and attacked him. Then they reportedly dragged him outside and threw him into a nearby canal. Koley died of his injuries that night in a Kolkata hospital. The incident sparked more clashes between the SFI and the TMCP, each accusing the other of bringing in hoodlums from outside to prevent the filing of nominations.
The youngest of three brothers, Koley came from a humble background and paid his way through college by working as a newspaper delivery boy in the mornings.
The incident quickly assumed broader political overtones. Trinamool Congress supremo and Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee accused Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee of politicising the death of a student when he went to the SFI headquarters to pay his last respects to Koley. She denied the TMCP's involvement in the murder and insisted that Koley was killed by CPI(M) outsiders who had mistaken him for a TMCP activist.
However, Saurav Santra, a TMCP activist of the college who was arrested in connection with Koley's murder, admitted that senior TMCP members had killed Koley and claimed that he himself was innocent.
At Ashutosh College in Kolkata, Souvik Hajra, a second-year student of English, lost vision in his left eye when a stray brick hit him as SFI and TMCP supporters clashed outside the college gates on the same day as the Prabhu Jagabandhu College incident. Souvik was drinking tea nearby with some friends. Doctors are not hopeful of restoring vision in the injured eye.
The SFI has claimed that Souvik is a supporter of the organisation, but he was not actively involved in college politics and, according to eyewitnesses, had nothing to do with the violence of that afternoon.
Within a couple of hours of the incident, SFI activists of the college took to the streets carrying posters of Souvik's bandaged face. TMCP supporters also took to the streets and were led by senior party leaders like Madan Mitra. The streets would have turned into a battlefield but for the timely intervention of the Rapid Action Force, which formed a dividing wall between the two warring groups. Traffic in the city was in complete disarray for hours.
West Bengal Governor M.K. Narayanan voiced concern over the violence and issued a statement saying, I am greatly worried and deeply grieved at the growing incidence of campus violence across the State. History will not forgive us if we condone the violence being unleashed within and outside the universities and even schools. These institutions should not become areas for violent confrontations on account of political and other reasons. Later, he sent for the Chief Minister, who reportedly had a discussion with him at Raj Bhavan for over 45 minutes on the law and order situation in the State and the increasing violence on college campuses. According to police sources, the involvement of outsiders people not belonging to the colleges concerned made things difficult. We believe that the main perpetrators of violence in both the colleges were those who did not belong to the student community at all. The violence is hardly ever lethal if it is confined to political differences among students of the same college, a police source said.
CPI(M) State secretary and Polit Bureau member Biman Bose condemned the violence. This kind of violence destroys the atmosphere of learning as well as the relationship among students. The moment physical violence takes place, the philosophical and ideological campaign flies out of the window, he told Frontline. He felt that the present-day situation bore similarities to the student violence of the 1970s.
In those days the Congress, in the name of the Chhatra Parishad, spearheaded violence on the college campuses. It is more or less the same today. The only difference is that instead of the Congress it is now the Trinamool Congress that is causing the violence. However, he felt that in the 1970s, there were not so many outsiders involved in campus violence.
The students' unions of the two colleges held protests over the next two days against the arrest of their respective members. Roads were blocked and some police stations were mobbed. Political heavyweights such as the Mayor of Kolkata, Sovan Chattopadhyay of the Trinamool Congress, got into the thick of things by visiting arrested TMCP members in the police headquarters.
One very strange incident was the Mayor going to a police station and lodging an FIR against certain SFI members who were at that time in Johannesburg attending an International Students Festival. This information could not have come to the Mayor from the students of that particular college because they would know, so it is proof of outsiders getting involved in campus politics, said Biman Bose. On December 20, the SFI called for a State-wide students' strike.
Political analysts point out that after a long period of undisputed sway over students by left-leaning unions, student politics is now reflecting the implications of the emergence of the Trinamool Congress as a serious contender for political power in the State.
According to CPI(M) sources, since the 2009 Lok Sabha election, 15 students belonging to the SFI have been killed. Five of them were killed by Maoists in the Jangalmahal area, while the others were killed allegedly by Trinamool Congress supporters. The opposition now wants to wrest complete power from the present incumbent in all spheres, not only in the panchayats and urban local bodies but also in the academic arena. This is bound to increase further as the Assembly elections approach, a political analyst told Frontline.
Suhrid Sankar ChattopadhyayCOMMents
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