ABVP’s Campus Surge: How the Right is Redefining Student Politics in India

ABVP’s sweep of three top university student bodies is a seismic shift in the landscape of student politics.

ABVP's strategic wins in major universities across India marks a shift in student politics, challenging the Left.

(Photo: Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student arm of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has pulled off a remarkable hat-trick in student politics recently—winning back-to-back in Delhi, Hyderabad, and Punjab.

The scale of these victories is telling: Aryan Maan’s emphatic margin at Delhi University, Siva Palepu’s clean sweep in Hyderabad after seven years, and Gaurav Veer Sohal’s historic breakthrough in Panjab University, breaking a 48-year barrier. These are not isolated wins. They cut across very different terrains—Delhi’s ideological battlefield, Hyderabad’s progressive bastion, and Punjab’s restive political soil—pointing to the ABVP’s sharpened strategy and expanding reach.

ABVP’s rise is not a sudden burst of electoral luck. Founded in 1948 by Balraj Madhok, an RSS pracharak and Delhi University professor, the organisation predates even the BJP. For decades, it has remained embedded in India’s premier campuses—Delhi University , Jawaharlal Nehru University, University of Hyderabad, Panjab University—weathering political shifts, resistance, and ideological pushback. Its longevity lies in a paradox: rigid loyalty to the Sangh’s Hindutva ideology, paired with tactical flexibility on the ground.

Unlike the BJP, ABVP does not fight student elections on the charisma of Narendra Modi or the spectacle of “Modi’s Bharat.” Instead, it digs deep into campus life, focusing on micro issues—hostel shortages, scholarships, placements, and everyday struggles of students. By marrying nationalist rhetoric with grassroots problem-solving, it taps both emotion and aspiration.

The disunity of rival student groups—fractured left collectives, weak regional outfits, and splintered independents—has only amplified ABVP’s dominance. For decades, the Left enjoyed a near-monopoly on campus imagination, embodying dissent, idealism, and youthful rebellion. That era is clearly over.

These consecutive wins, therefore, are not just campus headlines. They are proof of how the RSS-BJP ecosystem continues to cultivate its next generation of foot soldiers, embedding Hindutva politics within India’s student landscape—one campus at a time.

ABVP’s sweep of three top university student bodies is no ordinary campus victory—it is a seismic shift in the landscape of student politics. Once derided as too rigid for restless Gen Z, the RSS’s student arm has proved its adaptability, carving an ideological and political space that many thought belonged permanently to the Left. The saffron surge signals not just a momentary success but the emergence of a durable player in student politics, one that is unlikely to fade anytime soon.

The story today is of a fragmented opposition—politically, ideologically, and personally divided—leaving students disillusioned and searching for coherence. Into this vacuum, the ABVP has stepped with discipline, clarity, and an alternative narrative.

The saffron student brigade has not merely won elections; it has rewritten the grammar of campus politics. If the Left once symbolised the heartbeat of the young, the ABVP now claims that mantle with unapologetic confidence.

The message from Delhi, Hyderabad, and Punjab is unmissable: the battlefield of ideas on campus is shifting, and the saffron flag is here to stay.

Nationalism as the Great Equaliser

ABVP’s triumphs hinge on a weaponised Hindu-nationalist ideology that recasts local grievances as existential threats to a unitary "Bharatiya" identity, outflanking rivals mired in caste, regionalism, or leftist parochialism. 

At DU, where globalised liberalism fuels identity clashes, ABVP’s "nation first" rhetoric—echoing Amit Shah’s post-victory praise to youth faith in patriotic service—framed progressive demands for women’s safety and fee waivers as defenses against "anti-national" fragmentation. 

In Hyderabad’s UoH, a campus long synonymous with Rohith Vemula’s legacy and Ambedkarite activism, ABVP pierced the Left-ASA fortress by invoking "campus peace" and "national unity," positioning its sweep—including Siva Palepu’s presidency—as a rejection of "divisive" politics amid the sudden dissolution of the prior Left-led union. 

Punjab’s PU breakthrough, a seismic first after decades of Sikh-regionalist dominance, exemplifies this: Sohal’s campaign blended anti-drug crusades with tributes to Sikh martyrs, diluting separatist echoes while positioning ABVP as the authentic voice of "integrated" Punjabi youth. 

This ideological blitz, honed over RSS shakhas, exploits Gen Z’s quest for belonging amid economic precarity, turning campuses into incubators for the BJP’s pan-Indian hegemony.

The RSS-BJP Pipeline in Action

Beneath the saffron sheen lies ABVP’s unmatched organisational sinew, a cadre-driven machine that dwarfs fragmented foes through relentless, year-round infiltration. 

At DU, ABVP’s sweep of three posts stemmed from its ironclad volunteer networks—mobilising over 1,500 activists for door-to-door canvassing and grievance redressals like flood relief—while NSUI’s internal feuds and the Left’s AISA-SFI alliance splintered over ideological purity. 

In HCU, where the election followed abrupt administrative dissolution sparking protests, ABVP leveraged RSS’s southern outposts to forge alliances with OBC and Dalit-leaning groups like Sevalal Vidyarthi Dal, securing all posts from president to cultural secretary with over 81 percent turnout, outpacing a fractured Left post-ASA-SFI split. 

PU’s historic win amplified this: Sohal’s coalition with fringe outfits like Indian National Students’ Organization (INSO) bypassed the traditional Students’ Organization of Panjab University (SOPU) and Students’ Organization of India (SOI) monopolies, with ABVP’s groundwork—seminars on "youth empowerment" and 24/7 canteen pushes—yielding 3,148 votes in a 16,000-strong turnout. 

This isn’t serendipity; it’s the RSS-BJP nexus at peak efficiency, funnelling funds, intel, and muscle to convert student power into future electoral fodder, as BJP leaders openly tout these victories as "national power" precursors.

Saffron Solutions for Local Woes

ABVP’s ability to tailor its nationalist agenda to regional contexts exploits opposition disarray with surgical precision. At DU, Aryan Maan’s pledges for metro fare concessions and Wi-Fi audits resonated with urban aspirants, neutralising NSUI’s unity rhetoric, which faltered post-2024 rigging controversies. 

In HCU, ABVP navigated Telangana’s caste-justice fault lines by allying with SLVD and promising land protection, placement cells, and sports facilities, undercutting ASA-SFI’s focus on fee hikes and reservations while sidestepping Dalit anger over Vemula’s legacy.

In Punjab, Sohal’s “My University, My Manifesto 2.0” crowdsourced SOS buttons and synthetic tracks, addressing drug and job anxieties to outflank AAP’s CYSS and Akali’s SOI, whose regionalist pitches lost steam post-farm protests. Informed by RSS’s granular campus intelligence, ABVP’s hyper-local manifestos expose rivals’ fractures—leftists split over ideology, regionalists over identity—positioning ABVP as the sole “pragmatic nationalist” in chaotic electoral fields.

Exploiting Opposition Fragmentation

ABVP’s victories are as much about its rivals’ implosion as its own prowess, with opposition groups splintered by ideological rigidity and personal rivalries.

At DU, NSUI’s internal factionalism—evident in its failure to field a unified candidate post-2024—and AISA-SFI’s squabbles over protest strategies handed ABVP a clear runway, as voters recoiled from their incoherent messaging. 

In HCU, the Left’s historic dominance crumbled after the Ambedkar Students’ Association (ASA) and Students’ Federation of India (SFI) failed to forge their traditional “progressive” alliance, derailed by a bitter divide over including Muslim outfits like the Muslim Students Federation (MSF, linked to IUML) and Fraternity (tied to Jamaat-e-Islami). SFI rejected these groups as “fundamentalist".

While ASA accused SFI of marginalising Muslim students and pushed for broader inclusion with AIOBCSA and AISA—resulting in no coalition at all. This schism, compounded by NSUI’s backlash from a 400-acre land dispute, allowed ABVP to win all six posts by margins of 400 to 1,000 votes, as SFI’s G Mohit later conceded ABVP’s edge in mobilising freshers. 

In Punjab’s PU, regionalist giants like SOPU and SOI, once united under Akali patronage, were undermined by AAP’s CYSS splitting the anti-BJP vote, enabling ABVP to slip through with INSO’s backing. This fragmentation, exacerbated by opposition groups’ inability to counter ABVP’s disciplined narrative or match its resource pool, underscores a brutal truth: a divided opposition, lacking a cohesive counter-vision, is no match for ABVP’s unified saffron machine.

(The author teaches journalism at St. Xavier’s College (autonomous), Kolkata. His handle on X is @sayantan_gh. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)