Why Students’ Union Election is JNU’s Biggest Political Carnival

Avijit Ghosh’s latest book, ‘Up Campus, Down Campus’, gives a heady flavour of student life at JNU during the 80s.

JNU goes to the polls on Friday. And anybody who has seen one knows, they are one of a kind. Over the years, a lot has changed in the sprawling university where the Left has lorded for decades. But if there’s one thing one major string of continuity, it is the manner in which the students’ union elections are conducted. Slogans, speeches and posters are the only ammunition used in canvassing for votes, no flaunting of money and certainly no violence.

Here are extracts from Up Campus, Down Campus, a just-released novel on JNU, which gives you the heady flavour of how JNUSU were conducted in the late 1980s. The novelist Avijit Ghosh is a former JNU student who spent over five years in the campus.

(Excerpts from Up Campus, Down Campus)

Most colleges, universities and other institutes have cultural festivals every year. JNU had a rousing campus carnival for the politically inclined: the students’ union elections. The annual students’ union poll was a wonder of electoral democracy that defined the university’s distinct personality.

Everything about the election was incredibly civilised. No involvement of the university administration. No cops. No use of money or muscle. The Election Commissioner was a senior student; someone regarded as neutral and honourable by all parties. Open spaces in the campus were marked out for posters and distributed equally among the parties.

For those like Anirban who had come from Bihar, any election involving students was unthinkable without a few incidents of stabbing or someone getting his bones rearranged. These elections must be totally bland, he told himself.

Choosing a Candidate

Anirban turned up at the basketball court rather late. But nobody seemed to notice or care. The mood was more party than political. In one corner, a small group of older students was inhaling something regarded as mandatory on such joyous occasions—you could tell by the shape of the cigarette, the smell in the air and the relaxed calm in their voices. Elsewhere, a senior was cracking extremely sad jokes with a group of freshers. They were laughing: it wasn’t clear whether at the jokes or at him.

‘The great news is that the Free Thinkers will be contesting allllll seatssss,’—this was Robi, sloshed and slurring.

The news was hailed as some kind of Old Testament miracle since it hadn’t happened for some years. Two seniors, Mastana Singh and Robi, were singled out for praise for working selflessly and tirelessly. In simpler terms, for their ability to attract fresh fish.

Yogendra Kishore for president and Manoj Mahapatra for general secretary—that was the choice and everybody seemed to approve it. It was not clear who had selected them in the first place. The selection process seemed a little opaque to Anirban. But the names of all candidates for the central panel as well as the councillor candidates
were met with loud drunken cheers.

The general view was that the party had found the right balance of gender and geography for most panels, except in the School of Social Sciences where the list was all male: two tall Biharis, one short Oriya, one balding bloke from AP and, rather oddly, a frail Bengali from Bihar, who was Anirban.

Regional Considerations

When his name was announced, everyone lined up to congratulate him. ‘If you play your cards right, both Biharis and Bengalis will vote for you. I guarantee that,’ one of the party’s ideologues declared. He was so emphatic that Anirban felt obligated to win the election only to prove him right.

‘How do regional considerations matter? I thought only ideology mattered in JNU.’ Anirban told Jack later.

‘Don’t be naïve,’ Jack snubbed him. ‘Ideology matters at one level. But when you are contesting an election, you cannot ignore other social realities. We don’t have the caste factor here. And as long as the ABVP or the Jamaat don’t find a foothold, religion will not be a factor either. In fact, the Muslims generally vote en bloc for the SFI because they are constantly told by the SFI that we are keeping the ABVP away from the campus.

‘But regional bias is an important factor in a national university. And with so many girl students, you must have proper representation of women to be gender friendly. You have to be a good speaker too. The JNU is a Red bastion. Like blind mice, most cadres will queue up before the booth on polling day. But many are also anti-SFI in the
campus. Some are pathologically averse to the Left. Those guys will vote for us because we are the number one opposition party. But our job is also to catch the floating votes, of the neutral and the apolitical. If we manage to catch a majority of the floating votes and the anti-SFI vote, we win.’

‘Vote Seekers Stay Away’

Poorvanchal was easily the toughest hostel to negotiate, Anirban and his fellow FT councilor candidates soon realised. Some rooms had curt yellow notes posted outside the door: Vote Seekers Stay Away. A few of them appeared to have been locked for months. A couple of those who condescended to open the room, said rather pompously, ‘This is no time to disturb senior scholars. Don’t you know I sleep in the afternoon?’

However, the occupant of Room No. 208 welcomed them in. Moments after sitting on his bed, they realised he was sloshed. ‘I tell you guys, JNU died in the summer of 1983. There’s nothing left here. What goes on in the name of students’ election is a sham. Can anyone debate like Jairus Banaji and D.P. Tripathi today?’ he asked nobody in particular.

Anirban and everyone else were expecting a long speech from him. But suddenly the gentleman fell silent and started gazing at the ceiling. They all trooped out.

First Come, First Selected

Another hosteller was equally eccentric. ‘Okay. I will vote for you guys if you answer my question in the next 30 seconds. Can you name two books written by Herbert Marcuse?’

Nandu was quick to pounce on that. ‘One-Dimensional Man and Escape from Freedom,’ he said.

‘Good. Now can you say something about his work?’ He wasn’t the easy-to-please type.

Venugopal responded with exaggerated deference. ‘Sir, let me try. In One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse tells us how people begin to identify themselves with the commodities they buy. They begin to look for their souls in their cars and music systems. He is suggesting that under capitalism, humans become extensions of the material goods they purchase.’

‘Good,’ replied the rather middle-aged student, puffing intermittently at an unlit beedi while holding a lungi hitched up to the knees with his other hand. ‘That means the new lot of students isn’t as bad as they have been telling us. Give us your names. I will vote for you guys. The SFI guys had come here yesterday and they were able to give
just one name. That’s why I am losing faith in the Communists.’

They left, pleased. ‘Will he vote for us?’ Anirban asked Amarnath.

‘You bet, he will.’

But there is something to worry about,’ Anirban said. There was a furrow of anxiety in his voice.
‘What?’ Nandu asked.

‘That the SFI has been here before us. You know, it is a bit like getting the attention of a girl. It is generally first come, first selected. The best candidates often lose out because they wait too long thinking about the outcome. It is the same with elections, too.’

The excerpts are taken from Up Campus, Down Campus, a novel by Avijit Ghosh , published by Speaking Tiger.

(Avijit Ghosh works as a senior editor in The Times of India. He is also the author of the novel, Bandicoots in the Moonlight, and the award-winning Cinema Bhojpuri. He can be reached at @cinemawaleghosh.)