Communism in the classroom

A professor rewinds to years when the city's elite student fraternity was waking up to political activism and subsequently Maoism

Communism in the classroom

A professor rewinds to years when the city's elite student fraternity was waking up to political activism and subsequently Maoism

Given the propensity of students to fall into certain kind of groups, there were three fairly well defined groups at that time.

Dr Binayak Sen, civil rights activist, who was serving life
term imprisonment on charges of sedition and links with
Maoists at a Chhattisgarh jail. The Supreme Court granted
him bail recently

There was a group that I would term the partying/fashionable set. Then, there were the academics, maybe, colloquially you could call them geeks (my in group, the Dilton Doily-ish kind) and finally you had the group, which was interested in studies and politics too, they were the "activist/radicals".
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They dressed in a certain kind of way kurtas, jeans which were your stereotypical activist garb. I remember seeing Kobad Ghandy, similarly dressed in college. He was studying in College then.
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Though Xavier's did have this set, (there was a girl who was doing a Phd in English Literature from the college and one day suddenly announced that she was giving it all up to join the Naxalite Movement), it was Elphinstone really that was more known for its political activism.
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You must keep in mind that it was the Mumbai of the 1960s, when fewer colleges existed. Socio-economic lines defining what kind of students went to what kind of college were sharper then.
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Both St Xavier's and Elphinstone (they were also cricket rivals alas neither have a cricket tradition today) did have elite students but though Xavier's had its small share of left-wingers, Elphinstone had a reputation of being more radical and politically conscious.
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It was to be expected as many of the legal luminaries and freedom fighters of pre-independent India had graduated from this government college.
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Then, in the late 1970s when I entered St Xavier's as a professor of Sociology, I witnessed some anti-establishment flavour. I remember students shouting slogans against the management supported by some teachers with left leanings.u00a0 In the 1980s, Elphinstone continued to have politically activist students.
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In Xavier's, a few students in my class would have arguments, especially when touching on aspects of Naxalism/Communism, which were part of a sociology paper on contemporary issues. I remember Satyajit Bhatkal (who became a lawyer activist and is now a film maker) vehemently arguing in class.
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Then there was Sabbas Joseph (now a partner of the event management company Wizcraft) dressed in kurta-jeans who was very left wing.

When I would write recommendation letters for students who wanted to go to the US for further studies, he would always say it is wrong for them to go to the US, why do they want to leave etc. Today, I laugh and tell him that he has done a U-turn and become an unabashed capitalist and he laughs too!

In the 1990s, there was an agitation in Xavier's and a signature campaign against the college management because it planned to shut down the canteen and outsource it. Some students took up for the canteen workers and prominent amongst them was Arun Ferreira (now in jail).
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A paper I taught, Labour Welfare and Trade Union Movement always evoked heated discussion in class. It is strange when I think of how by the late 1990s; the several anti-establishment voices in Elphinstone and Xavier's were almost silent.
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Perhaps the era of liberalisation evoked a sense of complacency and activism with political party links spread to the newer colleges.

However last year the St Xavier's College management itself organised an Anuradha Ghandy memorial lecture in the college hall and on Human rights day in 2009, Dr Binayak Sen came to give a lecture. I think it reflects a new kind of social awareness for the 'underdog'.
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I believe that Maoists do have genuine grievances but their methodology is incorrect. Violence is not the solution and must be condemned. The policeman, a Naxal kills is doing his job. He is a poor man, a government servant who has to support his family.
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A balanced view must be taken. The security forces are Indians as are the so-called Maoists/Naxalites. On the one hand, the government has to take a developmental approach and "win over" its own people and today's activists must guide and help by pressurising the government rather than provoke and exploit the distress of the poor and oppressed.
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I would certainly not be extreme like Arundhati Roy for instance, who takes up arbitrarily for the Maoists. A couple of months ago, I read a piece by her in a Singapore paper where she slammed the Indian government.
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I would like to ask her if she would have the kind of freedom that she has in India, in some of the 'countries' she supports? Even whether she would have the freedom to slam the Singapore government in Singapore itself.
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I think not. No God, notwithstanding the God of Small Things, can ever condone killing innocents for any reason.

(* Naxals and Maoists are used interchangeably in the piece.)

Professor Nandini Sardesai was former head of the Department of Sociology at St Xavier's College in Mumbai and is now a visiting faculty for the Bachelor of Mass Media (BMM) course.

As told to Hemal Ashar

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