 "Young, angry, futuristic")
A man who is not a communist at the age of 20 is a fool. Any man who is still a communist at the age of 30 is an even bigger one: George Bernard Shaw.
If you're not a liberal at 20, you have no heart; if you're not a conservative at 40 you have no brain: Winston Churchill.
Either way, some great men thought that 20-something is the age to take a keen interest in politics, if not participate. About 10 days ago, Sudipto Gupta, an SFI (Students' Federation of India) leader, died in a protest rally under mysterious circumstances. He was 22.
The cause of Gupta's death is not clear; SFI activists claim he was brutally thrashed by the police, while the police and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee declared it an accident. But what is known is, Gupta, who was participating in a law-violation programme (an otherwise non-event for Bengal) for resuming elections in colleges, died in police custody.
The cause that Gupta was supporting had its genesis in an advisory issued by the Trinamool Congress government for suspension of election in colleges and universities for six months. The official reason given by the state government was that different board exams and panchayat elections would make it difficult to deploy adequate forces for college elections.
But beyond the official explanation is a murky story that Bernard Shaw or Churchill had probably not anticipated.
A clash between two students unions-Trinamool Congress Chhatra Parishad (TMCP) and Congress's Chhatra Parishad-ostensibly over filing nomination papers for election at Harimohan Ghosh College in February killed a sub-inspector who was trying to intervene. But, as it emerged, the clash had little to do with student politics or college elections, for that matter. It was a battle to gain control over Garden Reach (the college area), close to the Kolkata docks, a cash cow for political parties. Control over Harimohan Ghosh was symbolic in that sense; for the turf gang it defined the territory it controlled.
Among those arrested in the incident is a Trinamool councillor, though after much drama. In a sideshow, the Kolkata Police Commissioner, who went against the ruling party to lodge a genuine FIR against the accused, was transferred by the chief minister. The reason cited: he was inept at handling the issue. But it was the main incident that revealed a blatant display of the dangers of student politics, where young and impressionable minds often become pawns.
Back-to-back incidents like Garden Reach and Sudipto Gupta are now the topic of raging debates in drawing rooms, television channels and "paras" of Kolkata, not to forget social media. The big question doing the rounds is, should student unions be affiliated to political parties?
"College-level politics is nothing but party-baji. There is no idealism. The parties are defending their efforts for catching them young by saying this is the only way to make them politically aware. But students should devote their time to studying. Only a good student can be a successful political person," says painter Jogen Chowdhury, who happens to be an ardent supporter of Banerjee. Chowdhury has put his views across to the state government's syllabus reforms committee, as a member.
Manifestations of "party-baji" were seen at Presidency University recently. TMCP leaders and a TMC councillor broke into the university and vandalised the century-old Baker Laboratory to avenge the assault on Banerjee and Finance Minister Amit Mitra in New Delhi, allegedly by SFI.
It was also an outside attempt to wrest control of the elite college, where TMCP is non-existent.
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It's not difficult to figure out why the political parties target the young. "If politics can determine our future, we have a right to determine politics," SFI General Secretary Ritabrata Banerjee says. The passion in his voice is palpable. Incidentally, he was among those who led the protest against the chief minister and finance minister at the office of the Planning Commission in Delhi.
SFI was formed in 1970 and is one of the largest student organisations in the country in terms of membership, with its strength at 4 million. Apart from Bengal, Kerala and Tripura (Left bastions till recently), SFI has a presence in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan. The Left's rout from the seat of power in Bengal in 2011, however, spelt doom for SFI. Of the 452 colleges in Bengal, the fledgling TMCP now has 419 under its control, while SFI's dominance has been reduced to 12.
"The state government has suspended college elections and TMCP has overpowered unions in most of the colleges across Bengal. SFI wants restoration of democracy. The battle in colleges was won by goons, TMCP has no ideology," SFI's Banerjee says.
He may be right. For TMCP, its be-all and end-all is Mamata Banerjee. "Our idol is Mamata Banerjee. We are not a wing of TMC, we just believe in Banerjee," TMCP state president Shanku Deb Panda says. The other student union, West Bengal Chhatra Parishad, affiliated to the National Students' Union of India (Congress's student wing) is hardly a presence.
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It's a symbiotic relationship. When TMCP members were thrashing faculty members in district colleges, Mamata Banerjee had said, indulgently, the youth were full of passion. "I was also a student leader, I know," she had said.
For the cadre-based parties, the student wings are a recruitment ground, points out Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury, professor of political science at the Rabindra Bharati University. "Students have led many national liberation movements like in France and the Vietnam war," he says. Bengal knows it only too well. In the 1960s when the Naxalite movement reared its head, slogans like "Amar Naam, Tomar Naam, Vietnam, Vietnam," reverberated through Bengal. In fact, "Amar Bari, Tomar Bari, Naxalbari, Naxalbari" was an adjunct to it.
Students - some of them the best and brightest - quit colleges to join the movement. Landlords, businessmen, politicians and the police were seen as class enemies. When Congress Chief Minister Siddhartha Sankar Ray gave the police a free hand to deal with the armed struggle, they were also eliminated by the dozen. Bengal was in a trance.
Perhaps a scene in Satyajit Ray's Pratidwandi (1970) captures the mood during the time best. Siddhartha, the protagonist, is asked about the most significant event in the last decade at a job interview. His reply: the war in Vietnam (more important than man landing on the moon). Needless to say, Siddhartha didn't get the job.
(Debaleena Sengupta contributed to this article)