The Kerala unit of the Marxist students’ union, SFI, is in a dilemma — Should it end the practice of holding agitations involving blockage of classes in the new age where even its parent party, the CPI(M), is thinking of relinquishing violent agitation methods, or should it continue with the traditional practiceIJ
This discussion had started more than a week ago after CPI(M) central committee member EP Jayarajan, himself a former SFI activist who had led several intense agitations, advised the students’ union to end its practice of blocking classes in educational institutions in the name of agitation.
Expectedly, Jayarajan could not find many supporters for his proposal within the party for which SFI’s agitations on campuses and outside on the streets have always been a valuable tool for political survival.
However, the proposal has already given a new energy to forces which have always criticised the SFI for its agitations which involved blocking of academic sessions.
Reactions of SFI leaders to Jayarajan’s suggestion indicate that the organisation is not going to give up its traditional style of agitation but it has already created fissures within the outfit as well as in the CPI(M) at a time when the party itself is considering relinquishment of agitations that involve violence, roadblocks and other elements that cause hardships to the general public.
“I don't totally favour strikes, without blocking classes but one should not turn a blind eye towards new reality”, said a senior CPI(M) leader from Kannur, native district of Jayarajan. “The SFI itself would have to admit that the agitations it has been holding for the past two or three years have not been getting the kind of support they used to get a till decade back”, he added.
But another leader, known as an advocate in the CPI(M) of neo-liberalism, said it would be foolish to give up strikes. “Whether you block academic activity is of secondary importance. I don’t think ‘education mafias’ and Governments supporting them will be swayed by silent protest forms like Satyagraha. You need harsher methods to deal with them”,he said.
The CPI(M) has formally come to a conclusion that agitations could not be ended just like that and that situations may arise where strikes are inevitable. A meeting of the State secretariat of the party rejected Jayarajan’s proposal but, said it was up to the SFI to decide on the form and intensity of its agitations as per the nature of the issues it was taking up.
The SFI has so far shown its determination to continue with its traditional methods of agitation. Confirming this, Shiju Khan, State president of the outfit, says: “We can’t end our struggles when mothers are even selling their kidneys to pay the college fees of their children… A student cannot sit enjoying ‘Tom and Jerry’ in these days of commercialisation of education”.
Another SFI leader, who preferred to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, was even more critical of Jayarajan and his supporters. “I am shocked by how the apolitical virus is creeping up our leaders thinking faculty. Apoliticisation is what the education mafia wants. But students’ agitations have always been part of even apolitical movements”.
The SFI has always been in the forefront of agitations over issues concerning education as well as general politics ever since its formation in 1970 and has often been criticised for allegedly being a political tool of the CPI(M). One of the criticisms is that though its declared motto is “Study and Struggle”, it has been blocking study in the name of struggles.
Jayarajan’s proposal had come in the context of a new thinking in a section of the CPI(M) that methods of agitation should be democratised in the changed times. The thinking had first appeared in the Kannur unit which has decided to make its struggles more humane and had recently allowed reading of Ramayana at venues of agitation.