This brief note seeks to examine the political process as it operates among the students in AMU, with special reference to the AMUSU elections.
What we shall seek to analyze here is the mode of political organization, the language and issues of politics and the purpose of political action.
Political Organization
There are no political parties or formally organized political groups in AMU. Political organization is almost exclusively on the basis of regional affiliations, coupled with personal friendships. Occasionally sectarian differences such as Shia-Sunni or Barelvi-Deobandi do come into play, but are rarely divorced of regional considerations.
Some prominent collectives, or ‘lobbies’ as they are called in AMU, are Bihar, Bengal, Azamgarh, Ghazipur, GBS (Gonda-Basti-Siddharthanagar) and various cities of Western U.P. like Sambhal and Saharanpur.
The basis of these collectives is a sense of regional pride and the impulse to protect and further the interests of students hailing from the particular region that the collective represents.
Being non-ideological however, these collectives are quite flexible and include many students (and non-students) from other regions that become part of their activities due to personal friendships, relationships, or long association with people who identify themselves with the collective.
Structure and Leadership
These collectives mostly do not have any formal structures (except perhaps Bengal, which has a semi-formal functional “Bengal Association”), and are often broken up into factions which are identified by prominent ‘seniors’, that is, those who have spent many years in AMU and ‘given time’ to the collective.
Apart from seniority, leadership is based on personality cult and a rustic form of charismatic politics. Since the contest for political space or personal differences among students of different regions often erupts into violent encounters, proficiency in violence is a strong factor in assuming leadership roles.
Role of Teachers in political organisation
The involvement of teachers too cannot be ignored, and often it is teachers hailing from a particular region who direct the political activities of their co-regional students.
Teachers play a key role in recruiting new students to these collectives, and in protecting students from the consequences of illegal action. It is also not uncommon for teachers to encourage even violent conflicts to further their interests in the university.
The language of Politics and its issues
The language of politics is largely chauvinistic and adversarial. It is devoid of any central or underlying idea and its gravitas is nostalgic rhetoric full of allusions to past glory, both real and imagined.
The most common adversary is the Administration, the much-denounced intezamia, but it changes depending on the issue and can include anyone from the RSS to Central and State governments and political rivals.
The issues which are raised are mostly university-related. National and international topics which have emotional appeal (such as communal riots or Palestine) are also agitated upon, but from a very narrow Milli perspective.
Purpose of Political Action
In the absence of greater ideas, the purpose political action is limited to grabbing power, and enjoying the consequent privileges.
For the more ambitious, the Students Union is a platform which helps them join an established political party from a position of strength, thus getting a head-start in their political careers.
For others, getting elected is a way to earn some quick money. This is done either by stealing from the sizeable Union budget or by disrupting University administration and forcing them to favour paying clients.
For supporters of the candidate, it is about the pride of getting ‘their’ candidate elected, and thereafter sharing in the fruits of power. The candidate is also expected to get them out of trouble, if the need arises.
The common student only expects that their representatives speak for them and that too on very local issues. Some of these issues may be very legitimate, such as helping out with bureaucratic red-tape, while others may not be so much so, such as problems with attendance.
All in all, the real expectations from politics are not very high, and are essentially located in a very local and often self-centred context.
Contesting Elections
Selection of candidate
The norm is that when elections are announced, each regional collective or “lobby” holds a “General Body Meeting”, in which it decides upon a candidate. In some cases, a lobby may not field its own candidate but decide to make a “pact” with another lobby and support their candidate. Often it also happens that different factions within a lobby may field or support separate candidates.
The “General Candidate”
There is also the case of the “General Candidate”, that is, a candidate with supposedly no roots in any one lobby. Such a candidate seeks the support of different lobbies, or power groups within the lobbies.
Campaigning
The point of the campaign is to hype the name of the candidate, to spread it in every corner of the campus. This is done primarily by posters, banners and flexes. The posters rarely have any creative content or send across an idea or even list an issue. The only content is the candidate’s name and a catchy slogan.
Since all candidates are in reality unknown entities to most of the campus, the challenge is to get maximum number of people to just remember the name.
Another important component is the rallies, which are mostly bike-rallies. Prevailing common sense is that the bigger the rallies, the greater the hype. Added to this are the various gimmicks and political stunts that candidates engage in to get media attention and publicity. Pamphlets highlighting personal achievements of candidates are also common.
The topics of discussion are mostly centred on the strength of the rallies, the visibility of posters and the controversies around the person of the candidate. The campaigning of every candidate follows more or less these same methods, with only minor alterations and differences in strength.
Role of teachers in election process
Teachers play a vital role in the selection of candidates. It is common in AMU when taking of different candidates to talk of the teachers backing them.
This backing mostly follows regional lines, but has no set rules. One of the criterion of course, is the amount of use the candidate can be to the teacher or group of teachers. But primary motivation is mostly regional pride.
- Fawaz Shaheen, B.A.LLB
