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From Nav Nirman Andolan to anti-CAA protests: How student movements shaped Indian politics

A new rule in JNU to penalise students for protesting inside campus brings to attention the role that student movements have played in shaping local and national politics in India. These student movements also produced a generation of politicians, including former vice-president Venkaiah Naidu, former finance minister Arun Jaitley, and Union minister Nitin Gadkari, among others.

In November 2023, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) administration announced that it will penalise protests on campus with a fine of Rs 20,000 or expulsion for two semesters. The JNU students’ union opposed the rules, saying that it is an attempt to stifle dissent on campus.

JNU’s new rule brings back attention to the role of students’ protests in local and national politics in India since the pre-Independence era.

In the article, The History of Student Movements in India: A Sociological Account, sociologist Amit Kumar Saurabh writes that student movements “have always been a catalyst of change in Indian society”.

In 1828, the Academic Association, the first student organisation that held weekly meetings and cultural events was started by Vivian Derozio in Calcutta. Sociologist Anil Rajimwale writes that the Academic Association was set up as a debating society, but Derozio was involved in several social reform movements during the Bengal Renaissance. Under his leadership, the association questioned the practice of Sati and advocated for widow remarriage.

However, it was the Partition of Bengal in 1905 that marked the first student movement where the leaders focused on expressing disagreement with government decisions. Following the Partition, many students dropped out of colleges affiliated to the University of Calcutta, and referred to the university as Golamkhana, a factory that produced trained slaves to support British rule in India. No longer did they propagate the ideologies of the larger reform movement and instead began dabbling in national politics.

The students were spirited and often used violence to express dissent. This changed with the spread of Mahatma Gandhi’s message of non-violence. The non-cooperation movement in 1919 was the first political movement in the country to witness substantial student involvement. It provided an impetus for youth leaders to hold the first All India Student Conference in 1920 and coordinate growing student movements across India.

Historian Philip Altbach, in an article written in 1966, explains that this conference ushered students into the spirit of nation-building and trained a set of young leaders such as Aruna Asif Ali and Matagini Hazra who went on to play an important role in the Independence struggle.

In the 1930s, as the freedom struggle intensified, the civil disobedience movement saw unprecedented involvement of students. Recognising that the universities were also run by the British, students refused to attend college, leading to suspensions and imprisonments.