CHENNAI: Neha Bora, national president of the All India Students’ Association (AISA) and one of the prominent figures who undertook a 23-day hunger strike in the Jantar Mantar student protest, says the movement was about more than the resignation of then Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
In an interview with DT Next, she reflected on what the Jantar Mantar mobilisation represented, how it drew people in, AISA’s working relationship with the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) despite differences in ideological clarity, the Left’s struggle for visibility and a class distinction between student and workers’ movements.
Do you consider the CJP’s protest different from the anti-CAA or farmers’ protest?
No two protests are the same and in that regard it is very different. The CAA protests were also led by young people. They were all very clear in consolidating people against the government, against the present regime. Even though some people might say that the Jantar Mantar protests were just for Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation, that is not actually true. It consolidated a lot of people against whatever has been going on in this country for the past few years.
The same is the case with the CAA. It was about the Citizenship Amendment Act, but it turned out to be about people mobilising against whatever has been going on in this country for a long time. The farmers’ protest was against the farm laws, but it consolidated people against the order of things and the politics and the system.
You have said that the success of this protest was also somewhat due to people not really caring who the leader was. Can you explain?
I think that is true for all of these protests. People did not care who their leader was. Not exactly in that manner, but they were excited about the fact that there was such a popular expression of disagreement with people in power who claimed to be unquestionable, who claimed to be infallible. After a certain point of time, leaders are of course important. But like all mass movements, people also have a say in what direction the movement will take. The same was the case with the CJP protests.
AISA and the Left were vocal about the abolition of the NTA and the NEP. Are you satisfied with the outcome of the protest, given that it ultimately revolved around the paper leak and the resignation rather than an overhaul of the system?
I am satisfied with the outcome of the protest, but we also know that replacing one person with another who is equally bad, if not worse, is not how students will stop facing paper leaks, corruption or mismanagement in examinations. But this movement was also important in making people realise Dharmendra Pradhan left but they are facing the same system.
Did any conversation take place between CJP and AISA about the fact that the resignation was not the end goal?
We did talk about it, but we also recognise that mass movements do need to have certain very concrete agendas.
The people who came for the protest had left their jobs for three or four weeks. They were fired from their jobs because they refused to return. They had come from Maharashtra, Assam, Bengal and different parts of the country.
For them to be able to stay there and fight the system is a very strong idea, but it’s also a very big idea. It's a vague idea also. Dharmendra Pradhan resigning is a concrete thing you can point to. That is why often we see that mass movements have a very concrete agenda, so that it’s easy for people to grab onto it, to channel their agendas and energies into that.
Tell us about the collaboration with CJP, particularly in terms of ideology.
As of now, I think the CJP has not told us what its ideology is, or we have not had enough history of the CJP to piece together and figure out what their ideology is yet. It is still very new. But as long as they are fighting for students and young people, we are ready to work with them. It’s okay with us.
Student movements, particularly organisations such as AISA, have traditionally been at the forefront of mobilising people. But CJP got considerable visibility during the protest. Do you think Left organisations are still lacking when it comes to visibility?
I think CJP has a very robust system for interactions and communication with the media and a social media presence. With people like Arpit Shadma, Dhruv Rathee... they have a very big network because of their past political work. We don’t have such connections. So our social media presence is not as strong as theirs.
Do you find that people alienate themselves from the Left? How do you deal with that?
I think there has been a lot of money and years and years of propaganda to delegitimise the Left because it's the only real challenge to American imperialism in the world. There have been several regimes and leaders at different periods where the Left has been more relevant, and there has been a sustained campaign to delegitimise the Left and associate it with foreign influence instead.
Which is a funny thing because if there is any foreign influence, it is the foreign influence of fascism from Germany, from Italy and RSS ideologues. Bhagat Singh is not foreign influence. Ambedkar is not foreign influence. Savitribai and Fatima are not foreign influences.
The second thing is that we feel that this movement has already made the Left popular among people. Whatever I say, those ideas come from an understanding of the Left, from an understanding of communism, from an understanding of socialism. All of those ideas come from there. And if people connect to it, if people like it, well then they are socialists.
In the Indian context, electorally, what do you see as the next big hurdle?
I think electorally the biggest hurdle ahead is the elections, with the advent of SIR, where people are being systematically picked, handpicked and thrown out of citizenship. That is the biggest challenge to electoral democracy, I would say.
There was considerable anger against the education system that led to the mass protest and the resignation. Do you think there is not the same amount of anger against the labour system in India? Isn’t that a bigger challenge?
It is a big challenge. There is a difference in the kinds of issues that get the limelight.
For the issue of paper leaks to become so popular required a lot of resources and an extensive presence of people on social media. A very big chunk of that population was invested in the paper leak movement.
When you talk about the movement against the labour codes, or the Gurugram-Manesar protests a few months ago, a majority of the participants were also young. They were Gen Z too, but they were gig workers who did not have access to social and cultural capital. Hence, a majority of their time is not spent creating content on social media. They were labelled as disruptors and accused of being funded by foreign forces to destabilise India. But the Jantar Mantar protests gained immense popularity. So there is nothing but a class divide in this.
Students have a certain amount of security. They have a certain level of cushioning with regard to institutions. But workers, if they do not spend 18 hours a day labouring in their respective professions or jobs, then it is a question of basic survival for them. There is also a difference in how the media treats workers’ protests and how it treats popular, aesthetic protests like the Gen Z protest.