There was a general consensus in the Kerala Assembly on Tuesday that the recent High Court order banning student strikes in colleges was part of a fascist scheme to absolutely stifle dissent in the country.
It was Congress MLA V T Balram, while moving a Calling Attention motion, who first raised the suspicion that the High Court judgment echoed the fascist ideas of the BJP dispensation at the Centre. “The BJP is attempting to silent all forms of dissent, even the courts are being forced to toe their line. Now they want the campuses also to fall silent. This (the HC verdict) perhaps could serve them in their grand fascist design,” the young Congress legislator said.
Minister for higher education K T Jaleel, though his prepared reply to the Calling Attention did not contain any such thoughts, said he too suspected a fascist agenda behind the ban. “We know that the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act first began within campuses and had then spread outside. Perhaps they don't want the fire of protests to rage. They want complete silence,” Jaleel said.
Balram said the first voices of resistance against the CAA were heard from the campuses across the country. “Are others too taking up the right wing agenda of silencing the campuses,” he wondered. The minister then expressed the same concern.
Balram also said it was troubling that the courts were silent about the increasing use of religious symbols in colleges run by private managements. Jaleel later said that extreme religious organisations were found to gain the upper hand in campuses where political outlook was weak.
Along with Balram, young CPM MLA M Swaraj had also raised a Calling Attention on the issue on Tuesday. The minister's reply was common to both. Interestingly, the CPM MLA's speech did not contain any reference to the court verdict's link to fascist tendencies.
Nonetheless, Swaraj, like the minister and Balram, said a ban on politics would leave the field open for religious fanatics to take over. “This is a recipe for anarchy,” Swaraj said.
Swaraj said it was surprising that the Court had clamped such a ban when the bloody days of campus politics were a thing of the past. He reeled out a list of students, all of them belonging to Left organisations, who had been killed or badly injured during the seventies and early eighties. “Now, what we have in colleges are minor scuffles. Even this should end but you cannot ban politics in campuses on the basis of some trifling occurrences,” Swaraj said.
When his time came to speak, Balram took a dig at the LDF government and said that such a verdict was given because there were party colleges where weapons were stocked and also because there was a government that said these weapons were nothing but work implements.
Further, Swaraj said politics was a necessity at time when unfair, illegal and other questionable practices had become the norm in private self-financing. Jaleel said that the High Court verdict was just what the college managements wanted. The petitioners against campus politics included private managements and self-financing colleges, the minister said.
It was on February 26 the Kerala High Court ruled that strikes, rallies and gheraos that affect classes should not be held in school and college campuses. The court order further said no one should call upon students to participate in agitations and strikes that may cause hindrance to the smooth conduct of classes.
The higher education minister said the bill to “encourage democratic functioning of students organisations”, which he had earlier said was on the anvil, would soon be tabled in the Assembly.
