aisa aisa

4.9.14
In the Conveners Report School GBMs this year, SFI gave a call to Unite to Defeat AISA. In the election,
the new DSF-AISF Left Progressive Front has given the slogan to Reject Right-Wing, Defeat AISA. Strangely, both
these groups/platforms speak of the threat posed by the communal forces and the ABVP. What is this strange
model of resisting communal ABVP by calling to Defeat AISA?! Why is it that when the Modi Government is in
power, the CPI-CPIM student outfits in different permutations and combinations are only desperate to Defeat
AISA?
Today, one of biggest challenges for secularism is to counter the efforts of the BJP-RSS to rapidly normalize and
mainstream the poisonous communal mythology of Bangladeshi infiltrators, love jehad, madarsas as terrorist
dens (i.e accusing every ordinary madarsa-going Muslim of being a terrorist) and Muslim population increase.
The problem is that these myths that are the favourite fodder of the RSS hate-campaign, gain strength and credibility
because many so-called non-BJP political parties including the Congress and the CPIM, also deploy the same
myths. The result is that the BJP finds it easier to pass off its communal ideology as common sense.
Let us take a closer look at the CPIMs own contribution to creating a communal and Islamophobic common sense,
echoing RSS-BJP myths. Does the SFI have any response to these damning facts?
On the eve of Kerala Assembly polls in 2010 with the intention of garnering a Hindu vote-bank, CPI(M)s Polit
Bureau member and former CM Achuthanandan raised the bogey of conversion to Islam, love jehad and
population increase, saying, In 20 years India and Kerala will become a Muslim-dominated world. Youngsters
are being given money and are being lured to convert to Islam marry Muslim women and then give birth to
Muslim children so that they can multiply. (watch the video here - http://ibnlive.in.com/news/cm-sees-
muslim-conspiracy-kerala-outraged/127497-37.html) The CPI(M) never took any action against Achuthanandan
for this outrageous, blatantly communal remark, that echoed and reinforced all the RSS poisonous myths
about Muslims. (This year, the Congress CM of Kerala, Oomen Chandy, has also reinforced the love jehad
bogey by putting forward concocted statistics of Hindu women converting to Islam. In Kerala, clearly, CPIM
and Congress both compete with BJP/RSS by speaking the BJPs own communal language!)
In 2002-03, CPI(M)s then W Bengal CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharya raised the bogey of illegal Bangladeshi
infiltrators that Modi is raising today. Buddhadeb then met the NDA Govt Home Minister LK Advani in a cordial
breakfast talk about how to tackle the problem of Bangladeshi infiltrators. (http://www.telegraphindia.com/
1030305/asp/bengal/story_1735872.asp) This was a constant refrain for Buddhadeb a Frontline story of 2007
again quotes him speaking in the same language as BJP on the theme of illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators http:/
/www.frontline.in/static/html/fl2411/stories/20070615003701400.htm.
In the wake of the bomb blast at the American Centre in Kolkata in January 2002, CPI(M)s then W Bengal CM
Buddhadeb Bhattacharya declared madarsas to be ISI dens.
Again, the Wikileaks cables revealed how on 20 June 2008, Buddhadeb told the US Consul General, Kolkata
about Muslim extremism being on the rise in West Bengal, saying that madarsas are the breeding ground
for Islamic radicals and that these fundamentalists were behind the Nandigram agitation.
SFI and CPI(M) have repeatedly claimed that the movement in Nandigram is not a farmers protest against
eviction but a result of communal propaganda spread by Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Hind. ( Indian Express 8-9 Jan
2010). This very accusation an attempt to fan up deep-seated communal prejudices against the peasants
struggle reeks of communalism. The fact is that the Jamait-e-ulema-e-Hind that participated in the
Nandigram agitation had been hailed earlier by former CM Jyoti Basu as freedom fighters!
Late Socialist veteran Surendra Mohan, in a 2007 article in the Mainstream, wrote
about how the West Bengal Govt was playing an Islamophobic card and blaming
Nandigram on the high influx of Bangladeshis in the area (http://
www.mainstreamweekly.net/article499.html)
To top it all, the CPIM Malayalam organ Deshabhimani published on 1 March 2013
a full-page ad of the Modi Government of Gujarat, during Modis election campaign
to become PM! (see the picture)
The above quotes and facts clearly show how towering CPIM leaders, Chief Ministers of
their former Governments in Kerala and West Bengal, helped to sow and nurture the seeds of communal
CPIM-SFIs Track Record of Pandering to
Communal Common Sense!
P.T.O.
Shweta Raj, Sandeep Saurav, for Central Campaign Committee, AISA, JNU
common sense and today the BJP in Kerala and Bengal is reaping the harvest. This very year, 240 CPIM workers
joined BJP in a public ceremony in Kerala http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Thiruvananthapuram/240-cpim-
members-join-bjp/article6286151.ece) and 500 CPIM workers joined BJP in Nadia district of West Bengal (http://
www.thestatesman.net/news/57640-500-cpm-workers-join-bjp.html). When CPIM itself nurtures communal ideas
among its own mass base, is it any surprise when that mass base shifts to the BJP?
Deals With ABVP in JNU
In the Conveners report School GBMs, the SFI, DSF, AISF, joined hands openly with ABVP and NSUI to vote against
the AISA. It is another matter, that even this unholy united front failed to defeat the AISAs Conveners reports
except by an extremely slender margin in SSS. The School GBMs make it clear that none but the AISA have the
credibility, commitment and therefore the strength to defeat the ABVP.
The SFI, in its own leaflet dated 27.08.2014 accused the DSF of having won the JNUSU President post in 2012 by
having a pact with ABVP! Of course, we can all recall the infamous compromise deed secretly signed by the SFI
with the ABVP in the Vasant Vihar thana in 2002, betraying the efforts to bring ABVP perpetrators of violence to
justice.
Opportunistic or pragmatic communalism by so-called secular and Left political parties and
student groups, CPIM-SFI-style, can only strengthen the programmatic communal fascism of the
RSS-BJP. Genuine Left and secular-democratic forces need to build a consistent and uncompromising
resistance not only to overt acts of communal violence, but to challenge the communal common sense,
and expose and resist all those who compromise with and capitulate to communal forces.
In these extremely challenging times for the anti-communal movement, it was AISA alone that offered a
consistent resistance among the students and youth of Delhi. The JNUSU President from the DSF (erstwhile
SFI), failed to mobilize against Modis use of a DU college as an election platform in February 2013 - it was the
AISA that mobilized hundreds of students of JNU, DU and Jamia to protest. It was the AISA-led JNUSU that
took a team to Banaras to campaign against Modi, and that braved police crackdown to hold a protest following
the Supreme Court verdict (16 May 2014) nailing the false framing of innocent Muslims by the Gujarat govt.
in the Akshardham blasts case (of 2002). It was the AISA-led JNUSU that boldly protested, campaigned and
exposed every act of communal witch-hunt.
As we make our ideological and political choices, elect a JNUSU that can be a robust and committed part of
this uncompromising resistance to communal fascism. We appeal to JNU students to stand by AISA, with its
firm commitment and history of resisting communal forces head on, struggling for justice against communal
profiling and fake cases and fake encounters, and challenging the all pervasive communal common sense.
SSS
Abha Arya
Debottam Saha
Rama Naga
Sandip Mondal
Shashi Bhushan Gupta
SIS
Meilem Wangnaolim
Minhaj Ahmed Khan
N Sai Balaji
Pankaj Singh Kushwaha
Sukrita Lahiri
SLL&CS
Chetan Tyagi
Hamid Raza
Meenal Gupta
Waqqas Mahmood
Vijay Kumar
AISA Panel for JNUSU Election 2014
SAA
Samia Khan
Central Panel
President: Ashutosh Kumar
Vice-President: Anant Prakash Narayan
Gen. Secy. Chintu Kumari
Jt. Secy.: Shafqat Hussain Butt