Politics-Free Campus: Good or Bad?

by Mridul Chowdhury

Published in Daily Star on April 6th, 2007
http://www.thedailystar.net/2007/04/06/d704061501124.htm

Are you someone who has been a powerless "victim" of a highly politicized and, in many ways, decaying public tertiary educational system of our country? I suspect that many of you are -- a victim of a system where university administrators get appointed based on subservience to ruling party rather than on academic and administrative merit, where teachers get selected or promoted on the basis of party affiliations, where students have to sign up as a party member in order to get hostel seats, and where on-campus gun-fights between students wings of opposing political parties (typically over issues of campus dominance) is a phenomenon that university-goers have to grow accustomed to.

A typical foreigner coming into Bangladesh for the first time is shocked to find out that the country's main centre for learning and research -- Dhaka University -- is also a "red zone" for political violence.

It is encouraging to see that the UGC has recently taken a long-due responsible role in drafting a law to de-politicize university administration and develop strict guidelines regarding on-campus politics. This is something that only a powerful caretaker government can implement since the elected political parties will never have the incentive to do it.

However, we have to be careful about the extent to which these restrictions are set in place. We have to differentiate between "political mobilization for a cause" and "political mobilization for self-interest and power." The UGC's efforts have to ensure that the first kind of mobilization is not restricted.

It is true that the nature of on-campus politics has fundamentally changed over the years (except for a few exceptions such as left-inclined political activism) -- pre-liberation was a period of ideology-based politics, the 1980s was a period of movement against autocracy; however, since the early 1990s, the nature of student politics took a dramatically different turn.
Throughout the 1980s, during the process of student mobilization against the autocratic government, the seeds of powerful, destructive and armed student politics were taking shape behind the scene.

Ironically, since 1991, when so-called pseudo-democracy was established in Bangladesh, student politics largely ceased to be about causes or ideologies but more about shameless sycophancy towards the leaders of the mainstream political parties with a single-minded goal of power and wealth.

The parties have also gained significantly in letting this perpetuate since the rule of today's political game in Bangladesh has become terrorism against the political opponents -- and students wings have become the main lathial bahini (the militia wing) for that purpose.
Despite the fact that student politics has become polluted over the years, we still have to realize that university campuses are the havens for freedom of expression and political mobilization if needed. If you take away the right to engage in free thinking in universities, you root out the heart of what "democracy" is all about in a country.

In that light, UGC's recent attempt to "ban campus politics" needs to be supported with caution. If they ban the right to form student wings of mainstream political parties inside the campus, it is acceptable. But if they ban the right to congregate and discuss what is right and what is wrong with the country's politics and mobilize around certain political causes, then we have an issue to speak out against.

I hope that the UGC and the caretaker government focuses not on banning political mobilization in campuses altogether but on the real issues that pollute the academic environment, including increased accountability of UGC itself. Some recommendations for rules regarding on-campus politics include:
- Make illegal all causes of session jams, such as internal strikes by students or teachers and teachers' non-accountability regarding grading or exams.
- University administrators cannot be political appointees.
- Active party politics among university teachers must be eradicated.
- Activities of student wings of mainstream political parties may not be allowed on campus.
- Strict rules/ laws against appointment or promotion of teachers based on party affiliation.
- The control of hostel seats and other administrative matters by student political leaders has to be completely eradicated.

Bangladesh is an independent country today because of student activism; Bangladesh got rid of autocracy because of student activism. Just because we now temporarily have a seemingly "benevolent, just and honest" government does not mean that we will always enjoy such privilege. And when we don't, it will have to be the students who will come forward to change the way things are.

Students are the most important conscience of a society; they fill a role that no other institution or group can -- since all the rest are bound by some agenda or the other. If today, we make or support laws that can potentially be misused by any authority to squelch the voice of students, we may be setting ourselves up for yet another round of unstoppable 'force' from taking control of the country for a long time to come.