Gaurav J. Pathania - The University as a Site of Resistance: Identity and Student Politics

The University as a Site of Resistance

The University as a Site of Resistance

Identity and Student Politics

Gaurav J. Pathania

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ISBN-13 (print edition): 978-0-19-948841-4

ISBN-10 (print edition): 0-19-948841-X

ISBN-13 (eBook): 978-0-19-909369-4

ISBN-10 (eBook): 0-19-909369-5

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To Michelle

Contents

TABLES

MAPS

While I was on my morning walk, a small crowd gathered around a tree near the library caught my attention. It was the fifth day of my pilot field study at Osmania University in Hyderabad in December 2012 and I enjoyed walking around campus, observing student life. Inquisitively, I approached the crowd. I thought that some students may be protesting or preparing for an agitation that day, which is routine at Osmanias College of Arts and Social Sciences (known as Arts College). Making my way through the crowd, I found that they had taken down the body of a young student who had hanged himself. One student had tears in his eyes as he read the suicide note found on the body. The letter stated the financial crisis his family faced and how his education did not lead to a job. The letter concluded with an appeal to the government to grant separate statehood to the Telangana region in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

Two students made calls to the family of the deceased young man. I heard spectators commenting that this area had become a suicide point. Listening to the discussion, I discovered that the victim was not a student of Arts College but of another college of Osmania, and that this was part of a growing trend, whereby outsiders committed suicide at this suicide point. Later, I returned to Narmada Research Scholars (NRS) hostel where I was staying.

After about an hour, I noticed a larger crowd of students carrying the corpse, holding banners and shouting the slogan Jai Telangana, Jai Jai Telangana. I stopped at the nearby tea stall to see if I could understand what the commotion was about. Media and police personnel were sipping tea and discussing the incident as if it was routine for them. As I approached Arts College where students were protesting, I saw that they had blocked the main road and burned an effigy of the chief minister. Approximately 25 student leaders took turns addressing the gathering and each renewed their demand for a separate Telangana state, chanting, abhi nahi to kabhi nahi! [(Telangana,) now or never!].

After a few hours of protest, police warned the crowd to disperse but the students were determined to stay. In the meantime, a government minister arrived and met student leaders. I noticed that from all the student leaders speaking to the crowd, only one of them could speak fluent English. As a result, he had been nominated to serve as the national spokesperson of Osmania University-Student Joint Action Committee (OU-JAC). He told the media that it was an unfortunate fact that thousands of students had lost their lives in the 50-year long struggle for separate statehood, while the government continues to play its dirty politics. Amidst this rally, I was curious to understand how an outsider could leave his college to commit suicide near the Arts College building. This is a sacred place for Telangana activists, one leader told me. While chatting with him, I came to know that he faced more than 100 criminal charges since he led the biggest student agitation in 2009 for the same cause. It shocked me even more when he told me, There are 50 other student activists who are facing a similar number of charges and need to appear in court almost every week. He expressed himself in broken English with the help of his friend. Once he left, I enquired about his age and was told that he was the senior most student leader of Arts College, more than 40 years old, and had gained tremendous respect among students since he took an oath to remain unmarried to serve the people of Telangana. There were other activists who had made the same promise. During the protest rally, I met a much older man, an alumnus of the campus who had written 80 novels and stories, and had publicly vowed to produce a book on Telangana every month until it became a state. Such was their passion that some students even used Telangana as their surname. This piqued my interest in such an intense movement for statehood that I felt the need to explore this university as a site of resistance.

This book is the outcome of nearly a year of fieldwork in Hyderabad and presents an ethnography of activists everyday life on campus. How did their activism deal with the issues and problems of the Telangana region? How did their demand for Telangana statehood succeed? The volume also provides a theoretical debate on old and new social movements and argues that the Telangana movement should be viewed as new social movement. This book attempts to establish the Telangana movement as a cultural movement, rather than merely a political one, as many scholars argue.

Social movement is a process of consciousness and representation that requires material and cultural resources for its existence. But consciousness of cultural resources has largely been given an industrial answer. Culture cannot be reduced to mere economic or political factors, it cannot be understood, either, without understanding the economic context that surrounds and shapes it. What Telangana student activists gained after joining an institution of higher education is access to cultural capital and consciousness of cultural resources unique to their identity. That is why cultural identities, whether custom or costume, food or festivals, language or life-world, caste or region, are instrumental to the functioning of Indian politics.

Without the help of my activist-friends from Arts College, Osmania University, Hyderabad, and the English Foreign Language University, this research would not possible. I would like to thank Dr Kolluri Chiranjeevi, Dr Sujatha Surepally, Kota Rajesh, Mohan Dharawath, Mothe Sammiaha, P. Mukhesh, Panthukala Srinivas, Shankar Sampangi, Stalin, Sunil Shetty, and Srinivas Gellu for their unwavering support. Similarly, several discussions with the late Professor G. Krishna Reddy of Arts College compelled me to reflect on the importance of the concept of Joint Action Committee (JACs) in the Telangana movement. His sudden demise in 2016 was a huge loss for scholars working on Telangana issues. Several interactions with Professor Keshav Rao Jadhav, one of the key figures of Telangana movement, shaped my understanding of a mass movement.