The Pitfalls of Student Politics in Bangladesh

The student affiliates of the major political parties have always had a major hand in the decades long perverse politicking in Bangladesh.   Time and again mutually non-deterrent and devastating clashes have shut down the major cities in Bangladesh. Student leaders of these political groups often find lucrative contracts in the private sector; alternatively they become MP’s and cabinet secretaries.  It pays, then, to be in these party affiliated student groups and because it pays to posture in Parliament, student groups bandy about threatening other groups and often street and university posturing falls down in cries and flames.

There are three such major student groups.  The Bangladesh Chhatra Daal or the Bangladesh Student League is ingratiating affiliated with the Awami League, the BNP is conjoined with activists from the Jatiyatabadi Chhatra League while  the Jamaat-e-Islami is rearing the Islami Chhatra Shibir.

As the Daily Star recently exhorted in an op-ed, the Awami League affiliated, ” BCL cadres are reportedly thriving on booming admission business in the colleges.”  

Moreover,”the BCL has been committing all sorts of excesses in the educational institutions that couldn’t have nor did it escape the AL high command’s notice. The prime minister herself rebuked and warned the errant BCL activists of dire consequences. But all the warnings and exhortations have gone unheeded with similar rapidity with which these were spewed out by leaders, with the result that they have only provided sinews to the culture of impunity they think they are heir to by virtue of being associated with ruling party.

Today, the Daily Star reported on the  terror inducing tactics that Shibir, the Jamaat affiliated group has been using to have its run of a university in the district of Rajshahi.

The Daily Star reports, “Shibir, the student wing of Jamaat, has been able to carry out criminal activities and get away with it since the pro-Jamaat teachers have tactfully recruited their men in the RU administration as teachers, officials, proctors and even the vice-chancellor.”

A quick run down of the contemporary events and recent history shows how brutal these student run groups can be.  And, they often are as brutal as they can be.

Again, we look to Daily Star reportage:

To maintain its supremacy on the campus, Shibir keeps pressuring the university people by issuing threats directly and indirectly, sources said.

Around 60 incidents of clashes among the student wings of different political parties have taken place on RU campus since 1971, which left 28 people killed and over 2,100 injured, sources in the RU administration said.

The university remained closed for over 600 days because of the clashes.

Shibir has been involved in most of the clashes since 1980s after it started its activities on the campus in 1980. Towards the end of the ’80s, left -leaning student wings including Chhatra Moitree became weak organisationally, which helped Shibir establish its supremacy.

In the latest incident on Tuesday, Shibir men hacked to death Faruk Hossain, an activist of Bangladesh Chhatra League, in Shah Mokhdum Hall. Around 100 people were injured in the overnight clashes between the activists of BCL and Shibir following the death.

Sources said Shibir killed Faruk as a revenge for the killing of RU unit Shibir general secretary Sharifuzzaman Nomani on March 13 last year.

Consider that though Representation of the People’s Order (RPO) the founding document that in 1972 set up the rules of the electoral game in Bangladesh forbids any major political to have affiliations with students, teachers, professionals and unions, nevertheless each major political party has survived through major anti-democratic turns because of their grass-roots and ground-swelling affiliations with student groups, or rather, student parties.  Though the Awami League moved to sever her personal ties with its student affiliate, all indications show it is still politics as usual.  

Still, it is in the Awami League’s interest to be seen as the sensible party of governance.  When its student wing is implicated in rigging admissions and exam seating, somethings got to give.  So it is little surprise that the student committee at Dhaka College has been dissolved.  That  particular group of students within the Awami League student affiliate was allegedly responsible for drawing in a lucrative industry to control admissions within the University.  No wonder that these bad seeds had to go.

But this is hardly enough.   University education in Bangladesh is being hijacked to serve gross political interests.   This cannot continue if Bangladesh is to grow strong, and stable, a mature democracy.  Going forward  the Awami League and future governing parties might do well to institute some oversight mechanism that disallows a member of these student groups to seek political officer within a certain term of their graduation.