In UoH students’ union election, Muhammed Shameem (Right) from MSF contesting for the post of president and Jiyad Hussain (Left) from Fraternity Movement contesting for the post of vice president.
C. Yahya
University of Hyderabad (UoH) facing it’s students union election on 26th September 2019. Recent UoH election got attention and significance in which Hindutva organisations had major upper-hand power inside and outside the campus. Extreme right wing forces ABVP co-Nexus with Brahmanical-Kamma Reddy lobby of administration which lead by UoH Vice Chancellor Appa Rao who was forefront on the institutional murder of Rohit Vemula. Which appropriated and en-rooted its anti-cast, anti-Muslim and anti-reservation attitudes in the campus.
Post independence witnessed the conventional narratives of national/secular binaries enhanced with the Savarna left fantasies of J.N.U in 1970s. Mandal- Masjid momentum which address the political discourse of caste, religion, gender, region, language etc. UoH was one of the initial campus experimental momentum in which students from less social capital and underprivileged sections such as Dalits, Muslims, Adivasis who entered into campus and their entitlements bodies and organised forms of politics disturbed by the Savarna- merit consciousness in campus. Aftermath of OBC reservation in 2006 increased the number of Muslim students entered into campus who were the other in the Brahmin-Hindu nationalist spaces of Universities. Thus the history of Bahujans in campus itself is marked as the history of Muslims. Students Islamic Organisation (SIO) and Muslim Students Federation (MSF), the two Muslim political organisations instrumental on the legitimate existence and space of Muslim students one who entered into university spaces. The engagements of Muslim political organisations with Ambedkerities, Adivasi, Bahujans, Kashmiris, North East and other oppressed nationalities envisaged it’s idea of social justice, emancipation and liberation. Muslim political organisations stood for self respect through different platforms against the inferior consciousness of Muslimness vacuum in campus. These Muslim political engagements witnessed the resistance of Rohit Vemula movement.
Aftermath of Rohit Vemula momentum of Muslim/Islam political organisations MSF and SIO became more visible in university spaces which hesitated by Students Federation of India (SFI). They equate SIO with the mass genocidal right wing groups. During the late colonial times evolution of the term communal in India placed against nationalist/secular which imagined national as partnership among Hindus and shattering of that alliance reinforced national as unity among Hindus it’s usual it’s anti Muslim job invested upon MSF by the Savarna- Hindu left. This commune spread the industry of Islamophobia which they excluded the Muslims as a category of students who were associated in organised Muslim organisations. The alliance with Dalit- organisations (ASA) Tribal organisations (TSF) and sub caste political consciousness (DSU) which left negate their ‘class’ stand and on the category of religion which terrorised Muslims,communal Islamic state etc which exposed the SFI’s Islamophobia in direct manner.
The so-called anti fascist alliance and restoring campus democracy against extreme right wing organisation ABVP is trap to Muslims in which the rhetoric phobia of ABVP is created to disregard the Muslim politics in campus. In other sense for the power equations caste considered as internal unity in progressive secular liberal Hindu brand and category of religion placed undialogable other which branded as Muslim communal and to should vanished from Hindu public sphere. Which shows the Islamophobic mindset.
The Muslim students organisations asserted their politics who were the prime victims of Hindutva fascism on the eve of Tahrir programme on NRC issue, lynchings exhibition conducted by SIO and abrogation of Kashmir issue in which UoH administration gave show-cause notices from administration and constantly death-threat against Muslim students from ABVP. The so-called democratic, freedom of expression saviors strategically silenced on Muslim political subjects and questions and their exclusion from anti fascist alliance also. The negation of these Muslim political experiences forecasted they considers Muslims as mere vote-banks. So the MSF- Fraternity alliance upholds the politics of self-respect, legitimate existence of Muslim politics. The alliance reject the victim-hood and Muslims merely as vote-banks. The differentiates of oppressed unity and social justice enhanced from its theological liberation which problamatize the conventional secular/liberal framework. In UoH students’ union election, Muhammed Shameem from MSF contesting for the post of president and Jiyad Hussain from Fraternity Movement contesting for the post of vice president. Bahujan Students Front in solidarity with the alliance from outside.
C.Yahya is a PhD Candidate at the Department of History, University of Hyderabad
