Brute force back on Bengal campuses

Street violence is now steadily engulfing Bengal. The society has long been divided into two opposing political camps, between the ruling Left and the TMC-led opposition, and now as the crucial state assembly election is due in the first half of next year, the growing violence is indicating the bloody turn that it may take.

While in rural Bengal the CPI(M) and the TMC are engaged in bloody turf war, the reflection of that has permeated on the college campus. On Thursday last, in a spate of violence in a number of colleges, one student was killed and another was seriously injured.

While in some colleges the clashes between the CPI(M)'s students' wing SFI and the TMC's students wing TMCP took place over the issue of elections for the student unions, in other cases the provocation came from outside. Today, the SFI observed a state-wide strike in all educational institutes protesting the killing of their supporter.

Apprehending further violence, a number of schools decided to declare a holiday today. Ever since the general elections in 2009, campus violence has claimed lives of 15 students in the state. The TMC has been making similar claim.

Violence is not restricted to clashes between rival student unions; sporadic gherao of the college administration has become the norm of the day. Recently, the principal of Habra Sri Chaitanya College in North 24 Parganas suffered a cardiac arrest after being gheraoed by the students for more than 12 hours.

On Thursday last, while one student was chased down and fatally attacked in a Howrah College by the rival group of students, two groups of students clashed in south Kolkata and then blockaded the roads for hours resulting in a collapse of traffic movement in that area. On both occasions the cause of the trouble was not serious.

Ashim Chatterjee, a veteran Naxalite leader of the 1960s, who rose from student politics, feels that the politics of today is bereft of any ideology and because of that the sole focus is now on exercising brute force to impose political control over the student bodies.

Debjani Sengupta, a senior teacher in a Birbhum college, feels that the climate is so vitiated that it might continue to hamper studies in colleges for the next few years.

True to this picture, a growing number of students are leaving Bengal to pursue higher studies in other places such aas Delhi and elsewhere.

The vice chancellor of a state university was recently heard of advising some students to take this path as the coming years might lead to more violence on campus.