Jadavpur University student death: Why Left student bodies are facing the heat

Ever since the death of Swapnadeep Kundu, a first year student of Jadavpur University (JU), on August 9, the last bastion of Left student politics in the state is under siege.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee described the university as “atankapur”, meaning a place to be dreaded. “I go everywhere except Jadavpur University. They (students of the university) may be good in studies, but that does not invariably make them good human beings. They lack humanity,” the chief minister said about the university, which has been ranked by the National Institutional Ranking Framework as fourth best in the country this year.

Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari raising the pitch a notch higher called for uprooting tukde-tukde gang, a pejorative political catchphrase the BJP uses to defame its critics. By tukde-tukde gang, the BJP leader was referring to activists of ultra-Left body All India Revolutionary Students Federation (AIRSF), who held a black flag demonstration against Adhikari when he was addressing his party’s youth and student functionaries in front of the university on August 17.

TMC, BJP lead charge

Taking cues from their leaders, the student wings of both the ruling TMC and the BJP have intensified their attacks against the student bodies of the Left, blaming them for the mysterious death of the 17-year-old student at the university’s main boys’ hostel.

For the brickbats, the Left student bodies are only to be blamed.

This is not the first time the 67-year-old prestigious university, where the Left student bodies rule the roost, hit the headlines for wrong reasons.

Kundu was found dead after falling from the balcony of the second-floor of the hostel inside the campus within days of enrolling at the university. A few hours before the fatal fall, he had called his mother to ask her to take him home as he was very scared at the university. His death was linked to ragging as he was allegedly under severe mental and physical trauma due to harassment in the hostel.

The police claimed to have “corroborating evidences” of Kundu and 17 other first year students of the A-2 block of the main hostel being subject to ragging from the night of August 6, the day they moved in. In the name of giving “introduction” before “seniors”, the deceased student was ragged for about two hours confining him to a room from 8 pm on the ill-fated night, police sources investigating the case said. He was also allegedly subjected to sexual harassment.

Ragging rampant

The freshers had been forced to cough out Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,500 monthly to foot bills of parties organised by seniors or as donations to the union fund, police claimed.

So far 13 people have been arrested. All of them are current and former students.

Role of a students’ body of the university called Collective is primarily under the scanner for the thriving culture of ragging on the campus. The ultra-Left Collective has many avatars. Its members in the art faculty of the university constitute the Forum for Art Students (FAS). Its members in the science faculty manifest themselves as We The Independent (WTI) and in the Engineering Faculty they are known as Democratic Students’ Forum (DSF).

The DSF and WTI control the students’ unions in engineering and science departments respectively. The Students Federation of India (SFI), the students’ arm of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), runs the arts faculty students’ union.

All the main accused in the Kundu death case Sourabh Chowdhury, Deepsekhar Dutta, Manotosh Ghosh, Muhammad Asif, Muhammad Arif, Ankan Sardar and Asit Sardar are reportedly members of the Collective. This has prompted many to point fingers at the leftists for the death of the student that has severely dented the university’s reputation.

SFI under attack

The SFI’s strong opposition to installation of CCTV cameras on the campus and at the hostels gave more ammunition to the TMC and the BJP to attack the Left forces in the university for the student’s tragic death. The SFI, however, strongly refutes attempts to equate it with ultra-left forces.

The Collective claims itself as an independent, democratic students’ political organisation.

One of the branches of the collective FAS was formed in June 2005, following police lathicharge on students at the university during the erstwhile Left Front regime.

The Collective was vocal during anti-land acquisition movements in Nandigram and Singur. It was also at the forefront of the ‘No vote to BJP’ campaign during the 2021 assembly elections.

Administrative lapses

In the light of the recent incident, it is natural that questions have been raised about the role of these Leftist students’ organisations on the campus.

All this, however, does not shift focus from the administrative lapses, which to certain extent is the result of ongoing tussle between the state government and the governor.

The JU has no full-time vice-chancellor since the end of the tenure of Suranjan Das on May 31. This has adversely affected the institution’s administrative functioning.

After Das’ departure, Governor CV Ananda Bose, who is the ex-officio chancellor of the university, appointed Amitabha Datta, the pro-VC of the varsity, as the officiating vice-chancellor. Datta resigned on August 4 ostensibly after being asked by the governor. The JU did not even have an officiating VC on the day the horrific incident took place.

It was only on Saturday (August 19) that the governor appointed Buddadeb Sau, a professor in the varsity's mathematics department, as the officiating VC.