Student politics should be about honesty and learning leadership through involvement. It has a proud history, with students leading important movements such as the 1952 Language Movement, the 1954 Jukta Front Election , the 1966 Six-Point Movement, the 1969 Mass Uprising, the 1970 General Election, the 1971 Independence Movement, and the fall of dictator Hasina’s rule in 2024.
Many people says that the university is the birthplace of national leaders. The country’s prominent leaders learn politics at the university and later play important roles at the national level. Therefore, students should be involved in university politics. It generally seems that this idea is both logical and important.
If we refute each argument separately, will remain in the same position? Let’s find out. First of all, let me clarify that my writing is not against student politics within the university, but rather against the involvement of conventional students and teachers in party politics. Now, back to the main discussion on the student movement and party politics. We see university students leading important movements of national significance, but not under the banner of any political party.
This proves that university students do not need any party tag to play a role in national politics. They need issues of national importance. Whenever the students saw the need for national issues such as the state language movement, the war of independence, the anti-autocratic movement, the movement against discrimination in job recruitment and the movement for freedom from fascism, they jumped into the highway .
We do not see any conventional students movement firstly invited movements in 2018 Quota Reform Movement. The ‘Anti-discrimination Student Movement ‘ of 2024 was not under any political banner. Rather, the anti-quota movement of ‘Bangladesh Chhatra Odhikar Parishad’ of 2018 or the mass upsurge of the students and people of 2024 would not have been successful under the banner of any political student movement.
We may be thinking that more national leaders are coming out of college and university students, tail-wagging student politics has played a role in creating national leaders. The idea isn’t really right. Higher education, not partisan student politics, helped them become national leaders.
Apart from this, an immortal line of poet Helal Hafiz’s poem ‘Banned Editorial’ ‘Now is the youth, the best time to go to war’ is relevant here. In the natural law, the youth are the first voice of protest against oppression. That’s also why university or college students lead national issues. Young people don’t want to tolerate injustice.
Today, our country’s conventional student politics is mostly about flattery, gang activity, and power struggles. The bigger the gang leader, the bigger the student leader. In the past, students were involved to protect student rights and help others. Now, under the guise of “student politics,” many students are involved in criminal activities like taking control of dormitory seats, ragging, extortion, manipulating contracts, and influencing teacher appointments. They no longer focus on protecting student rights. Instead, they use the ruling party’s influence to engage in illegal activities. This is not the real purpose of student politics. Students should get involved to make a positive difference, uphold good values, and work toward meaningful change.
Universities in our country differ from those in other countries. When a political party is in power, it uses its student organizations to control campuses and dorms. First-year students are often pressured to join these organizations, becoming tools for the ruling party. During the Awami League’s rule, groups like Chhatra Dal or Islamic Chhatra Shibir remain mostly inactive. Likewise, when the BNP-Jamaat alliance is in power, Chhatra League members go into hiding to afraid Islamic Chhatrashibir.
Students should be involved in politics through a student union, which provides a way to communicate with university administrations. In public universities, the student union has been inactive for a long time. After more than three decades, the Dhaka University Student Union election was finally held in 2019-2020, but the university administration showed little interest, and it has not continued regularly. The situation is similar in other universities: Jahangirnagar University’s last election was held in 1992, Rajshahi University’s in 1990, and Chittagong University’s in 1990. Islamic University has no system for a student union.
Now, students of public universities in Bangladesh dream of creating a fair and welfare-based country. This vision can begin by bringing back student union elections that are free from the ruling party’s control in universities.
