Dream Deferred

Students in Punjab are trying to revive the National Students Federation along with its progressive spirit

By Babar Mirza

There was a time in Pakistan's history when students not only held independent opinions on the kind of education they were receiving but also had the moral audacity to agitate for the changes they wanted to see in the educational system. The students' movements at that time were not known for hostel-parasitism, petty violence or political banditry. Rather, the focus was on the problems faced by the students in their schools, colleges and universities. Students faced grave problems immediately after the partition. Karachi, the federal capital at the time, found itself bustling with youthful immigrants for whom the high costs and poor standards of public education were unacceptable. However, the response of students was not passive cynicism but a progressive belief in change through social mobilisation. The student organisation that led this movement through most of the 1950s and 1960s was the National Students Federation.

Since the NSF was a continuation of Democratic Students Federation (DSF), it becomes important to look at the latter's history as well. The DSF was formed in 1950 by half a dozen students at the Dow Medical College (DMC) in Karachi. According to Dr Haroon, one of the founding members of DSF, these students were inspired to act by progressive-Marxist ideas of change but their agenda was to address specific issues faced by the students. Hectic efforts to mobilise students at other educational institutions produced sweeping electoral results for DSF in 1952. A year later, DSF was also the leading representative of students' agitation for reduced tuition fees, better libraries and classrooms and a proper university campus. Not surprisingly, the protesting students were baton-charged, tear-gassed, injured and arrested, and, on Jan 8, 1953, six of them were killed when police opened fire at a rally. However, the students did not relent and put up such a show of democratic strength as to compel the education minister Fazlur Rehman to resign and the recently inducted Prime Minister Mohammad Ali Bogra to order the construction of Karachi University campus.

In the general crackdown against leftist organisation in 1954, the DSF was banned, along with the Communist Party of Pakistan, the Progressive Writers Association and the labour unions. However, in 1955-56, new students picked up the old threads and revived the DSF under the name of the National Students Federation.

The NSF prevailed in the electoral politics at campuses throughout the 1960s (not through a culture of fear as is the case with IJT, but through a culture of constructive debates). It was also the main mobilising force during protests in 1962-63 against the three-year degree course and in 1968-69 against the dictatorship of President Ayub Khan.

The issue-based approach of the DSF and the NSF during the 50s and early 60s kept them quite open to diverse progressive ideologies. A liberal Sindhi could get nominated by the mohajir-dominated DSF for union elections in DMC, and a woman could contest the post of the NSF joint secretary in the Karachi University. However, from 1965 onwards, the NSF suffered one split after another due to differences of opinion in ideological debates. The first split, for example, took place on the China-or-Moscow question. These splits shifted the organisational approach of the NSF from the issues in education to the issues in politics. The progressive students' movement didn't die during the 70s and 80s and was fairly active in crucial democratic movements, however, misdirected -- and sometimes misinformed -- focus on ideological issues became its perennial ailment.

After the decision of the present government to restore the student unions, some students in Punjab are trying to revive the NSF along with its progressive spirit. Students from Islamabad, Lahore and Faisalabad met in August in the city and decided to "resurrect the NSF as a non-partisan group while trying to keep all the parties of the Left in confidence". These students have since been trying to reach out to students in different parts of the province.

While prevailing circumstances often affect the fate of a political movement, NSF's history shows that organisational viability can only be ensured by consistent hard work and a ready-to-listen ideology. During the political events of the last two years, many students have become politically active and many others are yearning to find an agreeable platform for change. However, a lot of work needs to be done to convince these students for collective action through a progressive forum. It is very important for the student leaders to realise that their audience is their fellow students, who may have slightly different notions of the ideal but pretty much the same plans of action. Indeed, it would be quite unfortunate if the large reservoir of politicised youth was left to decay in various isolated ideals.