The First Election At JNU After The 'Sedition' Incident

The SFI-AISA alliance in JNU polls is an admission of their weakness in a Left citadel

- Bula Devi

Something must have gone horribly wrong in the left- leaning, liberal thinking sections of the educated, urban middle classes in India for their much-vaunted and much-reviled ‘citadel’— Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi—to be witnessing what many are calling an “existential crisis” of the Left. Once the cradle of politician-ideologues such as CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury and his predecessor Prakash Karat, the university became the site of an apparently unlikely alliance of leftist forces this year: the CPI(M)-affiliated Students Federation of India (SFI) joined hands, for the first time ever, with All India Students Association (AISA), the students’ wing of the CPI(ML) (Liberation), for the September 9 students union (JNUSU) election. Their main rival was the BJP affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), which had been trying—especially since the BJP took power at the Centre in 2014— to break out of its historically marginal position in JNU politics.