It is 2.30 pm on a weekday afternoon, and an ominous quietude hangs over Jadavpur University (JU). Pro-JNU posters adorn the walls of the arts department’s union room, while some students, immersed in conversation, huddle near the Worldview bookstore — a meeting point of sorts. The topic of discussion is a pro-azaadi rally by a group that calls itself Radical.

This is JU, one of the country’s most politically active campuses and home to the #Hokkolorob (let there be noise) movement that shook the state government, galvanised disparate student groups and convinced thousands to march in the heart of Kolkata demanding justice, in September 2014. “#Hokkolorob was the first time I saw and took part in a student movement. We had street theatre and poster campaigns in my previous college but it was more awareness-oriented. #Hokkolorob was about belonging to a place; the war of Hogwarts, as it were. What it did was create a place for conversation, where one could ask ‘why’ and ‘what was happening politically around the world’,” says Unmesh Dublay, a second-year student of film studies at JU.

The likening to Harry Potter’s fictitious alma mater is not without reason. On February 19, when an ABVP rally, goaded by BJP national secretary Rahul Sinha’s cry to “beat up” JU students for indulging in “anti-national” activities in the name of solidarity with JNU, almost reached the gates of JU, its teaching and non-teaching staff formed a human chain around the students to “stop any form of violence”. “This is the kind of atmosphere we have here. Professors encourage us to think and question instead of stamping out any dissent,” says Shoma Roy, a second-year student of the engineering department.

However, a little more than a year ago, the university was literally under siege. It began with a peaceful demonstration organised by students. “The university authorities didn’t respond to a complaint of molestation by a woman student,” says Roy. In the early hours of September 17, 2014, Kolkata police trooped into the campus after protestors gheraoed vice-chancellor Abhijit Chakraborty and a few other members of the administration. Students were lathicharged, and many women protestors were molested and groped. “That’s when we got together to take a stand. That’s how #Hokkolorob was born,” says Dublay. More than a year later, JU finds itself in the midst of another student’s movement. Since the tragic death of Rohith Vemula in January this year, various bodies in the campus have organised more than a dozen events to condemn “systematic persecution of student voices in the city”. “This is not just about students, the attitude the BJP government has towards us reflects their stand on every issue,” says Shammo Naam, a student of Bengali.

But was it #Hokkolorob that changed the narrative of the student politics of Jadavpur University? “I became more aware of the world around me after the incident, yes. It was a jolt for us, even though Jadavpur has always been politically conscious,” says Naam. Roy, who considered herself “fairly apolitical” till the JNU incident, feels such movements are also about empowerment. “Today, when I walk the streets of Kolkata, I know I should speak up when a poor taxi driver is harassed by corrupt policemen. I know you will say I am being idealistic, but I feel that these movements give us a push,” says Roy.

However, in Kolkata, politics is as much a part of life on campus as staying up all night to meet deadlines, raising funds for college festivals or organising late-night parties. But so far, in celebrated colleges like Presidency and JU it is partly a matter of fostering political consciousness; in many others it is a bitterly partisan, often violent contest for supremacy. However, Arpita Mukhopadhyay, a postgraduate student of Bengali, contends that campus politics imparts a sense of community. “At the end of the day, no matter which mother party we are affiliated to, we will always be students of JU first,” she says.

Madhura Chakraborty, who graduated from JU’s English department in 2009 and keeps visiting the campus frequently, insists that the urgency one sees in the students now is also because of the way social media has made knowledge more accessible. “Today, if a student is beaten up in University of Hyderabad we know about it instantly. When I was in JU, many of us would go to the farmer uprisings in Singur and Nandigram, and we continued to engage with issues in non-partisan ways. But today, students have a much more collative understanding of the world around them and that’s really good,” says Chakraborty.

Debapriya Nandi is a freelance journalist based

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