Youth & their various battle-fronts

 

Navnirman movement by Gujarat students in 1974 altered political history of India  

NK SINGH

A French philosopher once said: "Tell me what occupies the mind of the youth in a country and I will tell you the shape of things to come." 

In recent years, in many countries of the world students have been at the forefront of agitations launched to gain political objectives, to influence State policy and often to make a revolutionary change in the entire set-up.

Herbert Marcuse sounds relevant when he says that the youth alone has the potential to become the catalytic agent for structural changes in the present set-up.

Why are the 'angry young men' of today so angry? What disturbs the young men and women in India? It is no use taking comfort in assumptions, such as, they are a set of irresponsible and misguided people, or that they are in a minority. 

The need of the hour is a sober and sympathetic inquiry into why so many of them are so fiercely angry at the society they are about to inherit.

As economic and social conditions predetermine the mental attitudes and behavioural patterns of people, any presupposition that student violence is a self-induced phenomenon is mistaken.

The Indian social scene is a jumble of two different types of society, feudal in the countryside and capitalist in towns and cities. 

Students, the educated minority of our country, come mainly from urban society and a large portion of them have experienced the bitter fruit of capitalism.

There are three problems for the youth in India: educational reforms, unemployment and the struggle against communalism and reactionary forces. 

The most burning issue is the reform of education at the university level. Our education system is the same as that introduced by the British for their imperialist purposes more than one and a half centuries ago. 

The basic pattern of higher education has remained unchanged; imperialist and feudal trends still prevail in it. History, for example, is still taught on communal lines, which helps to divide our people. Feudal values are kept up in the attitude towards the emancipation of women. 

Higher education does not create any scientific outlook. All kinds of superstitions and prejudices survive there, not to speak of education on the lower level, which is thoroughly permeated with religious teachings and false ideas. In a word, university education does not reflect the accepted national goals, i.e. democracy, secularism and socialism.

Time and again the leaders have felt the need to emphasise the point that. the pre-occupation students should be studying. 

But most of the time the majority of the students are worried not only about how to meet their present expenses but also about their future. When a student leaves college he pretty well knows what awaits him outside: Unemployment.

Thus, the student finds his education ignores a liability than an asset. He finds that it is not enough to be ordinary or merely above average, he must also be outstanding. But nobody explains how everybody can be brilliant. 

Later he also realises  two factors are ultimately responsible for his plight- The State machinery and the older generation, the progenitors of his educational system.

He protests. His protest once upon a time used to be peaceful, but is no more so. Thus the student directs his energies against anything that represents the power of the State or the people who run the State machinery indirectly This, in short, is the psychology of youth violence.

The entire education system needs remoulding. Education should uphold the basic values and aim at sharpening reason and inculcating the habit of unbiased and objective thinking. Gandhi had found a practical solution in Nai Talim, which aims at relating education to the actual conditions in which the people live. 

Gandhi recognised that the British system of education was wholly divorced from our living conditions. He also recognised that in poor a country like ours, education must be made less expensive. 

There are four basic principles of Nai Talim: Education must be imparted through the mother tongue. it must be craft-centred, the craft chosen must be such as are profitable and help the schools to pay their way: it must be made free and compulsory for all. 

What we require utmost for a nation is emotional integrity, In universities, colleges and other educational institutions we find that people from different sects, religions, castes, communities and creeds flock for learning. If they synthesize and cast out their prejudicial ideas, they will become strong pillars of pragmatism and patriotism.

Now, what is this patriotism? While it is true that "he who loves not his country, can love nothing." It is also true that "no man can be a patriot on an empty stomach." The student certainly has to play a great role in nation-building. 

But in a society where exploitation. poverty and misery persist, the first task of nation-building will be to change the socio-economic set-ups. 

As a matter of fact, when you build a nation you not only build dams and factories; you have got to care for what type of valve system you build into that Society. 

Hence one of the chief demands Lenin made on students was that they should take an active part in public life and the revolutionary transformation of society. 

"We could not believe in education, training and upbringing," he said, "it these were confined to the schools and divorced from turbulent life. As long as the workers and peasants remain oppressed by the feudal lord's capitalists, as long as the schools remain in the hands of feudal lords and capitalists, the young generation will remain blind and ignorant. Education divorced from life and politics is lies and hypocrisy."

Today there exists a tremendous scope of solid student power movement in India. And it is high time that the students were made aware of this historic responsibility and concrete efforts were made to build a determined cadre of dynamic student leadership and rousing this country through radical, independent and revolutionary activities thereby compelling the corrupt, careerist and seemingly-radical political leaders to stage their exit from the political scene.

HINDUSTAN STANDARD 

2 June 1972