SFI Pamphlet Dated 7 August 2012

SFI congratulates its members and activists for resolutely ensuring admission assistance and other day-to-day activities in an uninterrupted manner, despite the presence of a handful of perpetrators of a disruptive tendency using the camouflage of SFI’s name in front of new students (many of whom questioned them on their political identity).

The 5 July GBM and After

It is now becoming increasingly evident to the student community that the larger political agenda behind the 5 July GBM in which a handful of the erstwhile leadership of SFI pushed for a divisive line over a non-issue was to line up with an individual who had chosen to resign over the same issue. The explanations given in the GBM for putting forward such a resolution revealed the continuing failure of a small but influential section of the erstwhile leadership of SFI in JNU to perceive and counter the ruling class political line adopted by the AISA since 2004, which was to relentlessly attack the organised Left. The same lacunae manifested themselves in their analysis of the post-2007 situation in the campus, according to which SFI was “vulnerable to attacks of ‘double-speak’ by the ultra Left” (“SFI-JNU” pamphlet, 07.07.2012). The adoption of the resolution insulating the organisation from the larger left-democratic movement was a logical outcome of this flawed analysis. The over-enthusiasm of the CPI (ML) Liberation to precipitate a “July Crisis” brought in an element of opportunist consensus between the AISA and “SFI-JNU” on analysing various issues since 2007 (AISA release dated 26.08.2012, AISA pamphlet dated 10.07.2012).

Looking back, it becomes clear that such a strategy was borne out of the desperation of the very same handful leaders of “SFI-JNU” to wash their hands off their central role in the unacceptable organisational tendencies prevailing since 2004, and their inability and unwillingness to “fix proper responsibility” and to “conduct rectification thereon” on various matters which shook the campus, such as the Nestle issue and the response to the Singur-Nandigram debates. Such right-wing deviations of a section of the leadership helped to consolidate the “fashionable”, so-called “ultra-Left” within the campus. Read along with these earlier tendencies, the current bout of left-wing childishness (which was encouraged by the resignation of an individual) brings the story to a full circle, as the same section of the leadership underwent both right-wing and left-wing deviations over this period.

Why continue with the name “SFI-JNU”?

With the intervention of the higher leadership of the SFI against the erroneous political line mentioned above, a handful among the erstwhile leadership of SFI in JNU is pursuing a losing battle to mislead the student community through their series of resolutions promising to “abide by” the Programme and Constitution of SFI. Such short-term electoral gimmicks aimed at “free-riding” on the political legacy of SFI and handing over its political space to AISA would be thoroughly exposed by the students of this campus. The larger questions of political identity and pursuance of a wrong line of dissociating the members and sympathisers of the organisation from the larger democratic movement in the country has been answered by “SFI-JNU” by suggesting a mythical course towards organisational affiliation at a date which would suit its above mentioned electoralist opportunism (resolution dated 04.08.2012). Going by their overlord’s recent ideological vacillations of terming “the programmatic debates of the 1960-70s by and large outdated for contemporary Left praxis” and the prescription of turning the communist party into a “radical” social democratic party, it can be safely inferred that the decadent mutation of “SFI-JNU” has only begun.

The revival of the Left student movement in the campus

The ascendance of a sectarian force like the AISA in the JNUSU has already eroded the cherished ideals of the JNU students movement, such as instituting an equitable admissions policy, furthering the struggles towards gender equality, advancing a research agenda rooted in the social reality of our country and most of all, to exist as a catalyst in our country's path towards a democratic revolution. AISA’s supreme failure in defending the JNUSU from attacks on its very existence during the four years since 2008 adds up to its inglorious contributions to the JNU students’ movement. Our responses to the profound changes going on around us at a time when the advanced capitalist world is undergoing a deep and cataclysmic crisis should not get mired in such sectarian tendencies assiduously promoted by the ruling classes.

Sd/-

Manu M R, Siddik Rabiyath

Coordinators, SFI Unit Organising Committee, JNU.