Panel presentation :

This panel focuses on contemporary student politics in India. Based on contributions for a forthcoming edited volume (Student Politics: Movements and Mobilization in Contemporary India) the papers attempt to encapsulate the multiple voices of what would potentially be a new phase of student mobilization in India. We hope to make sense of current student politics through considering pre- and post-independence history and contribute to the revival of a neglected field of study. Contributions explore, through various case studies, the possibility to consider cohorts of Indian students as a distinct political category, while keeping in mind its subnational diversity – including states such as Telangana, Kashmir and Assam.

Our empirical ambition is to survey contemporary trends in both elite and marginalised educational institutions in a context of growing enrolment. Student movements are getting more visibility in traditional and social media owing to large public participation – this was evident in the very recent Jadavpur University Hokkolorob movement, the Film and Television Institute protests, the Rohith Vemula agitation at Hyderabad Central University, and the Jawaharlal Nehru University mobilization as well. Thus, there is an observable re-politicization of the educational institution in the public imagination.

At a conceptual level, contributions assess the relevance of campuses both as territories of socio-political reproduction and as creation of alternate spaces for political experimentations. We explore how educated youth, set apart from spheres of family and work, renegotiate their political attitudes through prolonged exposure to a university campus environment. Survey studies (Kumar 2014) show that the young generation has a similar voting pattern when compared to other life stages. We are interested in looking at educated youth as cultural agents engaging in political activities apprehending notions such as (un)employment (Jeffrey 2012), gender and caste assertion (Lukose 2008; Subramanian 2015), liberalization (Liechty 2003) and civic engagement (Krishna 2013).