ABVPonaroll acrossthecountry
MAKING PRESENCE FELT Since BJP came to power in 2014, student outfit’s membership has increased from 22L to 32L
NEW DELHI: Saket Bahuguna’s mood turns foul as he shifts though the day’s newspapers. The coverage in the wake of the fracas at Delhi’s Ramjas College has been overwhelmingly negative and the national media convenor of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) cannot suppress his dismay.
“The reports portray us as a bunch of gundas out on the road to beat everyone up. Why is this being projected as a student versus ABVP fight? Aren’t we students ourselves,” asked Bahuguna, a research scholar at Delhi University.
Given the recent chain of events at various campuses across the country Bahuguna finds himself fighting a losing perception battle. ABVP, the students’ body of the RSS, is accused of strong-arm tactics and attempting to suppress dissent forcibly. Its members have allegedly run riot and targeted members of rival groups, portraying anyone who disagrees with them as “anti-national”.
But no matter the derision that the outfit evokes in urban drawing rooms, ABVP is actually on a roll across the country, particularly since the BJP rode to power at the Centre in 2014. Its objective of ‘nation building’ is appealing to new audiences and its memberstrength has grown exponentially. “We are a force that no one can ignore,” said Sunil Ambedkar, the national organising secretary of the outfit.
ABVP has 32 lakh members, compared to 11 lakhs it had in 2003. In 2014, the year Narendra Modi became PM, the organisation’s membership grew by a whopping 9 lakhs, from 22 lakh to 31 lakh in one year. It recruited the maximum number of members that year in Karnataka - 5.8 lakhs, followed by Telangana and Madhya Pradesh.
It has also spread its network, having presence in more than 5,300 cities and in 20,000 of the 35,000 colleges countrywide. In terms of member-strength, it has almost caught up with the other two big players in students’ politics: NSUI of the Congress with 40 lakh members and CPI’s AISF with 35 lakhs. CPIM’s SFI lags behind with 15 lakh members.
Buoyed by their rapid growth, ABVP leaders are unapologetic about the controversies they have been constantly courting in the recent past. “We are open to any debate, but we cannot compromise with nationalism, culture and mythology,” insisted Ambedkar.
But what about the bad press they have been receiving? ABVP leaders said it has all been the handiwork of Leftist organisations dominating the discourses on educational campuses. “Unfortunately the Left is the established thought in the academic world, We are out to challenge it,” argued Dr Vivek Nigam, an ABVP old-timer currently teaching economics at Allahabad University.
“We remember the times when we were painted as patriarchal people by the Leftist students in JNU. There was a general bias towards us as we were less in number,” pointed out Amit Singh, now a teacher at Delhi’s Atma Ram College.
According to Shreerang Kulkarni, the outfit’s spokesman, the bad publicity is the Left’s desperate ploy to checkmate its growing presence. Organising secretary Ambekdar, for one, is not one-bit worried about the bad headlines. “The problem is that people judge us without even studying us. The more people know us, the more they accept us,” he explained.
ABVP SAYS THE BAD PUBLICITY IT RECEIVES IS THE LEFT’S PLOY TO CHECKMATE OUTFIT’S GROWING PRESENCE