Power, politics, and the campus

Viewed globally universities are the seed beds of the political life of nations. They are the anvil on which ideas are hammered out, and where the dreams of youth become the realities of polity and eventually governance. But not in Pakistan. Campus politics have been all but erased from university life. They have become the focus for violent extremism, and where a political grouping has taken root and that with the obeisance of the university administrations, violence is endemic. Punjab University saw this graphically illustrated this year when Pakhtun and Baloch students were celebrating Pakhtun Cultural day — a peaceful and happy event. They were violently attacked by stick-wielding members of the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba (IJT). As many as 17 were injured, some of them hospitalised for days. The IJT appears to enjoy the patronage of some universities across south Punjab, and despite the ban on student unions it flourishes, largely to the detriment of university life in general.

With the IJT setting a dark benchmark it is no surprise that student politics are off-limits for many university administrations. At the prestigious LUMS a student can be rusticated for overt political activity. There is no student organisation or union at the University of Gujrat or the Islamia University of Bahawalpur.

Politics should run in the veins of every university in the land, but a propensity for violence, an unwillingness to tolerate the ‘other’ and a chronic inability to handle cognitive dissonance all contribute to enforced neutrality in terms of political discourse in the majority of places of higher learning. As has been observed elsewhere there was a period in the 1980s when ideology was the watchword — but was being replaced by the end of the 80’s by ethnicity and the rot set in. Today our universities are politically sterile other than where the likes of IJT are allowed free rein. Politics in the widest sense is the poorer for that, and we have a flaccid governance that is an intellectual desert.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 23^rd, 2017.

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