Incubator of democracy or lessons to subvert it?

The first election of the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union (Ducsu) in 28 years was held on March 11, 2019. Nearly 40,000 students were registered as voters. After almost three decades of suppression of student government in the premier university of the country (as in all other institutions of higher education), the election was seen as a precursor to the revival of a tradition of the university student union as the incubator of democracy, harking back to the glorious past of student activism. How has it turned out?

Ducsu was formed in 1922, a year after the University of Dhaka (DU) was established. The aim of the elected student body was to promote extra-curricular activities at the university and foster a spirit of cooperation and unity among the students of different halls. At critical moments of our history, the university students have taken on the role of the conscience-keeper of the nation.

Students in 17 halls or dormitories, each student being affiliated to a hall, cast their vote at their respective halls on March 11 last year. Student leaders had voiced their fears that the election might not be fair if the polling booths were set up inside the dormitories, which were all dominated by Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the ruling Awami League-backed student organisation.

Not that the political decision-makers and university authorities looked upon the student body election with any great enthusiasm. The High Court in a ruling on January 17, 2018 had directed the authorities concerned and the government to hold the election in six months. This was in response to a writ petition filed by 25 former DU students in March 2012. The DU authorities filed an appeal to the Supreme Court, which passed an order to hold the election by March 15, 2019.

The election on March 11, 2019 had polling booths set up in the dormitory halls, instead of central locations under public and media gaze. All premonitions expressed about the lack of a fair election proved to be true. The election was marred by all kinds of irregularities, reminding one of all the malpractices heard of in parliamentary or local body elections. The poll was organised by academics at the highest seat of learning, and voters were educated and politically savvy. Yet there were complaints galore about ballot box stuffing, voters prevented from voting, rigged voter rolls and violence—recorded and reported by media—against supporters of panels other than that of the ruling-party backed BCL.

All the major panels in the election, other than that of BCL, announced a boycott of the election before the end of the day over allegations of irregularities and vote rigging. They demanded its scrapping and a new poll, and called a student strike.

In response, Vice Chancellor Prof Md Akhtaruzzaman formed a seven-member probe body, headed by Supernumerary Professor Sajeda Banu. The committee was asked to submit its report in seven days. No report has been made public and no action has been taken.

Against all odds, out of the 25 elected posts, two were won by non-BCL candidates, including the post of the Vice President (VP), the elected head of DUCSU, with the President being the ex officio Vice Chancellor. Nurul Haque Nur, the elected VP, is a popular non-partisan student leader who came to prominence as the organiser of the anti-quota movement (in support of scrapping quotas in the civil service that took more than half of fresh recruitment out of merit-based competition).

But facing a solid wall of opposition in his own cabinet and little support or cooperation from the university administration, the resuscitated Ducsu is hardly alive. In fact, Nur and his sympathisers faced physical assault on the day of the election and continue to be subjected to harassment and even violence since then.

The most egregious hostility was the assault on the VP and his peers in his office at Ducsu.

As reported in the media, Ducsu Vice President Nurul Haque Nur and 27 others were injured in an attack allegedly carried out by activists of Chhatra League and Muktijuddha Mancha on December 22, 2019. VP Nur, along with the others, was taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) for emergency treatment. According to eyewitnesses, the Ducsu VP office was also vandalised during the attacks. Twenty-eight students were admitted to DMCH, 14 with minor injuries.

The tragic death of Abrar Fahad, a student of BUET, on October 7, 2019, after torture by fellow students, allegedly to demonstrate their loyalty to the ruling party, has not put an end to such mayhem on campuses across the country. There are a number of cases that show this, as gleaned from new reports. For example, four students of the University of Dhaka were beaten up on campus on suspicions of being part of Shibir (student front of Jamaat-e- Islam), allegedly by BCL activists on Janauary 21, 2020. A student of Rajshahi University of Engineering and Technology filed a case against 10 activists of the university unit of BCL, including its president and secretary, for allegedly physically assaulting him. Twenty activists of the Chittagong University unit of BCL were detained from two dormitories following an attack and counterattack between two factions of the organisation on campus. A house tutor of Bangamata Sheikh Fazilatunnesa Mujib Hall in DU was assaulted when she was trying to stop two clashing groups of Chhatra League women on campus.

If a dream was nurtured that Ducsu would be revived to protect the interests of students; and that it would again play the role it had historically until 1990, when the last Ducsu election was held, it was rudely shattered.

If anything, the Ducsu election has served to “legalise” the ruling party student wing’s control over the campus, to the detriment of promoting the academic vibrancy of the university community of students and teachers.  Instead of being the incubator of future leaders, the campus has now turned into a training ground for ways to subvert the practice and culture of democracy. The irony is that the value added, even from a narrow partisan point of view, is highly debatable.

The stalwarts of the glorious days of student politics who are still around—Tofael Ahmed, Motia Chowdhury, Rashed Khan Menon, Hasanul Haq Inu and a few others—have remained very silent about these disturbing developments. Will they speak up before it is too late?

Dr Manzoor Ahmed is professor emeritus at Brac University.