ABVP’s Dusu Win Isn’t End Of Student Storm

The victory of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in three of the top four posts of the Delhi University Students Union (Dusu) elections on September 19 has come as reassuring news for the rattled Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which was confronted with the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)-triggered July 20 tsunami of a protest leading to the resignation of Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Union home minister Amit Shah was exultant over the Dusu poll outcome when he described it as the defeat of “anti-national forces”, while BJP president Nitin Nabin had described it as the victory of “nation first” youth. It is evident that the two top BJP leaders were extremely relieved by the ABVP victory. It shows that the two leaders felt the BJP was indeed under a cloud, and the Delhi University students’ union election results cleared the skies for them.

For the last two months, BJP’s top brass was in a dilemma as to whether they should take the Gen Z revolt seriously. There was the defiant group which felt the protests were a flash in the pan and should not be taken too seriously. The party is in the process of lulling itself into complacency, assuming that not all students belong to ‘Gen Z’ in terms of mind space, and that the youngsters, especially the first-time voters, can be lured into the BJP’s Hindutva camp.

The ABVP’s electoral success in one of north India’s major university campus, however, has given an opportunity to the BJP leaders to reassess the magnitude of the Gen Z disenchantment with the Narendra Modi government. Dissatisfaction with the National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET) was only a trigger and the reasons for youth anger are wide-ranging.

It is possible to argue that the parent body of ABVP is the RSS, and not the BJP, and an ABVP victory should reflect the credentials of the RSS and not the BJP. Of course, the ABVP and the BJP are siblings because the BJP, too, has been spawned by the RSS. In the case of the July Gen Z protests, the RSS sarsanghchalak, Mohan Bhagwat, was more conciliatory than BJP leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The young protesters confronted the BJP and the Prime Minister. They had nothing much to say about the RSS. And the youngsters did not think of the ideological equations between the RSS and the BJP. So, in many ways, the RSS was not on the radar of student anger.

The question remains whether Messrs Shah and Nabin have shown undue haste in appropriating the ABVP’s victory for the BJP. For the ideological opponents of the Sangh Parivar, there is not much of a difference between the RSS, BJP, ABVP, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal (BD) and the countless others. And the victory of ABVP, and by extention, of the RSS, in the Delhi University students’ union elections is also a victory of the BJP because they all subscribe to the same noxious majoritarian ideology which equates Hinduism with nationalism.

The Shah-Nabin response shows that the BJP feels that it does not have to change its course or trim its sails. It can continue to harp on its divisive Hindutva agenda in the belief that it brings the party political and electoral dividends as it has done in elections over the past decade. Of course, no one can disturb the illusions of others. They will only fall away due to an internal shake-up.

Interestingly, CJP’s Saurav Das pointed out that the results showed the ABVP victory was not an absolute one and that there was substantial opposition. For one, the winning margins were much too narrow compared to previous years. And the interesting phenomenon of the person who won the vice-president’s post by a margin of over 16,000 votes being a rebel of the National Students Union of India (NSUI) of the Congress showed the miscalculation of the main Opposition party and the general sentiment among the students in the many colleges of Delhi. Saurav warned that the Opposition groups will have to join hands. If they remain scattered, then the ruling administration will continue to be where it is.

It is possible to extrapolate the north Indian political situation — with the two states of Uttar Pradesh and Punjab going into Assembly elections next year — because many of the Delhi University students come from different parts of north India. This would indeed be a speculative exercise; a kind of reading of the tea leaves, as it were. It would, however, be a mistake for the BJP leaders to believe that the storm is behind them and that it has not left any wreckage and traces of destruction. There is a strange sense of unease all over the place and across all sections of society because of the perceptible economic stress and distress despite the headline growth figures for Q1 of FY2026-27. As a matter of fact, the government and its political chieftains are clinging to the growth figures like a drowning man clutching at a straw. The global stresses, whether from US President Donald Trump’s tariff war or the war in West Asia, are keeping the oil prices high and the inflation is spiralling up steadily.

The BJP and its government could be getting things wrong in their bid put on a brave face amid brewing trouble which goes beyond political manipulation. Mr Shah might believe that protesters are “anti-national” but even if there were no protests, public discontent would continue to simmer. And the party might barely scrape through in the elections. Of course, for Prime Minister Modi and Mr Shah, nothing matters beyond electoral victories, so margins do not matter.

But electoral victories do not matter when the economic situation remains critical and the “seven per cent growth is good” chant will not suffice. Seven per cent growth does not generate even half of the required jobs or keep the prices at bearable levels. The anti-national rhetoric becomes an ineffective counter when people are finding it so hard to get by on a day-to-day basis. Pseudo-nationalist fervour is no substitute for wages and jobs.

The writer is a Delhi-based commentator and analyst