An All-India Conference of student activists was convened in Karachi on March 26, 1931, to establish an All-India Students Federation. Over 700 students from across India attended it. The objective being the mobilisation of young people against British imperialism. As a consequence, the first formal conference marking the incubation of the All-India Students’ Federation (AISF) was finally held in Lucknow on August 12, 1936
The recent cross-country protests by students and their organisations since June 2026 coupled with the heavy-handed response of governments have once again focused attention on student movements and their outcomes.
A brief history of student organisations and movements may, therefore, just be in order.
An All-India Conference of student activists was convened in Karachi on March 26, 1931, to establish an All-India Students Federation. Over 700 students from across India attended it. The objective being the mobilisation of young people against British imperialism. As a consequence, the first formal conference marking the incubation of the All-India Students’ Federation (AISF) was finally held in Lucknow on August 12, 1936.
Nehru inaugurated the proceedings while Jinnah presided over that conference. Speaking on the occasion, Nehru cautioned, “When you are trying to build up a students’ federation you cannot afford to make it narrow and shut out persons holding different views.”
In less than a year the national student movement splintered along communal lines. The Muslim Students Federation under the patronage of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Muhammad Iqbal came into existence in 1937.
On December 25, 1940, at its Nagpur session, the AISF split on the existential question of what took precedence — Indian Independence or the global struggle against Nazism and fascism.
This split led to the formation of the National Congress Student Organisation (NCSO), also known as the All-India Student Congress (AISC). The inaugural Conference was held in Patna in 1943 and Ram Sumer Shukla was elected as its first President. The priority of NCSO-AISC was naturally to prioritise the Indian Independence.
Post-Independence at the initiative of the RSS, the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad came to be established on July 9, 1949. Balraj Madhok and Yashwant Rao Kelkar were the moving spirits behind its inception. Its main objective was to counter Communist influence on university campuses.
An All-India Socialist Youth conference held at Kashi Vidyapeeth in Varanasi, from April 27-30, 1953, under the presidentship of Dr Ram Manohar Lohia. A student organisation named as Samajwadi Yuvak Sabha was founded. When Dr Lohia formed his own socialist party on December 31, 1955, a student organisation called Samajwadi Yuvjan Sabha (SYS) was concurrently constituted.
Finally, the National Students Union of India (NSUI), the student organisation of the Congress, was established on April 9, 1971.
The decades from 1960s to the1990s saw student protests around the world. In India, too, there were movements by students, some secular, others sectarian or linguistic.
The Paris student revolt of 1968 caught the imagination of young people of Europe. It represented a yearning among young people for a change in the “status quo”. It mainstreamed left-wing politics, anti-war sentiment, the thrust on civil rights and the institutionalisation of a counter culture that found expression in the hippie movement of the 1970s.
The upsurge in Paris coincided with the Prague Spring — a brief window of freedom in Czechoslovakia. It came 12 years after the revolution of 1956 in Hungary against Communist misrule. Both these protests were put down brutally by the erstwhile Soviet Union with Soviet tanks rolling into their respective capitals.
From Mexico, Brazil and Argentina to Chile across the Latin and South American continent in the 1960s and 70s, students rallied and railed against their respective governments on issues ranging from university autonomy, free speech, police repression, military dictatorships. Asian campuses were also on fire against US imperialism.
Post-Independence, India saw four major student movements with four very unique outcomes. The anti-Hindi agitation in Tamil Nadu in 1965 was supported by C.K. Annadurai, Muthuvel Karunanidhi (Kalaignar) and other leading lights of the Tamil intellectual and cultural community. It led to the ouster of the then Congress government and the establishment of a Dravidian dyarchy that was broken only six decades later by the victory of actor C. Joseph Vijay in the 2026 Assembly elections.
Conversely, the anti-English agitation in northern India called “Angrezi Hatao Andolan”, supported by the likes of Dr Ram Manohar Lohia and Atal Behari Vajpayee, brought the socialists and the right-wingers together. It paved the way for the establishment of the first Samyukta Vidhyak Dal (SVD) governments in the 1967 state Assembly elections.
In 1974, the Navnirman movement in Gujarat saw the ouster of the Chimanbhai Patel government. It soon dovetailed into the Sampoorn Kranti — total revolution agitation led by Jayaprakash Narayan. Emergency in 1975 and the establishment of the Janata Party government in 1977 followed.
In the 1980s, a powerful movement against immigrants from Bangladesh by the All-Assam Students Union (AASU) led to the formation of the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AGSU). It brought into existence the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) government post the Assam accord on August 15, 1985.
In 1990, the movement against the recommendations of the Mandal Commission saw over 63 students self-immolating themselves and 50 more killed in police firing. It led to the ouster of the Vishwanath Pratap Singh government.
The reset of the Indian economy in 1991 coupled with the global collapse of Communism as manifested by the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Communist regimes in Eastern Europe suddenly brought the era of ideology-driven debates, globally the staple of student politics, to an abrupt closure. The globalisation, liberalisation of the Indian economy and its alignment with the Washington consensus opened up new vistas for young people. No longer was student politics a stepping stone to national politics. The opening up of the broadcasting space to private enterprise in 1992 with the advent of cable and satellite television provided an avenue to young people who craved for both a voice and a profile in the public space. Career consciousness became the driving force. Students now consider student politics a waste of time and perhaps rightly so.
The ‘apolitical space’ in college and universities thus expanded exponentially where ostensibly cash for votes, alcohol-fuelled parties and even beauty salon vouchers have become the staple during student union elections across the country. Ideology and policy debates turn in their grave.
As national president of the NSUI and later president of the International Union of Students (IUS) in 1980s-90s, I witnessed these transitions play themselves out in real time. Trends that have now held fast for the last three-and-a-half decades. Would the latest assertion of student and youth power on Neet and SIR break this apolitical paradigm? The jury is out on that.
