Love is Political

Onnyoswor Collective

Probably for the first time LOVE is now political in India. Gone are the days where the society witnessed a strong debate–"Shall we love?" the hidden word was "outside". Seventies shattered old concepts and made love a general and simple affair. Love relations are no surprises. It was the roaring politics that clinched the debate in favour of the youth. India is no more like Saudi or any conservative limitizing country. The "how" however was not resolved. Promenading in couples are now allowed but their expressions need "social sanction", this permission seems need to be prescribed from those , who once opposed love, who thought love only means sex and therefore something very personal.

The students are now questioning this attitude, love has its own concepts and definitions to them. Love, love-making, love-expressions are aspects which they would define in their own terms and the limits will be defined by them as they read the "society". Society as an institution is always conservative, patriarchal and reactionary. Society as a flow is always the ground and arena of political discourse. The students have established that "Personal is Political". Theorists theorized it sitting in universities, came feminist theories, came post-modern liberalism, but here in the soil of Kolkata and now in India, the students have implemented the theory and thus theorized it in Praxis.

Society has its debates. STATE always takes the position of the reactionary side of the society's debates, it requires a social revolution to make a STATE stand for revolution. JU students have proved this point very clearly. They have shown how really fast STATE and their politicians take up the position of reaction, mainly to woo the conservative upper middle class upper caste mentalities of the society. Some political leaders and senior-citizen celebrities are plunging into the discourse and quite naturally taking the position of reaction. They had nothing to do with the debate! No one expected them to take part but they took part simply because they thought they are going to lap in some votes from these conservative parents of the middle class voters. In Bengal the ruling Trinamul Congress (TMC) is fast discrediting and distancing itself from the student community through its stupidity. There is however more "intelligence" in this stupidity! The students are creating and re-creating the value system of the society through its presence in the discourse. The 'hokkolorob' movement really raised a question of the students' entrance into the world of "rights" and "dignity". Middle class society has now come to a cross-road on the question of students-in-politics.

The society in its reactionary conceptual theory thinks that the celebrities and [even worse] the politicians are the guardians of the society, and therefore their opinions are more justified than what the students can think. Students are all adults and they have much better knowledge and concepts of the discourses of the society.

TMC is reacting to the recent BJP ghost and thinks that to put a finger in the middle class pie would stop the deluge of support of the same class towards BJP. This is non-sense. However watch CPM. They are keeping mums, this is a better intelligible move, but a defensive one and would not give CPM any advantage by shying away from the reality. BJP would always take up the reactionary opposition and the #hokchumbon movement is essentially against this attitude! The slogan is "Sanghi Gundae hoshiar, tere samne karenge pyar". The Kochi incident was also against this, this is how it started and the students have found the right target of attack.

BJP, TMC and these reactionary parties have plunged into the society's debates with STATE machinery. The students are the first to bridge the discourses of STATE and society, they have done so, very effectively proving that STATE has the inherent character of aligning with everything that is reactionary in the society.

This is the right point of forking or departure [as it is not very appropriately defined in Marxist terminology] where a student movement acquires the character of a mass movement on an interest that belongs to the society's discourse. Out of Campus is most appropriately expressed in this movement. Those who think it is a mere fashionable middle class expression would actually belittle the essence of the relation of STATE and SOCIETY and the reactionary alimentary canal that serves and feeds both in both the directions. The students have hit in this undercurrent. Their questioning has brought the entire society face to face and delineated the fault line within the society. This is the real progression in society's zeitgeist and the thought process. This will usher the era of love and love making into a public affair- how far it will go, will be determined by the process of movement. What is important is not the exact moment and the value of the moment but the process- this process is now ushered by the JU students on Indian soil–now followed by all institutions–exactly the same way #hokkolorob spread #hokchumbon is therefore a movement of a higher level- the next level is the higher level in societal discourse.

They have shown how student movement comes out of the campus—not in the cliched way as envisaged by traditional Marxists, but in the creative way. Students not only have consolidated themselves as a group-in-itself [not class-in-itself because the question of production and production relation is absent] to a group-for-itself, where it lays out the way how it can interact with other sections of the society and other class questions. They have shred the facade of the STATE and have shown the society the real military and administrative face of the STATE–that it is always reactionary!

They [reactionary hidden authorities of Society] have a directed path of love. Students have their own way. The twain over-determines each other and progress–this is the development of the contradiction–a two-line struggle. The students and their supporters in the society have their own road-map laid out now...

Frontier
Vol. 47, No. 25, Dec 28, 2014 -Jan 3, 2015