The Spillovers of Competition: Value-based Activism and Political Cross-fertilization in an Indian Campus

Martelli, Jean-Thomas

doi:10.4000/samaj.6501

Cited by 3 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Today, a non-negligible section of the younger generation of CPI(ML) office bearers are JNU graduates. Post-2016, state-sponsored and coordinated attacks on anti-government student activism in the country have triggered alliances between various oppositional student groups, causing a united front of left political outfits to emerge on the JNU campus (Martelli 2020).…”

Section: The Voice Of the Left: Student Activism Academic Elitism And Middle Classness At Jnumentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As for many social phenomena, the activists' devotion to this political modality cannot be credible unless the practice of declassing is carried out repeatedly and over an extended period of time. Considering the centrality of day-to-day in situ socialization in the circulation of political attitudes at JNU (Martelli and Ari 2018, Martelli 2020), the efficacy of left self-fashioning relies on its everyday routinization in a shared living space where such practices are made visible. Thus, below I survey various ways in which declassing practices are made pervasive and are inherent to JNU campus politics.…”

Section: Squandering the Heritage Through Declassing And The Production Of Representative Claimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Politics of Our Selves: Left self-fashioning and the production of representative claims in everyday Indian campus politics

Martelli¹

2020

Mod. Asian Stud.

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Through engaging with everyday practices among student activists in contemporary Indian campus politics, this ethnographic study examines the breadcrumb trail between the left and self-fashioning. It focuses on a performative modality of political representation in Indian democracy by tracing the formation of biographical reconfigurations that implement subject-oriented techniques. The article charts their relevance in producing political legitimacy. It engages with the way in which personal reconfigurations are mobilized to recruit and appeal to both subaltern and privileged communities, thus generating universalistic representative claims and political efficacy. The study discusses self-presentations among leading left activists who are members of five contending Marxist student organizations that are active in Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University campus. It shows that reconfigurations are a hallmark of practices of social ‘downlift’ which echo the notion of declassifying, a concept developed by philosopher Jacques Rancière. While embracing secularism and the legacy of political martyrs, the analysis illustrates how self-fashioning attempts to erase signs and habits attached to economic and social privileges through subverting and engaging creatively with sacrificial and ascetic tropes. Conversely, such practices find themselves critically questioned by activists at the bottom of the social ladder who aspire to social upliftment, including members of lower castes and impoverished Muslim communities. I find that the biographical effects of left activism are both long-lasting and renegotiable, shaping campus lives and subsequent professional careers. While such reconfigurations are not inspired by world renouncers of the Hindu mendicant tradition, these practices of the self might exemplify the historical cross-fertilization between long-standing cultural idioms and the Indian Marxist praxis.

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Section: The Voice Of the Left: Student Activism Academic Elitism And Middle Classness At Jnumentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Squandering the Heritage Through Declassing And The Production Of Representative Claimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politics of Our Selves: Left self-fashioning and the production of representative claims in everyday Indian campus politics

Martelli¹

2020

Mod. Asian Stud.

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“…One example is the circulation of political idioms from one micro-cohort (Whittier 1997) to the other through the authoritative intervention of senior student activists who transmit their political capital to new batches of freshers (Martelli and Ari 2018). Another mechanism involves the spilling over of value-based political idioms from one group to the other under the effect of competing student organizations fighting for representation (Martelli 2020).…”

Section: Communities As Units Of Sensemakingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The latter argues that commemoration events on a Bangladeshi university campus, though being ideological at their core, are also "a privileged site for renegotiation of power relations and factional affiliations." Yet four ethnographic contributions demonstrate that ideological and value-based student activism pertain not merely to the glorious past of the student movements during the various independence movements in South Asia (Christiansen 2020;Gautier 2020;Garalytė 2020;Martelli 2020). These authors show that political idioms and values emerge as a core compass of present-day students' political fashioning.…”

Section: Overview Of the Special Issue And Research Prospectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Contrary to that, its rival, the Students Islamic Organisation of India (SIO), aligned with the democratization trajectory of its parental organization (the Jamaat-e-Islami), which prevented it from radicalizing in the wake of the increasingly assertive anti-Muslim agenda of Hindu nationalists at the turn of the 1990s. Campuses also emerge as important incubators of feminist and queer groups (Martelli 2020) as well as spaces of contestation of dominant nationalist narratives (Singh and Dasgupta 2019). In the light of such evidence, it is necessary to revise the reach of the many studies portraying students as inevitably de-politicized after the colonial period (Altbach 1969, 1970a, 1970b, Mehta 1971Vidyarthi 1976a, Chopra 1978.…”

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Generational Communities: Student Activism and the Politics of Becoming in South Asia

Martelli¹,

Garalytė²

2019

samaj

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The wide resonance of the aphorism, "from shadows to the stars," closing the 2016 suicide letter of lower caste student activist Rohith Vemula 1 suggests broken hopes for South Asian educated youth. It points at the tragic obstacles to political change and social upliftment experienced by many young people, reflecting a characteristic desire for individual and collective change. The astounding protests that ensued from Rohith's suicide in India are now contributing to the revival of scholarly interest in the formation of political attitudes among educated youth, subjecting the question of students' socialization into politics to academic scrutiny. Indeed, amidst the uncertain social, economic and political promises of the South Asian educational bulge, 2 contemporary politics in university spaces in South Asia has the potential of shaping youth as idiosyncratic generations. They are characterized not only by their aspirations for a better future, but also by their ability to experience collectively, yet in their own way, major political and social events. 2Making sense of this research agenda revival is core to this special issue's enquiry, which runs through ethnographic and historical insights of eight contributions, covering youths' experiments with politics in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. This introduction questions the relevance of student politics as an object of inquiry by asking whether it truly constitutes a field that is autonomous from wider organized politics. By interpreting student politics as political becoming, this collection of articles indicates that everyday campus-based activism is a potent vehicle for the (re)production of contemporary South Asian polity. Interrogations over the meaning of this "(re)"sprinkle the issue, as authors debate how student politics, understood as an experimental learning process of politics within a given educational space (Loader, Vromen and Xenos 2014) both produces and reproduces political imaginaries, cultural tropes and social hierarchies. While party politics is not always central in the conduct Generational Communities: Student Activism and the Politics of Becoming in So...

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Symbolic Boundaries and Moral Demands of Dalit Student Activism

Garalytė¹

2019

samaj

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This article presents an analysis of a debate between two students of so-called "untouchable origin" 1 during which they discussed the moral dictate of "paying back to society." 2 Among Dalit activists, "paying back to the society" is a common explanation for why they engage in Dalit student activism. Such altruism is not solely a Dalit idiosyncrasy, but should rather be seen as reflecting a broader Indian moral concern (Bornstein 2012;Copeman 2011;Jeffrey and Dyson 2014;Srivatsan 2019). 3 Srivatsan has shown how sevā (social service), "the keystone of ethics of modern India" (2019:24), has reoccurred in different contexts by various forms in the postcolonial Indian history. This research also highlighted how through sevā (social service) hierarchical relations were maintained and altruism used as a means of domination. Contradicting the predominant image of youth in the global South as entangled in "predatory patronclient networks," Jeffrey and Dyson showed how Indian youth in Uttarakhand engaged in "generative politics," by "channeling their energies and time into serving...others," and thus generating new social and political relations (2014: 967-68).2 Dalit social responsibility ethics, while resonating with the broader Indian cultural values of altruism, also have their own characteristics and logic rooted in the Dalit movement's history and ideology. The idea of "paying back to society" was introduced by Kanshi Ram, the founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh. It was based on the vision of the broader Dalit community, which encompasses different exuntouchable groups. Kanshi Ram suggested that having benefited from the quota scheme, upwardly mobile Dalits should reciprocate and work for the betterment of the community. This idea was intended to help overcome the prevalent caste-centrism and competitive division among the SCs while encouraging social responsibility. Naudet

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The Spillovers of Competition: Value-based Activism and Political Cross-fertilization in an Indian Campus

Cited by 3 publications

References 87 publications

The Politics of Our Selves: Left self-fashioning and the production of representative claims in everyday Indian campus politics

The Politics of Our Selves: Left self-fashioning and the production of representative claims in everyday Indian campus politics

Generational Communities: Student Activism and the Politics of Becoming in South Asia

Symbolic Boundaries and Moral Demands of Dalit Student Activism

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