Thursday | 16 January 2025 | Reg No- 06
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Thursday | 16 January 2025 | Epaper

Students’ intrepid role in our political movements

Published : Thursday, 5 December, 2024 at 12:00 AM  Count : 361
Deb Proshad Halder
The students are the greater saviors of a nation that you can never interpret as mere braggadocio. The student forces of Bangladesh have contributed to the political, social, and cultural maneuvering since the colonial past.The language movement of 1952, the mass upsurge in 1969, the pro-democracy movement in 1990, the Sahabagh movement in 2013, the road safety movement, theanti-quota movement in 2018, and the 2024 July uprising are a few of the instances that remind us the strength and the contribution of the student forces to destabilize the incumbent normativity and re-establish a new order of everything. However, not all student movements have provided quick results, though they have been able to mold the nation's conscience and help the nation re-think the necessity of revising the nourished thoughts and practicedbehaviors. The acceptance of Bangla as the state language in the parliament was a great victory in upholding National identity against Pakistani discourse in 1956, though it emerged through the sacrifices of courageous language heroes in 1952. 

Now, the second thought-provoking quest may lead you to the question of why it requires students to wage movements. First, freedom of expression and movement are entitled to human rights, which are realized through the constitutions of nation-states. Students comprise a specified entity in a state, and it is practically sound that students inform the higher authorities about the maladjustment regarding flawless student lifeon campus and a suitable profession as per their academic achievement upon the successful accomplishment of their educational journey. The East Pakistan Education movement in 1962, against the recommendation of the Sharif Commission, exemplifies the students' stance against the sign of annulment of the mass aspiration. However, many examples existwhere students are not directly aggrieved but have led movements.Analyzing the socio-political history, it interprets that the students fill in the blanks of the socio-political cavitycreated due to the absence of strong political parties and rightful civil society. In this respect, the student force acts as the sixth column, whichstrikes the baton in favor of the national conscience. 

Again, the student force is more vital than any other socio-political force in practice.Some fundamental secrets behind this vitality prevail. Firstly, the student force represents the storehouse of knowledge. Hence, the nation has tacit support for the students' actions in that the students may not be blinded to partiality, superstition, and selfishness. Secondly, the student community represents the wholeness of the nation, from the marginalized to the privileged. Hence, they speak for all by all. As they lead the future and work for the state's progress, the nation grows a sense of silent piety toward this community. This endowment helps them gain impunity, which enables them to be as strong as any stainless steel against any dear and dire situation. Thus, they reflect the mantra 'Amra Shakti AmraBol, Amra Chatra dal'that Kazi Nazrul Islam visualized at the backdrop of WWI and the anti-British movement in the then Indian Sub-Continent. Khudi Raam exemplified the vision of Nazrul Islam in that the poet loved to see in the students.

The student force, student power, or student strength-in what terms do we address-can never demonstrate that it provokes the reign of threat and persecution, as the code of student conduct clearly marks what a student force can demand, how a student force can place its demand, and to what extent the action of the student force is beyond jurisdiction.The set of margins tends to harmonize balance, peace,and tranquility; it aims not to subjugate them. The common global feature of today's world is the increased rate of intolerance among the youth.This changing behavior pattern raises tension and disharmony among fellow students. Consequently, the killing of fellow students by the mates with guns is visible. However, the nation trusts the student force, and they are a privileged entity in the eyes of the state. That does not mean we have to lose the courage 'to call a spade a spade.' It is a failure of a state to get the nation to distinguish truth from falsehood because falsehood and wrong beget thousands of falsehoods and wrongs.

The relationship between the state and student force is complementary. One's action influences the other. Our history witnesses how students have reshaped the course of history. Again, it is a fact that the state molds the students' cognition by formulating a curriculum, drafting a mission and vision, and implementing the aspired philosophy of the nation-state. Hence, the nation-state is responsible enough to shape the behavior pattern of the student community. We have been experiencing the student community being involved in mob culture and unexpected vandalism. To take it as an activity by a student community, we need to say that a behavior pattern does not grow up at night. The state needs to trace its history and the extent to which it fails to address the student community adequately. Suppose you are injecting a man with a molecule of arsenic per day. One day, the molecule will form a molehill, and the person will die from arsenic is when that poison crosses its limit, and the body loses the threshold of tolerance. 

However, the nation-state cannot help but realize that policy drawbacks fail to orient learners to tolerance, sympathy, empathy, and peaceful coexistence. They are losing the power of critical thinking, so they victimize their fellow mates and are being victimized vice versa. The necessity of media literacy and critical thinking is the call of the day.The time has come for the state to focus on these two modern aspects of learning. These two aspects teach us to differentiate between information, misinformation, and disinformation, which are misleading the current generation. The outcome of this unwise enterprise by the students is harming the smooth academic activity accomplishment, leading to the jeopardizing of authority decisions and scheduling long-term planning, which we had to experience concerning the demand of the HSC candidates to cancel the HSC exams and revise the published HSC exam results consecutively that they led them to succeed by gearing the secretariat.

To sum up, the student community is a great force for a nation. The future of a nation rests upon them. Hence, the state must have foresightedness to lead them through a secure tunnel so that they can dream of a society devoid of the petty interests of the vested quarter and cannot be the scapegoat of the designed schema. 

The writer is a BCS Cadre (General Education)



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