“In the dark times,
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing.
About the dark times.”
It has been more than eight decades since Bertolt Brecht wrote this verse in 1939. And Today in India, a corporate-communal nexus exploits us mercilessly. They ensnare students in crippling debt with exorbitant tuition fees while corporations profit off our unpaid internships and underpaid labor. Social-media algorithms peddle hollow dreams, distracting us from injustices meant to break our spirit. Since the pandemic, these attacks have intensified under the Modi government’s NEP 2020, a toxic cocktail of neoliberalism and RSS ideology that sacrifices critical thinking on the altar of finance capital, advancing a Brahminical, patriarchal, anti-minority agenda. Communal violence is weaponized to fracture our campuses; Muslim and Dalit students endure targeted assaults while Hindutva mobs roam free under state protection.
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Our universities are under siege: governors play RSS proxies, and UGC reforms tighten central control, strangling autonomy. Marginalized students, Dalits, Adivasis, minorities, and women are systematically excluded through school closures, soaring fees, and vanishing scholarships. Education is hijacked; textbooks are rewritten as propaganda; centralized exams like NEET and CUET enrich the coaching mafia, treating us as commodities. Anxiety and suicides climb. The NEP cynically rebrands working students as cheap labor for finance capital under the guise of “internships.” As public education erodes, private universities expand, widening the gulf of inequality. And when we protest? Dissent is crushed. TISS, Ambedkar University, Pondicherry, Jamia, HPU, Jadavpur, all once vibrant hubs of debate, are under relentless attack. Banning student unions has crippled our movements. Protesting students are branded “anti-national” by mass propaganda tactics modeled on Orban, Trump, and Erdogan.
Remember, we students are the primary stakeholders in education. Defending it isn’t just SFI’s struggle; it’s society’s duty to safeguard India’s future, its Constitution, and the right to learn. Unity is our only shield.
On the global stage, capitalism flounders. Far-right forces rise, and imperialist aggression, led by U.S. hegemony, ravages societies. Here at home, the Sangh Parivar’s push for a Hindu Rashtra assaults scientific temper and critical thought, replacing curricula with obscurantist myths like astrology. Public universities, once bastions of dissent, are suffocated by authoritarian control, extortionate fees, and criminalized activism. The pandemic intensified exclusion, and education is now a commodity for the elite. To suppress resistance, the regime fans communal hatred, dividing us by caste and creed.
Yet, even in this darkness, our flame burns! Recall the historic farmers’ movement, whose united struggle smashed the corporate-state nexus and repealed the three black laws. That victory proves revolution is possible. We honor our martyrs who dreamed of justice. Today, we unite secular student organizations into a formidable collective against the NEP, Agnipath, and unjust suspensions. Our mission is to transform SFI into a true “organization of the student masses,” not merely organizers. We must deepen our political consciousness; we must politicize ourselves. We carry forward internationalism and the proud legacy of anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggles, standing with Palestine, Cuba, the Global South, and all who resist imperialism, exposing the Modi regime’s subservience to U.S. and Israeli interests.
We must win the battle of ideas by defending democratic education, fighting saffronization, commercialization, centralization, and caste exclusion; demanding massive public funding, free education for all, and restored student unions. We will build a scientific, secular pedagogy rooted in rationality and social justice, rejecting pseudoscience and communal lies. Our campus struggles must link with broader battles against neoliberalism, fascism, and imperialism, standing alongside striking workers, fighting farmers, and anti-caste warriors. We will forge internationalist solidarity and advance progressive alternatives through study circles on socialism, Ambedkarite thought, and eco-socialism, and through people’s art, theatre, and independent media.
The ruling class wants us fragmented and defeated. But history shouts back: crisis breeds revolution. From Vietnam to Chile, from our farmers’ long march to campus uprisings worldwide, the oppressed always rise. As the Students’ Federation of India, we are the vanguard. Let’s unite fiercely across caste, religion, and gender. Let’s turn grief into rage, and forge that rage into organized, unstoppable power. They say the night is darkest before the dawn. Believe this: We are the generation that will shatter the night. We are the dawn.