By Z.G.Muhammad
Memories of my days in Kashmir University campus are exhilarating. These add new rhythm and pace to my heart. Perhaps it holds true for all my contemporaries, even those living a withdrawn retired life or enjoying playing rummy and some having become too devout. Truly, ours was happy to go lucky group; a group of boys of varied interests holding fast to our dreams-dreams that our forefather also lived with and as a poet believing:
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
I remember a pale faced, cringed eyes boy with a golden voice. I have no idea, for whom he sang those melodious songs. Many times, his melodious voice piercing the glass panes of our classroom mixed with musical verses of the Canterbury Tales read 1ader with the cadence of the highland stream by our teacher Dr.Jaya Raman
He sang melancholic songs from films like Baiju Bawra, Udan Khatola, Kohinoor, Aan, and Andaz. None of us knew if he was a jilted lover or he sang songs out of love for music. Nevertheless, he was a great attraction on the lawns of campus. Girls mostly watched him from the long corridor of the arts block and boys squatted around him; he loved solos and discouraged others from joining him in chorus.
Ours was a group of twenty to twenty-five boys from different departments with varied interests literature, poetry, culture, theatre and sports. Student activism bound us. Some of us were deeply inspired by French student leader of the 1968 unrest in France- notwithstanding the student movement having fizzled there; we admired his resilience. Those were the times when the Pradesh Congress ruled the State. Some ministers of the party more particularly the education minister, Abdul Gani Lone and his deputy Abdul Qayoom, considered the campus as a recruiting ground for their party- a party which despite having ruled for almost tern years continued to be a pariah for the overwhelming majority of the students. The minister had succeeded in establishing a unit of National Student Union, (NSUD, the student wing of the Congress Party in the city. Its office was put up in Hotel Lal Rookh; a state government owned hotel.
It was our first year in the university. Some of us were highly agitated over some ministers indulging in politicking inside the camps and vitiating the academic atmosphere of the university. For ending interference of the minister inside the campus we called upon Dean Students Welfare in his office chambers. There was no elected student union on the campus, and we placed the demand for setting up a democratically elected student union in the university before him. Suave, soft-spoken, Abdul Aziz Bhat, always wore a smile on his face, assured us about considering as our demand for a student’s union favourably. However, it was for a Vice Chancellor, a bureaucrat from outside the state, that the Ministers continued playing their dirty political games on the campus.
One day our patience exhausted and we lost our calm. A farewell party was for the chancellor of the University, Bhagwan Sahay (15 May 67 -3 July 1973) was held on campus. And out of annoyance students disturbed this top function in the campus. Ministers ran away like smoked rats from burrows. Their cohorts were thrashed thus the university campus was exorcised of politicking. Most of the student supporters, who were in final year after the incident preferred oblivion and, later on, some of them were given government jobs in various departments.
Sometimes, when I look back, I find Syed Mir Qasim comparatively liberal and open-minded in his tribe. One fine morning we learned that the CM had asked the Vice Chancellor to start process of having democratically elected students’ union on the university campus. Elections for class representatives were held as a prelude to elections for the first Students Union. Four students were elected as the constitution drafting committee, Bashir Ahmed Kirmani student of law, Abdul Hamid a law student, Anupam Sood from Hindi Department and myself from English Iiterature. It took us sometime for framing the University Students Union Constitution. The constitution was approved by the Vice Chancellor and pro-vice chancellor. The first ever democratic election was held in the University perhaps in 1974.
Z.G.Muhammad is a noted writer and columnist
