"Youth Fights Colonialism "

This is the name of a regular publication of the World Federation of Democratic Youth, and the title of one of its departments in its headquarters. As one reads through the issues of this publication one gets a deeper insight into the fact, assiduously played down in our daily press, the Asia's colonial people are stirring from their slumber and that students and young people are in the lead in the upheaval. The aspirations of millions for education, culture, even food and housing, and for national independence as a basis to secure these things, is being vigorously supported by the WFDY. and not without success.

In Asia in the past, the youth movement, and in particular the student movement, has played an important role in the general movement for national liberation.

The student movement reached varying degrees of development in different countries, corresponding to the level of development of the struggle for independence in these countries. It ranged from the mighty student movement of China. 7,000,000 "strong in the Kuomintang areas alone, to the still weak student organisations of Malaya.

In the early period of the liberation movement it was natural that the student movement should be in the forefront of the struggle, not only as far as the youth is concerned but in relation to the entire struggle. They had the necessary degree of education to enable them to organise, to give leadership.

But this condition was changed in the course of the anti-Fascist war. The necessity to fight, to mobilise more and more people into the anti-Japanese armies, meant especially the activisation and organisation of large masses of young people, peasants and workers, and the birth of a youth movement of the working class and peasants.

Such organisations developed as the mighty 2,000,000 strong organisation of Viet Nam organised as an integral pan or the Peoples Front of Viet Nam. In Indonesia, a federation of 17 youth organisations, differing widely in type, stood in the forefront of the armed struggle against the Dutch forces. In Malaya, in 1946. from the Anti-Fascist People's Army was formed the Malayan New Democratic Youth League of 23,000 members in a country of 3,000,000 total population. In India alone, no definite movement of the youth developed. Organisation remained confined entirely to students.