Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 12, No. 4. May 4th 1949

Opposition

Opposition

It didn't stop the setting-up of stooge organisations of trade Unions, women and youths. It did not decrease the oppression. On Viet Nam Day the "Independent" students of India demonstrated in solidarity with their Vietnamese brothers and had to fight a six-hour battle with the police in which several students were shot. In January, 1948. the National Conference of The All-India Students' Hederation, equivalent to our NZUSA. was banned at the last moment and when they went ahead despite the ban they were attacked with a this, tear gas and bullets, leading to six delegates being wounded and 600 with their skins burnt with tear gas. This was the crime which called forth an official protest from our Students' Association Executive, Later in the year, at the end of June, and the beginning of July, hundreds of the officers of the central and provincial Indian Students' Federations were arrested. In some Provinces this had occurred earlier. For instance, in the United Provinces, in September, 1947, 700 students were arrested, students as young as 10 and 12 being kept in solitary confinement and caned in prison. Often no charges were preferred. On July 16th, 1948. when Nehru was asked by student demonstrators about the various Public Security Acts and the repeal of the right to Habeas Corpus petition, he replied: "Is that a really fundamental right of human beings'?" Geeta Mukherjee, Working Committee member of the A1SF. is typical of hundreds, being arrested without trial for keeping "close contnets with the WFDY and the IUS."

The South-East Asian Youth Conference itself expressed the sharpening of the situation. There was great bitterness by the progressive youth at the sell-out, but also desperate efforts by the reactionary student leaders in India to prevent the success of the Conference. The Conference was characterised by disruption and confusion in the initial stages, and when this failed to split the unity of the vast majority of organisations present, the opposition in desperation launched armed attacks against the Conference delegates.