The Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) administration’s decision to enforce the mandatory 75% attendance rule for students has sparked an outcry. On November 21, 2024, students protested in large numbers against the decision, also calling for the holding of students’ union elections (which haven’t been held since 2019). But the response of the administration was heavy-handed. They filed FIRs against nine students, marring their career prospects. Baseless accusations have been hurled against them: a plot to kill the Vice-Chancellor (VC), vandalism, and property damage. It is alleged that students damaged the VC’s car, but eyewitness accounts suggest otherwise. Arsalan Baig, a political science undergraduate at AMU who protested for seven hours, said that students engaged in sloganeering and demonstrations to demand a meeting with the VC. However, the VC ignored them, following which students continued their peaceful protest. On November 22, 2024, students reassembled to demand the dropping of all FIRs, the resignation of the proctor, a fair attendance policy for all, and the reconstitution of the students’ union.
In the wake of the mass protests, there has been a cynical response on the part of status quoists. They believe that these protests are annual rituals whereby students attempt to evade their educational duties, shirking classes and engaging in useless frivolities. But do students really don’t want to study? Arsalan said that the seven hours during which he protested could be utilized more productively to learn something new. The protests were a necessity so that students could reclaim the free time necessary for educational exploration.
Free time is an overlooked demand. A major criticism of the current educational structure is that it forces students to participate in mechanical learning that feels like a waste of time. The introduction of modular courses like Vocational Courses, Value Added Courses, etc. has meant that students are being fed fragments of everything without comprehensively learning anything. The time dedicated to core courses has decreased. This is an inevitable component of the neoliberal education strategy, which fragments learning into pieces of information that have to memorized quickly, instead of encouraging extended discussion on core topics. In this structure of education, teachers become the conveyers of pre-constructed knowledge, while students become passive objects to be fitted into the machinery of endless exams.
The fragmentation and mechanization of learning has led to a lack of rapport between students and teachers. Attendance becomes an issue only when students don’t find classes interesting. The time spent at classes becomes so unproductive that students find non-class learning to be more useful. Growing disinterest with institutional learning should force administrators and teachers to rethink their methods of pedagogy so that the hours spent at classes can become an affirmation of students’ educational freedom. The time of institutional learning should become the time of freedom, wherein students and teachers interact freely to enhance their learning capacities.
But the AMU administration’s actions have shown in clear terms that it stands for pedagogic domination. When students mobilized to question the administration over the need for mandatory attendance, the latter should have carefully reflected upon the deficiencies that have led to mass disinterest. Instead, the administration filed FIRs against students, indicating that it didn’t want to engage in democratic pedagogy. It wanted to exploit students’ vulnerability, namely their career prospects. We live in a world where learning is dictated not by the internal rhythm of open-ended discussion but by the external force of one’s marketability. By attending classes, the student submits to an order that makes them learn merely for career. However, when students protest against compulsory attendance, they show that their own interest in learning matters. If they find classes uninteresting and oppressive, they shouldn’t be forced to attend them. It is incumbent upon the administration and teachers to devise a pedagogy that takes into account the creative development of the student’s self.
For the honchos of status quoist pedagogy, what the students feel doesn’t matter. What matters is the smooth circulation of pre-fabricated information over which no discussion can take place. The regime of information, rather than the creative play of learning, ensures that students are equipped with fragmented skills that prepare them for informal, precarious jobs rather than stable occupations in which individuals are actually interested. In the words of Prabhat Patnaik:
[T]he policy of pushing people into career-oriented courses, into vocational training even before they have had a minimum number of years of general education, is typical of a government that wishes to wash its hands off its responsibility towards young persons. It offers them neither a proper education so that they can become citizens of the republic, nor a proper job. It just wants to dump them on the market with a modicum of training, and then let them fend for themselves.
Since the goal of education is to pigeonhole students into market-driven skills rather than allow them to learn on their own, campus democracy becomes an anathema. A student’s union would function as the forum where dissatisfaction with existing pedagogies can be articulated. However, if there is no students’ union, the administration can continue to force students to attend classes without caring for their educational sensibilities. In the end, the protests over the attendance policy in AMU boil down to this: will the students confirm to a status quo that suppresses their freedom to creative learning, or will they construct a new pedagogic order? Whoever fails to understand the import of the issue remains trapped in the narrowness of what exists.
Yanis Iqbal is studying at Aligarh Muslim University, India. He is the author of the book Education in the Age of Neoliberal Dystopia.
