On February 15, an Instagram page named AISA Bangalore Resignation (@aisaresignation) was created announcing mass resignation by 40 members of the All India Students' Association (AISA) Bengaluru wing.
A resignation letter signed by 40 former AISA members, including office bearers, district committee members and party members, along with detailed posts on various problems that plague the organisation, has been posted on the Instagram page. These posts recite incidents from the last few years including instances of misogyny, transphobia, patriarchy, trivialisation of mental health, among many others.
These former members of AISA, which is a student organisation affiliated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation (CPIML), claim that the "progressive and proletarian" ideologies of the left group are nothing but a “facade” for the organisation's leadership.
“Underneath it lies well-masked lesions of ideological- political degeneration, the manifestation of which shows up in various problematic practices such as rampant misogyny, transphobia and patriarchy, glorification of hyperactivity and activity-based assessment of political commitment, unbridled philistinism and anti-intellectual attitude of the leadership, trivialisation of mental health and ableism against neurodivergent comrades, and abandonment of cadre-activists facing administration crackdown in the process of programmatic execution of organisational activities,” the letter posted on Instagram on February 15, said.
Patriarchy and transphobia
The student organisation, which advocated for a number of feminist and queer movements, has been labelled with serious allegations of sexism and transphobia by its former members.
One of the posts put up on the Instagram page narrates an incident where Debjani, a former member of AISA, was excluded from taking part in work related to All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU) citing the "discomfort" felt by workers by her presence as she is a woman. Similar behaviour was meted out to another female member of the student organisation a few months later.
“These grievances we faced, in turn, culminated in a demand for gender sensitisation in the organisation… The local GSCASH suggestion was immediately shot down by AISA State leadership, citing a lack of possibility under the current GSCASH constitution; however, through our persistent struggle, we were able to pass the resolution stating that the demand for a local committee will be raised at the National Conference,” the Instagram post informed.
The post further added that several transgender students, a majority of them from Bengaluru’s renowned Indian Institute of Science (IISc), reported concerns regarding transphobia within the organisation. The students shared instances of casual misgendering and transphobic remarks, despite several attempts to explain how it affects the sexual minority students.
Lack of support from leadership
Other posts on the Instagram page described incidents where AISA members were abandoned by the AISA leadership while they were facing a crackdown for participating in activism work.
One such incident listed in the Instagram posts comes from Christ University, where in September 2023 two AISA members faced suspension while building a campaign against the university’s rigid attendance rules.
The two students were summoned to the police station for a complaint filed against them for putting up posters in the university’s vicinity. They were also threatened by the university administration to face detainment, said the post on Instagram.
However, despite receiving a detrimental impact on their academic progress due to the campaign, the students did not receive any support from the AISA Bangalore leaders, said the post.
“Throughout this whole period, AISA leaders shunned any efforts to inform the rest of the members in the organisation that there is such an ongoing crisis. Let alone the members, even the District Committee (DC) was not informed about it and the majority of the members remained in the dark about any such development,” it said.
Trivialisation of mental health
Another Instagram post on the same page speaks about AISA's toxic overwork culture, and encouragement of hyperactivity driven by idealistic passion, which impacts the students’ mental health who juggle activism work with academic duties, internships, part-time jobs and more.
“What makes this worse is that those cadres who haven't been able to be as 'active' as per the requirements are told that their views and inputs in meetings and discussions will be disregarded. They are further shamed and looked down on, and they are slandered about to other members of the organisation through whisper campaigns,” the post read.
Further, the post narrates an incident where an AISA member with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia was labelled “not fit” to be on a certain national-level committee.
