Members of the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and Left-leaning student organisations clashed at Jadavpur University in the early hours of Thursday, leaving several students injured and triggering fresh protests on the campus.
The confrontation began around a Faculty of Engineering and Technology Students' Union (FETSU) meeting on Wednesday and continued late into the night. University officials said several injured students were taken to hospital.
The university also reported incidents of fire on parts of the main campus, while Aurobindo Bhavan, the administrative building, was locked as tensions escalated. Videos circulated on student social media groups showed groups of people raising slogans and attempting to enter locked university buildings.
But the clash on the intervening night of August 19 and 20 is not an isolated episode.
Jadavpur has spent decades at the intersection of student politics and wider political battles in West Bengal. The university has a strong tradition of independent and Left-leaning student politics, while national political organisations, including the ABVP, have increasingly sought a presence on campus. That has repeatedly produced confrontations over student unions, political events, outsiders and control of university spaces.
What happened this time?
The immediate dispute centred on a General Body meeting of the Faculty of Engineering and Technology Students' Union (FETSU) on Wednesday.
ABVP members questioned the meeting and the process through which the union was functioning. Left-leaning groups have given a different account, saying the confrontation began after ABVP members entered the meeting.
The accounts remain sharply divided.
ABVP has alleged that Left student groups attacked its members and brought outsiders onto the campus. Left groups have accused ABVP of bringing outsiders into the university and escalating the confrontation.
There have also been allegations of vandalism, stone throwing and fires at different points on campus. Several students were injured and some were taken to hospital. Police eventually entered the campus after being asked to assist the university administration and removed people described as outsiders.
One point is already disputed. SFI leaders have said their members were not present at the FETSU meeting, despite ABVP and some reports describing the confrontation as involving SFI and other Left organisations. That distinction matters because Jadavpur's Left is not a single student organisation.
The university has now announced an inquiry. Vice-Chancellor Chiranjib Bhattacharya has also restricted the entry of outsiders after dusk and said security measures would be strengthened.
Why is student politics at Jadavpur different?
Jadavpur's political history predates the university itself.
The institution grew out of the National Council of Education, established during the Swadeshi movement following the 1905 Partition of Bengal. Nationalists including Aurobindo Ghosh and Raja Subodh Chandra Mullick were associated with the movement to create an Indian-controlled system of education. Jadavpur University was formally established in 1955.
That history helped create an institutional culture in which political debate and dissent became part of campus life.
The late 1960s and 1970s brought a more radical phase. Jadavpur became one of the important university centres of the Naxalite movement in Bengal. Student politics became closely connected with wider struggles taking place across the state.
Over time, however, the political landscape at Jadavpur developed its own peculiar structure.
The SFI, the student wing of the CPI(M), has historically been influential, but independent Left and far-Left organisations have also held considerable influence, particularly in engineering. In the 2020 student union elections, for example, SFI retained the humanities student body while the Democratic Students' Front (DSF) retained the engineering union. ABVP, contesting across departments, made significant inroads and finished ahead of SFI in engineering.
That is important to understanding the present conflict. Calling every Left student group at Jadavpur "SFI" does not accurately describe the campus's political structure.
The 2014 movement that became Hokkolorob
One of the most significant recent episodes was the Hokkolorob movement in 2014.
Students began protesting over the university administration's handling of a sexual harassment complaint. Tensions escalated after students gheraoed the Vice-Chancellor and police entered the campus during the early hours of September 17.
The police action became the immediate trigger for a much larger movement.
Thousands of people joined demonstrations in Kolkata, turning the protest into a wider debate about university autonomy, student rights and the safety of women on campus.
The movement became known as Hokkolorob, meaning roughly "let there be noise". Academic research on the movement notes that it stood apart from conventional party-led student agitations and attracted support beyond the university. The agitation eventually contributed to the resignation of Vice-Chancellor Abhijit Chakrabarti after intervention by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Hokkolorob became part of Jadavpur's political memory. It also reinforced the university's reputation as a place where student mobilisation could move beyond campus and become a city-wide political event.
When ABVP entered the picture
The confrontation between ABVP and Left student groups became particularly visible in 2016, when Jadavpur was engulfed in a dispute over the screening of Vivek Agnihotri's Buddha in a Traffic Jam.
The university's alumni association cancelled the booking of the Triguna Sen Auditorium, but the film was eventually screened in the open air on campus amid protests from Left-backed students. Clashes followed. The university filed a police complaint against four outsiders, including three people identified as ABVP activists, over allegations involving female students. The allegations were disputed.
The episode quickly became a political confrontation beyond the film itself.
ABVP accused the Left of creating an "anti-national" atmosphere on campus. Left-backed groups accused ABVP and outsiders of trying to impose a political presence on the university. The then West Bengal Governor Kesari Nath Tripathi expressed concern that Jadavpur was becoming a "centre for disturbance".
The Babul Supriyo episode
Three years later, the conflict became even more directly tied to mainstream party politics.
On September 19, 2019, Union minister Babul Supriyo visited Jadavpur University for an event organised by ABVP. Students opposed to his presence protested and prevented him from leaving for several hours. Supriyo alleged that he was assaulted.
The situation escalated after supporters of ABVP entered the campus. Police cases followed over rioting, assault and vandalism. University property was damaged, including the Arts Faculty Students' Union room and areas around Gate No. 4.
Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar eventually went to the university to help Supriyo leave the campus.
The episode demonstrated a recurring feature of Jadavpur's political conflicts: a dispute involving student groups can quickly become a confrontation involving state and national political parties, the Governor, the university administration and the police.
Why outsiders are always part of the argument
The word "outsider" has appeared repeatedly in Jadavpur's political disputes.
It has also become one of the central allegations in the current clash.
For the university administration, the question is straightforward: who has the right to enter a university campus during a political confrontation?
For the competing student groups, however, the allegation carries a larger political meaning. Each side has accused the other of using people from outside the university to alter the balance on campus.
The university's decision this week to restrict outsider entry after dusk is therefore significant. It is an immediate security measure, but it also addresses one of the recurring fault lines in Jadavpur's student politics.
A campus where politics has never stayed inside the classroom
Jadavpur has historically resisted straightforward control by mainstream political parties. A 2023 analysis of its student politics described the campus as a space where mainstream parties had struggled to displace independent Left-leaning student organisations. The latest confrontation is therefore about more than one FETSU meeting.
