Did you know ABVP demanded the ‘Atom Bomb’?

• Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) was set up in 1949 by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and is generally believed to be the country’s largest student union in terms of membership.

• However, contrary to popular belief it is not the student wing of the BJP but is affiliated to the RSS. The national president of the ABVP is normally a University Professor and a member of the RSS. The ABVP’s charter is “to reconstruct India into a powerful, prosperous and proud Nation”. Late VHP leader Giriraj Kishore in 1966 was given the full time responsibility in 1966 to develop the ABVP.

• ABVP is the only student union in the world to have demanded the making of the ‘Atom Bomb’ during a demonstration in Delhi in 1970 as mentioned in its own website. Not surprisingly the organisation has rarely taken up issues related to quality education or issues related to students’welfare.

• Secularism could be a part of the Indian Constitution and figure in the Preamble but ABVP considers secularism a myth. In a report published in Los Angeles Times, the national organising secretary of ABVP Sunil Ambekar is quoted as saying , “ There is a myth called secularism, which believes in denying Indian culture and tradition…instead of teaching patriotism, they encourage anti-national activities…”

• Well-known commentator Christophe Jaffrelot points out that the primary aim of the ABVP was not to serve the student community but to combat the communist influence on university campuses.

• ABVP is possibly the only student union named by a commission of inquiry (Shiv Dayal Shrivastava Commission of Inquiry in the 60s) set up to the genesis of a riot.

• The ABVP website acknowledges its active participation in the ‘Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Movement’ though it steers clear of any admission of involvement in the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

• While ABVP members were accused last year of inviting a Zee TV Network team to the JNU campus which allegedly doctored videos and incited violence, this pales in the face of accusations that ABVP members were responsible for assaulting Professor HS Sabharwal, Head of the Department of Political Science at Madhav College in Ujjain, who suffered a cardiac arrest and died in 2006. Six ABVP members were arrested by Madhya Pradesh police but in 2009 the Nagpur Sessions Court acquitted them giving them the benefit of doubt citing lack of evidence.

• Significantly, the main accused Vimal Tomar mysteriously committed suicide in 2011.

Also see ‘Five posers to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad’ and ‘Why is ABVP afraid of the war in Adivasi areas?’