The Jawahar Lal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) elections – held after four years – are finally over and the United Left Front has won them. ‘JNU painted red again’ is what they and their supporters claim. But on every post, candidates of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad have lost by a small margin. That’s why they are calling it their victory because the leftists who had differences among themselves came together out of fear of the Right, yet the difference between them and ABVP remained very small. Their argument is that if they had contested elections separately like before, the ABVP would definitely have won.

There was huge excitement in the media around this election. On the day of counting, the media seemed to be in a hurry to declare victory for the ABVP. The thought of the fall of the red bastion of JNU is what made it mad with joy. But in the end the results disappointed them and they lost interest. The Left Front won every post. Now it was the turn of the other side to claim that the results were a total rejection of the ideology of the RSS.

But if we look at the difference of votes, it cannot be said that the students have completely rejected the ideology of RSS. Rather, it should be said that its student wing has emerged as a strong competitor and is here to stay. To say that JNU has turned red again would be a misrepresentation of facts.

People may wonder why the JNUSU elections should be national news at all. After all, this is only the student union of a university! It is true that the curiosity and excitement in the outside world regarding the JNUSU elections is extraordinary. This time it was much more. After all, these elections were being held after a long hiatus of 4 years. A lot has changed in JNU in these years. Even outside the campus, people in general, or rather a big section of Hindu society, have started viewing JNU with suspicion and hatred. It has come to be portrayed as a bastion of Muslims, leftists, seditionists and terrorists and this propaganda has influenced public opinion. Earlier, people used to feel proud in sending their children to JNU, but now I have hard stories of students fighting with their parents to come to JNU.

This change didn’t happen by itself. Since 2016, the Bharatiya Janata Party and its affiliated organisations have been carrying out a powerful propaganda campaign against JNU. Along with them, big media and even the film industry have been engaged in spreading a picture of........

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