Students Struggle

AISF was the first Indian organisation of students which worked for the independence of India. The foundation conference of the AISF was held in the Ganga Prasad Memorial Hall of Lucknow, on August 12, 1936.^[1] 936 delegates representing 200 local and 11 provincial organisations from all over the country participated in the conference. The conference received messages of good wishes from Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindra Nath Tagore, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, Srinivas Shastri and many other prominent personalities. The conference was the biggest gathering of students at all India level till that time. All the universities were represented. P.N. Bhargava welcomed the delegates as the Chairman of the Reception Committee. The conference was presided by M.A. Jinnah and inaugurated by Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru. Prem Narayan Bhargava was elected the first general secretary of the AISF. TheStudents’ Tribue became the first organ of the AISF.

The second conference of the AISF was held after a short interval of only three months, beginning on 22 November 1936, in Lahore. It mainly discussed and adopted the constitution of the AISF. The conference was attended by about 150 delegates under the president-ship of Sarat Chandra Bose, who called upon the students to derive inspiration from the Russian revolution. The conference was also addressed by Pt Govind Ballabh Pant. The conference decided to affiliate the AISF with the World Students’ Association. The Lahore AISF conference prepared a Demand Charter of Students as a basis of countrywide mass student movement.

The last months of 1936 and the whole of 1937 saw unprecedented and active mass movements of students and youth, an upsurge of students, mainly under the leadership of the AISF. Students in Aligarh, Faizabad, Kanpur and other places were punished for taking part in the political activities. As a result, there were big protest meetings and students’ strikes.

Students of U.P. went on protest actions in August 1937 against the arrest of student leaders Ramesh Chandra Sinha and J. J. Bhattacharya. Over 15 thousand students went in protest demonstration in front of the Chief Minister (then called ‘Prime Minister’) of UP Govind Ballabh Pant in support of their 37-point demand charter. Big movement broke out in Bengal in support of the hunger-striking Andaman prisoners in 1937. AISF played an important role in it. There were widespread lathicharges and arrests. Protests against those attacks also took place in the far-away Madras, where protest marches were taken out. For the first time in India’s history our All India Students’ Day was observed on 20 November 1937.