JNUSU polls: BAPSA announces its arrival as a contender in JNU’s political scene

Members of the organisation say it was after deliberations of over a year that the organisation was formed to break the “hegemony of both the Left and Right”. “We felt we needed to bring the Ambedkarite discourse forward and represent our issues ourselves. It’s like Marx said – the working class has to emancipate itself. Similarly, the oppressed also have to fight their own battle,” says Sonpimple.

He says BAPSA members are “not against Marx or upper-castes” but if either wanted to be part of the group, “they’d have to stand at the end of queue and let the oppressed lead from the front”. While accepting that they didn’t explicitly state workers and peasants as being part of the oppressed, Sunaina from BAPSA said, “For us the definition of the oppressed includes socially, culturally and economically oppressed sections.”

The organisation, which started with roughly 30 members, now has a larger activist circle and 30 core committee members. “For us, elections are another way of creating a socio-political consciousness of our politics, and a strategy to mobilise oppressed communities. We, therefore, fielded two candidates last year who secured about 300 votes each,” says Jitendra, a member of the organisation.

In the last one year, the group says it has worked constantly to expand its base — whether it’s organising protests, holding lecture series on ‘a nation without social justice’ or making interventions on important university matters regarding reservations and deprivation points. “The first thing on our list now would to be start an official membership system since many people have expressed their desire to join BAPSA,” says Jitendra.