PrintBy week one, we had the bandh blues. This Hindi word for “closed” refers to a community lockdown, during which people are expected to stay in their homes. A few days prior to our departure for a semester abroad in Hyderabad, India, the U.S. State Department warned American citizens of political unrest in Andhra Pradesh, the state of which Hyderabad is the capital. Assured by Columbia’s study abroad office that the situation would not affect our experience, we found ourselves disillusioned when we spent our first week in India locked inside the University of Hyderabad campus gates, caught in a series of bandhs.
Since 1953, the state of Andhra Pradesh has debated its regional boundaries. Andhra, the southwestern region, sustains an agricultural economy afforded by its fertile geographical location. As a result, the region has largely funded Hyderabad’s growth and the city is now a bustling high-tech hub with an increasing flow of foreign investment. However, Hyderabad’s location in Telangana, the arid, resource-barren region in the northwestern part of the state, has left the rest of the Telangana region with inadequate government funding and little room for economic growth. Drastic disparities in resource allocation prompted a long-standing separatist movement in Telangana which seeks to form its own state, independent of Andhra Pradesh.
Just as we began our stay in India, the fifty-year debate culminated in a series of demonstrations overwhelmingly led by university students. In mid-December, the central government finally ceded to the protestors’ demands and is currently constructing a plan for separation. Or so they say—the situation changes more quickly than we can follow.
A photograph on the front page of the Times of India depicts almost a hundred students from Hyderabad’s Osmania University sitting in the branches of a tree at a political rally. On our own campus, students marched for the cause, held sit-ins in the commons, and “edited” all road signs to read “Telangana” instead of “Andhra Pradesh.” Many professors were unable to reach campus due to the halting of public transport. Classes that were held were soon interrupted by student activists demanding that the professors discontinue their lectures “voluntarily” to demonstrate support for the separatist movement. Almost a month into the semester, professors grew frustrated as the repeated interruptions went on in the few uncanceled classes they had. One professor, in response to a student group’s interruption, offered up the decision to his class. After all, he explained, it is the students’ right to join the separatist cause in place of class time. As American students observing the decision from the sidelines, we recognized that our academic experience here was being overshadowed by the larger political issue.
It’s an odd experience to be dropped into the thick of an intense political disruption, but what’s most surprising to us is how familiar this agitation has been to most Indians. While the bandh has certainly overtaken the daily routines of those in Hyderabad, it’s clear that those who are not wrapped up in political rallying have learned to live around it. Even we have adapted to the unpredictability brought on by the political tension: When we saw that the campus gates were locked one evening, we anticipated that the next day’s classes would most likely be canceled, the library and student center would be closed, and pockets of demonstrators would be proclaiming, “Jai Telangana!” Yet we can’t help but think about the reaction of Americans if a city larger than Chicago were to come to a complete pause for days on end. Political protest, such as bandh, student walk-outs, and public demonstration, is the pulse of Indian democracy. The voice of protest in India seems to ring much louder than it does in the United States, even though the First Amendment is a hallmark of our political consciousness.
The role of students in this movement is vital and omnipresent, and it prompts us to reflect on our own political weight as Columbians. Something has shifted in our perception of American students as political actors. Of course, there are many Columbia students who actively demonstrate for their causes. The collection of outcries against the Manhattanville expansion and the recent mock-wedding to show support for gay rights confirm that student activism still very much holds a place here. However, the majority of students at Columbia don’t seem willing to walk out of class to demonstrate or to miss a week of school to march in DC—we hesitate to invest the amount of time, energy, and personal sacrifice required for protest to succeed. Perhaps the reason why there seems to be such a discrepancy between student activism in the US and in India is that Indian students maintain the expectation that their voices will not only be heard, but will even bring a city to a halt. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy: we don’t see ourselves as effective, and therefore we don’t take the responsibility to affect.