Ban lift on students discomforts many in Pak

However, statistics on the country’s campuses punctures such claims.

According to a report on student politics between 1947 and 1984, when the unions were active, students clashed 151 times, 13 students were killed, 284 injured, 800 arrested and 110 rusticated.

In contrast, between 1984 and 2004 — when the ban was in place — 525 student clashes were witnessed on campuses. A total of 165 students were killed, 12,010 were injured, 7,235 arrested and 985 rusticated.

The imposition of emergency by President Pervez Musharraf in November last year saw the resurrection of the students’ movement after many years.

Students came out on the streets, braved batons and teargas shells and protested against the sacking of judges and curbs on the media.

Though they won praise for their activism, the recent clash of students in the University of Karachi with both sides brandishing weapons isn’t exactly good news for some.

The incident, which took place just three days after the lifting of the ban, even saw a university professor Riaz Ahmed being beaten up by the Pakistan Rangers when he asked them to let him out of the closed gates.

Following the incident, the university has been shut for over a week now and campus adviser Khalid Iraqi has announced it will be kept closed for two more weeks till security issues are adequately addressed.

Students brandishing weapons was a reminder for old timers of the clashes of the pre-ban era. Until the 1960s and early 1970s, clashes were usually fought with fists or hockey sticks but the 1980s saw students carrying AK-47s and campuses became battlegrounds for rival factions.

But it is not just the violence that is a pointer of things to come. The shift in the ideological stance of the students is also stark.

“In the 1970s, students rallied around ideological slogans and showed tolerance towards each other. During the election campaign at the campuses and at colleges, they would distribute pamphlets highlighting their point of view and ideology on national and international issues and these pamphlets were very educative,” a university professor said.

“Sadly enough, after a ban was imposed on student unions, the ideological debate evaporated in thin air and was replaced by ethnic, sectarian and parochial slogans destroying the very social fabric of Pakistan society,” he said Several students, especially from creative societies, see the unions as bad news. “Depending on who wins they will try and politicise everything and tell us what to do. They will crush our creativity,” said Hina Khan of Mohammed Ali Jinnah University.