When the CPM announced her candidature for the Bengal polls on Wednesday, Aishe Ghosh had just led a group of students into Jawaharlal Nehru University’s B.R. Ambedkar Central Library and compelled the administration to reopen the reading rooms, closed since the pandemic began.

Aishe, president of the JNU students’ union and just over five feet tall, was in the limelight last year when she suffered a deep cut on her forehead from an assault with steel rods by alleged ABVP supporters while leading a campus agitation against a hostel fee hike.

The Durgapur native and leader of CPM student arm SFI is now one of a set of young candidates the party has fielded to try and wrest power back from the Trinamul Congress in Bengal. Aishe, 26, is the candidate from Jamuria, West Burdwan. From a varsity known for its disdain for the establishment, she is the first incumbent students’ union president to contest for public office.

Her fellow SFI leader from JNU, Dipsita Dhar, is contesting from Bally and has already begun campaigning.

Aishe told The Telegraph a realisation was growing that student leaders need to enter electoral politics to have an impact on the lives of students.

“Whatever we face on campus is now seen in the context of what is happening outside. Be it the dilution of reservation, the growth of communal forces that led to the disappearance of (JNU student) Najeeb, or budget cuts,” she said.

“Inside the university, when we talk of bringing about change, such a change has to be systemic, (involving) policy-level changes. And if there has to be change, we need to be in spaces where we can voice our opinion about what policies there should be.”

JNU has been simmering since Aishe joined the School of International Studies for an MA in 2016. That year saw a police crackdown against alleged sedition by some students, and the disappearance of student Najeeb Ahmed after a scuffle with ABVP members.

The following years witnessed seat cuts and a range of changes that the students’ union says were aimed at making the university inaccessible to students from marginalised segments and unduly congenial to those who espouse Hindutva.

“When I joined JNU in 2016, activism itself was new to me. There were suggestions not to join JNU. Student politics and the political culture were new to me,” Aishe, who had joined the SFI after enrolling at JNU, said.

Five years on, she has waded into electoral politics just when she has submitted the first draft of her MPhil dissertation on the “Impact of human intervention in the Tibetan plateau, 1980-2019”.

She explained the plunge and the timing: “I know that the organisation I belong to, the SFI, and the party I represent now have an ideology. It’s not my individual view: it’s the organisation that has backed me up in JNU, it’s the party that is now backing me to contest.”

After the attack on January 5 last year, Aishe had needed 16 stitches on her forehead and had to endure the false propaganda that her injuries were staged. When she returned home, neighbours came to see if the injury was real. She continues to suffer spells of dizziness.

While no one has been arrested for the assault, during which several students and teachers were roughed up, police have accused Aishe of leading a mob that day. She has not yet been chargesheeted.

With the self-disregard expected of communists, Aishe told this newspaper her injuries needed to be seen in the context of governments encouraging goons to quell protests.

“The violence I have faced personally could have been faced by anybody in this university, and it may increase in the coming days…. Even in Jamuria, if there’s a fee hike the students will fight against it. What happened to me can happen to them if they fight for a government to spend more on education. So what has happened in JNU is not isolated,” she said.

“These forces, which have attacked us before, will never be able to break our spirit. I had said back then that the answer to the iron rod will always be iron will, the answer for all kinds of violence will always be alternative policies that we put forward. An idea doesn’t die because of an attack on one person.”

Indeed, it’s because violence is so common in Bengal that many students like her have moved out for higher education. Aishe graduated from Delhi University.

She spoke of the Bengal she was now returning to.

“In some places there is an ‘insider-outsider’ debate, or a Hindu-Muslim divide. The real issue is that a lot of people are forced to migrate. I would have been happy studying back home; we couldn’t because of a certain educational environment. Tomorrow we have to make sure that people are not forced to migrate for jobs or education,” Aishe said.

“The idea of homogeneity is problematic. From Durgapur to Calcutta you will find three or four different kinds of Bengalis. We have always celebrated that. Everyone has the right to assert their culture. We can’t let people divide us on ‘insider-outsider’ lines or say that someone’s religion is not acceptable. That is what the front (Left-Congress-ISF alliance) and the Left have to make sure.”

Transplanted from a campus of political purity to the realpolitik of allying with a party led by a cleric, Aishe was blunt when asked about the tie-up with Pirzada Abbas Siddiqui and his Indian Secular Front.

“He (Siddiqui) is talking about the oppressed, the minorities, Dalits, Adivasis, their condition, education and employment. Not in a single place has he used religious jargon to mobilise people,” Aishe said.

“Even on (the JNU) campus we have prioritised the inclusion of the marginalised in education. That priority remains the same in the Assembly elections.”

Asked about Siddiqui’s misogynist and polarising utterances in the past, such as those against actress turned Trinamul MP Nusrat Jahan, she replied: “I’m not here to defend that. In the coming days it is for all of us to work towards a society where women are not objectified and are not in the clutches of a patriarchal society.”

She added: “We need to go out and vote. I appeal to people to vote for the Morcha. While thinking (about) that, it is (also) very important that the fascist forces are defeated…. On May 2, voters must usher in a government that brings back the Bengal where people have a better standard of living and can hold their heads high.”

With that she was off to the library, just like Wednesday, this time to catch up with her reading before she left for Jamuria on Friday.