“As I came to Rajshahi University from Naogaon in 2010 to sit for the admission test a boro bhai [senior student belonging to Islami Chhatra Shibir politics] approached me, enquired about my problems and managed a room for my 20-day stay in a dormitory.
“He also arranged model tests for me and put forward some guideline on how to face the hurdle of admission test.
“After the test result was published they [Shibir men] relayed the news to me over cell phone,” this is how a Shibir leader narrated his story of getting entangled in the politics of Chhatra Shibir.
And this is how the Chhatra Shibir expand its political network on the RU campus. This radical Islamist organisation offers all kinds of facilities to a student from the very first day an admission seeker makes his/her entry to the university.
Two leaders of the student affiliate of the Jamaat-e-Islami are now Shibir hall committee leaders who bared their minds open to this correspondent yesterday as they walked down their memory lane.
“Why should not you join Chhatra Shibir when you are provided with all the facilities?” they questioned.
Asked about how they established their dominance over the university they said other organisations such as Bangladesh Chhatra League has no hall committee in 11 dormitories of the university.
“But we have not only hall committee but also floor committee in each of the halls. Our members and leaders provide freshers with the room facility and all kinds of moral support, said one of them.
A student of Journalism Department and a Shibir hall committee leader from Chapainawaganj said: “I went almost mad after I had failed to collect the admission fee for my Master’s Degree course but a teacher, a believer to Allah, came to my rescue and gave me Tk3000.”
If the authorities permitted at least 10,000, out of the total 26,000 students of the university will join its rally, he boasted.
The leader further said the internecine conflicts between different factions of Chhatra League is the source of their recruits.
“Leaders in Chhatra League sidelined by factional feud join us and work as our members with the identity of Chhatra League,” he said.
Some senior-most teachers said Shibir drew their recruits mostly from urban poor family.
Of the students, 35% come from poor families, 25% from lower middle-class families while the rest from the middle class, says a professor of Sociology Department unwilling to be named.
Another professor of Geology Department imparting teaching in the university over the last 32 years, told the Dhaka Tribune that the Jamaat-Shibir has permeated all the levels of the university.
They have Jamaat-minded reporters, teachers, officials. “As far as I know at least 120 senior teachers of the university among 1200 teachers are Jamaat men and donate a hefty amount to the party fund.
One of the Shibir leaders said his organisation provides tuitions to the needy students and also help them get a job in future after the graduation.
“Sometimes our members are driven out of the campus due to clashes with other organisations and in that case we help him sit for the exam under a private university. We also help them go abroad for higher education.”
Rajshahi University Vice-Chancellor Mohammad Mizanuddin said the anti-liberation forces provide financial support to students to establish their supremacy on the campus as most of the students of this area are poor.
About the Shibir domination Mizanur Rahman Rana, president of Bangladesh Chhatra League of RU unit, said Chhatra Shibir was garnering support from the areas adjacent to the university as those areas were completely under the control of Jamaat-Shibir.
Moreover, they get married to the girls of localities nearby the university to take refuge there and garner support from them as well, says the BCL leader.