Paper short abstract:

This paper explores different types of political defection in the context of contemporary student activism in New Delhi. If "belonging" to a group involves a social cost for the individual, to be removed from it implies one too.

Paper long abstract:

Usually scholars are keener on knowing the processes by which actors participate to social movements and are less interested in knowing how these commitments fade away or disappear altogether. This is particularly the case of research on Indian campus activism, an activity requiring a high degree of implication − often detrimental to one's own academic performance. Taking as object of study the case of political leadership in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, this paper argues that both individual and collective demobilization can be best understood in terms of "trusting discontinuity". The magnitude of such distrust has to be sufficient to overcome the constraints student organisations put on defection. The major loss faced by the former activists is undoubtedly the loss of "political friendships".

Though providing in-depth ethnographic evidence I identify three major types of disengagement. The first one is the "organisational split" arising when an intense ideological schism shaken the core of a student organisation. The second one is the act of "turning passive" occurring when activists, for various reasons, distance themselves from the political structure they were part of without engaging in an open conflict. The third one is the "continuing of activism by other means". It concerns individuals who leave participatory student politics (often because they graduate of drop out) but see their new professional activity as a continuum of their former engagement. Another case, such as joining a rival organisation, is also a possibility but the latter does not implies necessarily a form of disengagement.