Student Unions.

Institutions of higher learning provide leadership to contemporary societies in the process of social transformation. Students are an important part of the thought leadership provided by academic institutions. Universities are sanctuaries of idealists and dreamers. Students charged with the idea of a free, democratic, and prosperous Pakistan played an active role in politics soon after independence. This was the continuation of the political activism in support of the creation of Pakistan. Aligarh Muslim University was the breeding ground for young student leaders. Students Unions became an important vehicle for political activism of students in Pakistan. Global students' movement against the Vietnam War that originated in American universities spread to campuses all over the world in the 1960s and 70s. This movement turned into a cultural revolution against conventional values, capitalist exploitation, and imperialist hegemony. It was a caravan of dreamers, idealists, truth seekers, and young people opposed to the commodification of society.

Quaid e Azam advised students to keep away from politics after the creation of Pakistan. According to Farooq Maudoodi, his father also advised his children to stay away from student politics. One wonders what was the thinking behind the advice of these political leaders. The answer seems to lie in the thinking that students should try to change the world through knowledge, ideas, and imagination. Their turf is the world of knowledge, dialogue, and research. In Pakistan, political parties with a limited following and weak presence in the parliament used students as a proxy for street power and turned academic institutions into hotbeds of political confrontation. As a result, student unions emerged as an important vehicle for politics of dissent and unfortunately, violence became an integral part of student politics. Engaging in violence simply means crossing the boundaries of the discourse of knowledge and entering the discourse of ignorance. This defeats the very purpose of using student unions for grooming future leaders. If we look at the history of student politics in Pakistan we see that it was not only student unions but college magazines, debates, mushairas, dramatic clubs, and sports that created an atmosphere for the holistic development of our youth. Student unions hardly paid attention to the real issues of students related to curriculum development, pedagogy, scientific research, development...