Historicising Student Activism and their Pamphleteer Discourses: a Textometric Analysis
Recovering those writings on the wall: this paper aims at providing new insights on youth Indian activism through presenting preliminary results of a textual study on campus politics. Through a lexicographic analysis of a recently (2015) digitalised database of pamphlets in a predominantly left leaning university in New Delhi, I present three main findings. Mainly, pamphleteer rhetoric in this campus operationalises a vituperative type of discourse based on competitive argumentation, slanders and truth claiming. Moreover, textual statistics helps us to identify phases, changes of political leadership and the advent of new political debates in the university, which echo those emerging in the country. Lastly, activists authoring pamphlets build on pre existing ideologies embedded in Indian politics, as they draw from the political culture of the party they belong to.