National Students Federation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
National Students Federation (NSF) is a Left-wing students federation in Pakistan. National Students Federation active in many Pakistani universities and colleges. It was formed in the early fifties as a student wing of the Communist Party of Pakistan and played a major role in the popular student and labour uprising against the pro-US dictatorship of Field Marshal Ayub Khan in 1967 and 1968. NSF activists were among the first major supporters of future Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and its populist/Socialist Pakistan Peoples Party. One of the leading leaders of NSF, Meraj Muhammad Khan, was made a minister in Bhutto's first cabnit but both NSF and Miraj fell out with the Bhutto government in 1973 when Bhutto started to compromise on his Socialist agenda.
NSF saw its first major split when a pro-China faction formed Democratic Students Federation (DSF) and another NSF faction created Liberal Students Federation. These splits helped NSF's arch rivals, the right-wing, Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba (IJT), the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami, gain ground in the many student union elections held in the country's campuses in the seventies and the eighties. Till then NSF had been sweeping student union elections in the Fifties and the Sixties. NSF was also affected by the creation of Pakistan Peoples Party's student wing, Peoples Students Federation (PSF).
When left leaning and progressive parties were persecuted and harassed by the right-wing dictatorship of President General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in the eighties, NSF joined an alliance of progressive student parties that included DSF, PSF and many secular nationalist student groups like All Pakistan Muhajir Students Organisation (APMSO) and Baloch Students Federation. This alliance called the United Students Front (USF) soon was dissolved. When students’ union elections were banned NSF did joined hands with all students organizations against this oppression. Islami Jamiat Talaba and NSF were the two biggest components of this alliance of students. NSF is not active these days and is now overshadowed by other secular, regional and progressive student groups like APMSO and PSF and by Islamic minded student parties such as IJT and Pakistan Muslim League's student wing, Muslim Students Federation (MSF).
