Sohel Chakma, Assistant General Secretary, Hill Students’ Council
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| Sohel Chakma |
Nipon Tripura, who identifies himself as a former president of the student organization of the JSS (Santu Group), made a Facebook post yesterday (August 2, 2025). While sharing his opinions on leadership, he misrepresented the leadership style of Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro. In doing so — perhaps unknowingly — he ended up revealing the fascist nature of his own party’s leadership.
Regarding his nonsensical remarks, I would like to say the following:
One.
You said, “As a simple fact, there isn’t just one tiger in a forest. So I don’t understand why the UPDF and some critics use this nonchalant (sic) term.” What I don’t understand is how you don’t know why it’s used. Kindly teach this “two tigers can’t share one forest” theory to Santu Larma himself. Because he is the only one who believes “two tigers can’t share one forest, therefore only JSS can exist in the politics of the hills.” He hasn't just believed this silently—he’s been desperately trying for the past 27 years to establish his sole reign over the hill’s political forest. In doing so, countless promising and militant “tigers” have faced premature demise—there’s no way to count them all.
Since we’re talking about tigers, let me give you some more insight into a tiger’s behavior. When a tiger gets old and can't hunt anymore, what does it do? It eats its own helpless cubs. Old Santu Babu is doing just that now. He can no longer lead movements (though how much he ever did is debatable), so with the help of the military rulers, he’s hell-bent on eliminating the new generation of leaders.
But just as a tigress protects her cubs from aggressive, ferocious male tigers—sheltering and hiding them—the Jumma people have been protecting the UPDF from Santu’s barbarous attacks for the past 27 years. That’s why the UPDF has survived and grown from a cub into a powerful tiger.
Two.
Nipon Babu wrote: “In any movement or party organization, there’s always one leader. The rest are assistants, and one of them fills in as the next leader in his absence.” (Poorly structured sentence.) This idea—that in movements and parties, there is always just one leader and the rest are mere assistants—is completely flawed and nonsense. Only someone with a fascist mindset could hold such a view. Of course, it’s true in fascist parties like Ershad’s Jatiya Party, Khaleda Zia’s BNP, and Hasina’s Awami League—where there’s only one leader and everyone else is a servant.
But in parties led by great revolutionaries like Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro, leadership is not like that. The idea of leadership in revolutionary parties is entirely different. It’s not like Santu Larma’s party leadership, or the leadership of Ershad-Khaleda-Hasina, where one person is supreme.
You cited Lenin as an example. But do you know that even Lenin’s important opinions were often rejected through party votes? When the Bolsheviks decided to seize power in the October Revolution, two central leaders—Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev—publicized the plan in the press. Lenin was furious and demanded their expulsion from the party. But the majority of the central committee did not support him. So his demand was rejected—his view was defeated. Even after the revolution succeeded, Lenin's opinion was not always accepted. The committee made decisions based on democratic majority votes, and Lenin accepted them.
But what would Santu Babu have done in such a case? What would have happened in the so-called “revolutionary” JSS party?
The answer is very simple. It would have been decided according to clause 7 of article 17 of the JSS constitution. Let everyone see what it says:
“In case of serious disagreement within any party committee, where members are nearly evenly divided, every effort must be made to reach consensus. If reaching consensus proves impossible, then the president’s opinion shall be taken as final.”
There’s a lot of talk about democracy and majority opinion in the JSS constitution. But this clause renders all that hollow and meaningless. This is the fundamental difference between Lenin’s party and Santu Babu’s party—even though Santu and his followers loudly spew Leninist-Maoist jargon.
Why, when “serious disagreements arise and opinions are split,” should the president’s view be final? What kind of democracy is that? What kind of revolutionary practice is that? It means the president is always right. Just as in Ershad-style parties, all decision-making power rests with the chairman—in Santu Larma’s “revolutionary democracy,” it’s the same: the president’s view is final. Those who believe that a party should have only one leader and all others are subordinates inevitably have such a constitution and such a distorted form of democracy.
On this point, I ask Nipon Babu: have you actually read your party’s (i.e., JSS Santu Group’s) constitution properly? I suspect you haven’t. The constitution isn’t even available on your party’s website. I get the feeling that Santu Larma hides it from general members. (For the record, I learned about this clause from a UPDF political class.)
Three.
This ultimate weapon—clause 7 of article 17 in Santu Larma’s constitution—was experienced firsthand by Chandra Shekhar Chakma, Rupayan Dewan, Sudhasindhu Khisa, and Raktotpal Tripura, who suffered its consequences. Eventually, unable to digest Santu Larma’s version of “democracy,” they were forced to leave his so-called revolutionary party. And as for what ultimately happened to Chandra Shekhar Babu—well, everyone knows. Another victim of the two tigers can’t share one forest policy.
The truth is, anyone with even a shred of self-respect—anyone who despises servitude—could never remain in the party of a dictator and autocrat like Santu Larma.
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