For the last couple of years, JNU has been doing the rounds on national television and print media for no good reason whatsoever. DU students took the opportunity to conquer the battleground already set by the national media having JNU stand unabashed in it, as Ramjas college of DU witnessed another violent turn of events.
The entire fiasco began with the English Department and the Literary Society of the college inviting alleged ‘anti-nationalists’ like Umar Khalid, a JNU scholar (who is already atop the glory in the same battleground mentioned earlier, with charges of sedition against him) and Shehla Rashid as guest speakers in a two day seminar named “Culture of Protests”. This agitated the DUSU and right minded student wing of RSS, the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and they took to protest. After a lot of rumble, the authority finally decided to cancel the invitation to the two controversial social figures and so was done. Despite this, the ABVP considered it their ultimate national duty to pelt the seminar hall with stones and create violence in and around the college premises by randomly beating up students and even professors in order to suggest their disgust.
The left minded AISA saw no wisdom in carrying out the silent protests and marches to police stations, hence they too jumped into the sea of violence organising rallies and violent sloganeering- protesting against the violence of ABVP. Much irony?
You know everything is wrong with a University when it is on the front page of Nationals due to no noble reasons. Such situations are so frequent in Delhi because students there don’t know where to draw a line while defending their respective political wings and their ideologies. The ever lasting conflict between the left and the right is much prevalent there, but that doesn’t give a particular group of students the right to declare violence and disrupt peace. Nobody dares miss a chance of being on the news channels and being referred to as an ‘activist’. Students fail to understand that association of the student bodies with political parties and wings does not call for promoting violence and conflicts. What is expected of this generation is pure intellect and wise decisions. But the student wings have entirely deviated from the ideologies, camouflaging their own aggression under the same.
With the college authorities inviting controversial speakers and the ABVP (occupying over 3/4 th seats in DUSU) resenting violently against it, nothing was called for or was mandatory. The entire situation could have been avoided. As always.
SARJANA 