Students Have Become Pawns Of Discredited Political Class

Students have become new tools of political game in India. Unable to combat an aggressive Right wing on ideas and execution fronts, the Left and the Centre-left forces are using the gullible students to cause unrest.

Recent incidents in Hyderabad university, Delhi’s Jawahar Lal Nehru University, Srinagar’s National Institute of Technology and the heinous act of government college in Palakkad are disturbing for parents like us.

Here are today’s developments:

Students at the National Institute of Technology (NIT) in Srinagar on Wednesday alleged police harassment and accused the college administration of threatening them following last week’s clashes between local and outstation students.

“The director called a meeting with students; there he threatened us and said that if you rake this issue more, we will fail you and delay your degrees. No one was speared; girls, handicapped, all were beaten by the police,” one of the students alleged. “No one is questioning those who raised anti-national slogans, instead we are facing atrocities of the local police and collage administration,” another student said.

Last week there were clashes among students during the World Twenty20 semi-final match played between India and West Indies. Some students from outside the state claimed Kashmiri students chanted anti-India slogans and burst firecrackers after India’s defeat.

The NIT administration suspended classes and shut the campus down till Tuesday to prevent the situation from escalating, but students expressed a sense of insecurity and wanted to leave campus.

The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) was deployed inside the campus following the confrontation as protesting students accused the state police of using ‘excessive’ force against them.

Meanwhile, tension prevailed near the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) on Wednesday after scores of students belonging to different organisations held protests demanding arrest of the Vice Chancellor Appa Rao Podile and tried to forcibly enter the varsity.

Some of them climbed the main entrance gate even as police deployed in large numbers, immediately intervened and prevented them from entering the campus and took them into preventive custody.

The protesting students raised slogans against Rao and held banners asking him to leave the campus. They said Rao has been booked on charge of abetting suicide of research scholar Rohith Vemula, and questioned how can he hold the 76th academic council meeting, which was going on in the university.

Since the university administration has imposed a blockade on the campus preventing students to contact anyone from outside, ‘Chalo HCU’ call is also against the imposed blockade on the university, JAC had said.

However, what makes us really worried about is the abuse of freedom of thought by the students.

In Kerala’s Palakkad, to insult their Principal, a group of Left-leaning SFI students (students wing of Communist party) of the prestigious 127-year-old Government Victoria College,  allegedly prepared a symbolic ‘grave’ for her as a ‘retirement gift’.

Following a complaint by Principal T N Sarasu, who retired on March 31, police have registered cases under various sections of IPC against some SFI students.

In her complaint to police, Sarasu has named at least eight SFI students who had prepared the ‘symbolic grave’ inside the college campus and had strewn it with flowers and placed a wreath on her retirement day.