New Delhi: Tension prevailed at Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University on Tuesday after a group of students and alleged right-wing activists held a rally and shouted slogans against Pakistan’s founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
Slogans like “Jinnah premi Bharat chhodo”, “Vande Mataram” and “Hinduon ko darana band karo” were raised in the evening during a march from Sarai Julena to university’s gate number 7. Rahul Tiwari, an RSS member who claimed that he was a post-graduate student of the university, was among those who led the march.
“It’s an attempt to rep-eat what had happened in Aligarh Muslim Univ-ersity,” said Mohammad Salim, a Ph.D. scholar. The Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) campus has been tense ever since members of the ABVP and the Hindu Yuva Vahini entered the premises demanding that the portrait of Jinnah be removed from the students’ union hall. They allegedly beat up students who stood up to them.
The protesters at Jamia, on the other hand, said they held the rally against the discrimination Hindu students were facing. “We were receiving complaints of Hindu students being harassed and threatened by fellow students at the campus,” Jatin Jain, a B.Sc student at the university and one of the protestors, said.
“Many students were bullied on social media on the basis of their identity for posting something on AMU-Jinnah controversy.”
Students alleged that most of the protesters were outsiders and dem-anded that the administration file a police complaint in the matter.
“How can outsiders enter our campus and create tension like this,” said Imran Choudhary, the president of Jamia’s National Students’ Union of India unit.
“The administration should immediately look into this.” Jamia’s public relation officer Saima Saeed said that the protest was on the road and not on campus. “The protest was on the public road and university has no control over it,” she added.
