Members of Goraksha Dal attempted to disrupt the JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar’s speech at a convention held at Sundarayya Vignana Kendram in Hyderabad on Thursday. Kanhaiya, who arrived in Hyderabad yesterday, was addressing on ” Constitution Rights In India,” when the incident took place.
Naresh Kumar Reddy and Pawan Kumar Reddy, both reportedly members of Goraksha Dal, a right wing organization, managed to sneak into the conference and one of them pelted shoe at him. They raised the slogans, Bharat Mata Ki Jai. But, the shoe missed the target, though the incident created a brief disruption in the conference, Kanhaiya’s supporters immediately caught the miscreants and roughed them up even as the JNU students’ leader continued his address. But later, the police took the duo into custody. This miscreants shouted, ‘anti-nationals like Kanhiaya should not be allowed to speak.’ Earlier the student leader addressed media also.
Kanhaiya’s visit to Hyderabad, the first after his release from jail in the sedition case, generated a lot of interest among the students and youth. Even though it was a talk on constitution, huge crowd of students and youth came to see him. His speech was a hit like the one he delivered at HCU yesterday. The campus was converted into police camp to prevent him from entering the premises. Leaders of HCU students had been arrested, Hostels were closed and prohibitory orders were issued.
Kanhaiaya said there had been a concerted effort to de-legitimize all students’ activities in the country other than the Sangh Parivar. Stating that there was a pattern in that, he said, first, the saffron repression began in HCU which later spread to JNU more virulently and now the there had been an attempt to divest the minority status of Aligarh Muslim University. According to Kanhiaya, the anti-national slogans raised by some outsiders on JNU campus was a deliberate attempt to divert nation’s attention from the suicide of dalit research scholar Rohit. It may recalled that it was the time the Rohit issue was spreading like wildfire across all Indian Universities.
The assault, Kanhaiya said, on the movement of HCU and JNU was the assault on the autonomy of universities and ever-growing demand for social justice in the educational institutions.
He cautioned that the universities would soon become war zones if the Sangh Pariwar continues to impose its ideology to the exclusion of others.
He said his path was Gandhian but hastened to add that he was not the one who would be cowed down into silence by hooliganism. ” Kuch bhi Kar lo, hum darnewala nahi hai,” he roared.
He said they(students of JNU) would carry forward the Rohit movement in Delhi and set up a HCU-like Joint Action Committee in Delhi as well.