CHENNAI: Surprising as well as inspiring the youth, Dhananjay Balakrishnan, the IIT Madras student who won the Governor’s Prize for all-round proficiency in his dual degree, spoke at length about the situation in Palestine and termed it as “mass genocide”, during the convocation on Friday.
Delivering the acceptance speech, Balakrishnan said it would be an injustice to himself and everything he believed in if he did not use the platform to extend solidarity to Palestine. “This is a call for action against the mass genocide going on in Palestine. People are dying and there is no end in sight.”
He further said, “One may ask why those gathered here be bothered about this; because STEM has historically been used to advance the ulterior motives of imperial powers such as Israel. While engineering students work hard to get top-level and lucrative jobs at MNCs, these tech giants are directly and indirectly involved in the war, by providing Israel with technology — the technology to kill.”
He stressed on the need to spread awareness on what can be done to liberate the oppressed. “I don’t have all the answers. But I do know this — as engineers graduating into the real world, it is our job to be aware of the consequences of the work we do,” he said.