KOLKATA: Fresh violence erupted on Sunday at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI) campus in Kolkata after activists of the Hindutva organisation Hindu Jagran Mancha (HJM) allegedly tried to enter the institute by forcibly breaking through its main gate.
The activists staged a protest outside the gate on Sunday evening and allegedly hurled water bottles and stones at students inside the campus in Panchasayar.
Students also allegedly launched a counter-attack on the HJM agitators, triggering fresh tension at the same spot where violence had erupted last Sunday.
A few hundred HJM activists gathered at the SRFTI gate and organised a rally. They allegedly tried to break through the gate so that their programme, held in protest against last Sunday’s violence, could be organised inside the campus.
After being denied entry, the protesting HJM activists put up photographs of Swami Vivekananda and Bharat Mata at the gate.
Students were heard shouting ‘azadi’ slogans and allegedly pelted bottles at the protesters outside in a counter-attack.
A week after the earlier violence, the institute faced another challenge on Sunday.
In a statement issued on Saturday, the SRFTI students’ union had urged the authorities to take “preventive measures” to ensure that a proposed rally by the Hindu Jagran Manch on Sunday did not become a “threat to the safety of students, staff and faculty”.
On 27 September, the SRFTI campus had virtually turned into a battlefield after students and activists of the RSS-linked Akhil Bharatiya Grahak Panchayat (ABGP), which had hired the institute’s main auditorium for a state-level event, clashed with each other.
The SRFTI students’ union said Sunday’s rally had been scheduled days after students were attacked on campus by people associated with the ABGP.
The union said in its statement on Saturday: “The (September 27) incident has left students deeply concerned about their safety... We do not wish to speculate on the organisers or their intention. However, the timing and circumstances of this proposed mobilisation cannot be treated casually. When students have already experienced violence involving persons from outside, the responsibility of the administration and concerned authorities is to prevent any situation that could further threaten their safety.”
A former member of the HJM, who is now associated with the RSS, said: “While disrupting the programme of the ABGP at the Main Theatre on the campus, the SRFTI students disrespected the image of Swami Vivekananda and Bharat Mata. We will not allow this anymore.”
“After the violence... allowing another mobilisation in the immediate vicinity of the institute without adequate safeguards raises serious questions about the responsibility being taken for students’ safety,” the union had said in its statement.
“We want safety, transparency and accountability — not an announcement of normalcy while students remain afraid,” it added.
An SRFTI student said there was a “deep-seated fear” among students. “The arrests of the offenders belonging to the ABGP could have given confidence to the students. But that has not happened,” he said.
“Amid this, a rally by the Hindu Jagran Manch has triggered more panic,” he said.
The students’ union has also demanded that the first report of the special investigation team constituted by the state government to probe the violence be made public.
