KOLKATA: With graffiti and counter-graffiti, banners and counter-banners, and marches and counter-marches organised by two rival groups, Left-leaning students and RSS-backed ABVP men, inside and outside the campus, Jadavpur University (JU) virtually became a war zone, triggering fresh tensions over an ideological battle over nationalism and campus politics on Thursday.
The ABVP and a pro-BJP platform held back-to-back programmes at JU on Thursday, while the CPI-M student wing SFI organised a march and street meeting at the main gate outside the university campus this afternoon.
Police installed barricades outside the campus to stop the SFI activists from marching ahead and avoid any face-off with the ABVP.
Students, teachers and non-teaching staff participated in the two programmes.
The ABVP men, carrying national flags, brought out a procession called ‘Vande Mataram’ inside the university, demanding a ban on ‘anti-national’ slogans and activities allegedly made by Left students on the campus.
They assembled at the portico of Aurobindo Bhavan, the university’s administrative headquarters, around 2 pm and then marched across the campus, shouting slogans like ‘Vande Mataram’ and ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’.
Nikhil Das, the ABVP’s JU unit president, whose alleged assault by Left student supporters on August 19 was said to have prompted the vandalism by suspected ABVP supporters, was among those who led the march today.
They also put up portraits of great men, including Rabindranath Tagore, at the university gate and displayed iconic artist Nandalal Bose’s illustrations that form part of the Constitution of India on campus walls as a mark of protest against the alleged ‘anti-national’ slogans of the Left student supporters.
The Haripada Bharati Smriti Raksha Committee’s programme on nationalism was also held at Triguna Sen Auditorium from 3 pm on the campus.
Haripada Bharati was the founding president of the BJP’s West Bengal unit and served from 1980 to 1982.
The event was scheduled to be inaugurated by state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya, but the focus is likely to be on BJP MLA Sarbori Mukherjee, whose threat allegedly triggered the prolonged student unrest at JU.
Protesting against the ABVP’s programme, SFI and other Left student organisations escalated their attack on the RSS and BJP. They also organised a protest march and street meeting outside the campus, accusing the saffron camp of political polarisation and sending police inside the university premises.
Gaurav Barman, an SFI leader at JU, told the media, “The RSS never participated in the freedom movement. Now its students’ wing wants to spread nationalism on a campus that was born out of the anti-colonial struggle during British rule.”
JU again had visitors around midnight.
On Wednesday, it was a Kolkata Municipal Corporation team armed with police and paint cans. They were invited by none other than the JU bosses.
The civic body erased graffiti that Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari found objectionable.
On August 23, Suvendu had posted a video of some of the graffiti on X and asked JU to take “appropriate action”.
The JU authorities had kicked off their action by whitewashing the graffiti on Saturday. However, a section of JU students had reclaimed the walls and repainted the graffiti on Monday.
This is the second time in a fortnight that JU had got midnight visitors. In both instances, the university readily let the visitors in.
Around 1 am on August 20, the university was vandalised by alleged activists of the ABVP. They said they were out to avenge an assault on their JU unit president, Nikhil Das, a few hours before.
The KMC team then went to Nazrul Bhavan, an academic building, and erased a portrait of artist Chittaprosad Bhattacharya.
A member of the students’ platform Art Against Oppression said the portrait of Chittaprosad was drawn in 2022 as a tribute to the artist who documented the Bengal famine.
