Post Delhi University Students’ Union elections, the winning party Akhil Bhartiya Vidhyarathi Parishad (ABVP) launched one of its initial campaigns focusing majorly on ‘atrocities towards women and their objectification’. The campaign witnessed 200 partisans joining hands to form a human chain to fight ‘live in relationships’ and ‘love jihad’.
While a few welcomed this step in all sincerity and without equivocation, larger population at University titled it as a doomed campaign. According to ABVP, live-in-relationships are against Indian culture as they involve no fidelity towards values.
This means that people indulging into such relationships aren’t mature enough and they are constrained to act in a way ABVP wants. Other students at the varsity also feel that this is some kind of policing where the party is trying to question consensual relationship of two people.
The crusaders also justify the movement by highlighting the agenda of reducing crime and abuse rate pertaining to live-in relationships by making girls aware of malignant effects such relationships have. I personally feel that University deserves to attract more attention towards issues like students’ accommodation or specifically girls’ hostels. Yes, of-course, it is ABVP’s right and personal standpoint to campaign for the matters like these, but the ruling party that swept all the positions at DUSU elections is expected to do much more.
The ABVP leaders, however say that the campaign focuses on overall safety of women, restoring respect for the gender, curbing issues like female foeticide and moderate the youth to create a generation that is unaccustomed to alcohol and drugs.
Groups also focused on fighting ‘forced conversion of Hindu girls by Muslim men’ and abstained from using words like ‘love jihad’. ABVP strives to save girls of falling into such traps where men with pretended identities force them to convert religion by means of marriage. Congress backed National Student’s Union of India (NSUI) thinks that ABVP is labouring enough only to enkindle differences between students of various religions and maximum students also think alike.
Moreover, matters like these are born out of ABVP’s patron party BJP which has been fueling the issue of ‘love jihad’ for a long time now. Yogi Adityanath, love jihad’s self made critic ambassador calls it an international conspiracy and feels that only BJP led government in Uttar Pradesh can stop this ‘social evil’. ABVP taking cues from BJP to launch similar campaigns in University, where maximum people don’t consider love-jihad as an ‘evil’, seems like an untenable and a substandard coalition by the student body.
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