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SFI Alleges Attack on Members at DU Lit Fest

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On March 19 2023, the last day of the DU Lit Fest, SFI workers gathered to protest against a speaker session with Dr. Subramanian Swamy and were allegedly physically attacked by unidentified persons.

The Delhi University Literature Festival, organised on Ramjas College grounds from March 17–19, has been subject to a series of allegations by organisations such as Students’ Federation of India and the All India Students’ Association, with the latter accusing the event of holding right-wing political affiliations. On March 19 2023, a protest by SFI during a speaker session with Dr. Subramanian Swamy was shut down by the beating and manhandling of the protestors by assailants, who the SFI alleged are affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

“On 19, we decided to show our dissent with placards, and as soon as we marched towards the stage—we were some 20-25 activists—first the organising team members tried to stop us. After 10–15 seconds, almost 40–45 people, who may be students or may not be students, I don’t know what student wing they were affiliated to, but they were affiliated to RSS — for sure I know that — started chanting slogans like ‘Jai Shree Ram’ and ‘Vande Mataram’ and started pushing and beating us. They beat 5–6 of our activists pretty badly, including me, and pushed us outside the college gates. The security did not do anything. What was shocking for us was that a professor of Ramjas College itself, Chemistry Department, also started to beat us.”

Abhishek, SFI DU Convenor

In a press release, SFI alleged that the assailants “hurled abusive remarks on the students” and “physically pushed the female students”. Referring to the security officials as “mute spectators”, they accused them of not trying to stop the alleged attackers. SFI further described the program as “a PR event for BJP under the garb of a Literature Fest”, and alleged the use of “cheap tactics involving muscle power to silence them (the protesting students).”

The organising team of the DU Lit Fest has hit back at these allegations, stating that the event was “not politically motivated in any way” and was merely an expression of ideas which “did not belong to the political left.”

A volunteer and member of the organising team for the DU Lit Fest, who wished to remain anonymous, felt that the claims were “exaggerated” and “twisted into a narrative”.

Being a part of the organising team, I never felt that any political ideology or political party inspired us. Students, not just from DU, from various colleges and institutions, were very excited and joined. A lot of the authors that came to DU Lit Fest were the ones who had come to Bharat Book Club, which comes under Historical India, for their book launches. You will hear that they are rightists and all, but if you would’ve actually gone to the book stalls, you would find books from various ideologies and various authors.

– Anonymous volunteer at the DU Lit Fest

A student who volunteered at the Festival told us that it was but natural for the organisers to try to stop a “screaming” protest, even a peaceful one, at a large-scale event they had worked very hard to organise.

Similar sentiments were echoed on social media channels, where the apparent and presumed fest organisers called SFI’s videos “full of misinformation and misleading statements”, referring to the diversity in the rest of the talk sessions and the hard work put in by students behind the event.

Read also: AISA Organises People’s Literature Festival, Condemns DU Lit Fest as ‘BJP-RSS Propaganda’

Featured Image Credits: DU Beat

Sanika Singh
[email protected]

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Campus Central

An Impalpable RSS Manual to Nationalising Education

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Over the weekend of 25-26 March 2017, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), through its intellectual body Prajna Pravah conducted a seminar at Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Technology and Management. This “Gyan Sangam”, an invitation-only event, was attended by over 700 scholars and over 50 of the top executives of government universities across the country. Yogesh Tyagi, Vice Chancellor of the University of Delhi, was also present at the seminar. The two-day event was a closed-door workshop and was apparently triggered by a contemporary need to “Indianise” the educational system by providing a nationalist narrative.

J Nanda Kumar, the National Convenor of the Prajna Pravah, talked about the dilution of the Indian culture as a result of the “culture of protests” and the practice of “cultural evenings” on campus. He said, “This is a time of revival of nationalism throughout the world. All intellectuals here should also come together to nationalise our education system.” This cry for change is apparently an attempt to free the students’ minds from colonial values and replace them with national values. He stated, “We have to develop a social an intellectual point of view that will be able to solve the problems of our current generation. We have to free our youth from the colonial values.” RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said during the proceedings, “This seminar is not organised to raise an alternative narrative but to raise the true nationalist narrative in our education system.”

The seminar had three sections – session-wise discussion with regard to academic subjects such as history and political science, expert sessions on topics such as cultural onslaught, and an interactive session with Mohan Bhagwat. None of these sessions provided any specific policy details as to how the education system will, in reality, be “Indianised” or how university syllabi will include a “Bhartiya” perspective. The only answers received were the crafting of a non-governmental and autonomous academic system. How this will automatically lead to the removal of the “culture of protests” and the Indianising of education is yet to be clarified. When J Nanda Kumar claims that the current atmosphere in Indian universities “badly affects young minds and poisons the environment of our educational institutes”, the least these young minds deserve is a reasonable alternative that will lead to holistic growth and awareness among students – not merely the furthering of a self-serving agenda by an increasingly authoritarian ruling party.

 

Image credits: Press Trust of India

Vineeta Rana

[email protected]

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QWERTY

RIP Google Reader

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It might be a little late for writing your obituary, but almost after a week since your demise, the hollowness has just begun to sink in. Dear Google Reader, thanks for being the information aggregator that I always required. Thank you for being there, and specially for being a Google product.

When your daddy wrote this in a blog post, I almost felt that retire could be replaced with kill. The fact that I will never see my subscriptions in the Google Reader interface was just a change one wasn’t used to.

“We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months.”

Now that you are gone, its strange that with so many alternatives buzzing in the Internet sphere that people hardly notice a void. They might not be Google, but they still work and surprisingly come packed in intuitive interfaces. And then your demise also created a new category called the ‘Google Reader replacement’ and a huge number of developers willingly went for the kill. Almost dying Digg saw the scope in the market and launched the Digg Reader. Established AOL announced plans of an AOL Reader. Feedly and BlogLovin have already been there since long.

Bread and butter to many and a reader’s paradise, with you RSS had been a companion. It had been there earlier but hadn’t been recognised. You gave the phenomenon visibility, thank you for that.

Like many application based services that come and go in this fast changing web world, you my friend lived a long fruitful life of eight years. In today’s world of social media dominance, I wonder whether RSS is becoming a shrinking market. I shared your loss with a few friends, and well the major response said, “I have no idea what you are talking about.” Sadly, the past three years of social media dominance have taken over your prowess. Twitter majorly, might be the one to blame. RSS is all about quick and light updates for news and information that matters to you. Twitter, integrated multimedia into the system, subscriptions in the form of accounts you could follow and everything in a constantly updating ‘feed’. I am not referring to it as a complete RSS alternative, it just happens to be doing a lot of damage to RSS’ market.

As a blogger, reader and Internet lover, I will miss you. We shall continue to respect you for what you gave to the Internet. You might leave us as a service, but will continue to stay in our emotional cache and mental history forever and ever. May you rest in peace and ever eternal online glory.

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