'Hooliganism, not patriotism’: Professor on ABVP’s class disruption at Mohanlal Sukhadia University

NEW DELHI: “If the feelings (of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad) have been hurt by any of my posts, then they have every right to register their protest but the tradition of dialogue should not stop at a place called university,” Himanshu Pandya wrote on Facebook, just after a few members of ABVP, the student group affiliated to the BJP, disrupted his guest lecture at Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, on June 8. Pandya is a Hindi lecturer at Government College Raniwara, affiliated to Jai Narain Vyas University, Jodhpur.

On the same day People’s Union For Civil Liberties, Rajasthan, an organisation working on civil rights in India, issued a statement condemning the incident at the university. “Prof Himanshu Pandya had been specially invited to the university to teach a course in research methods. The ABVP members reached his class without any warning. They abused the professor and evicted him from the class, raised ugly slogans and forced him to leave the university, pursuing him with slogans even outside the campus. After Prof Pandya left, the foul-mouthed group protested against course coordinator Prof Sudha Choudhury and department head Hemant Dwivedi,” said the statement.

According to Pandya’s post, the ABVP dug through dozens of posts on his Facebook page to find one on the Ram Temple and that was the trigger for their protests.

On June 9, a joint statement by cultural-literary organisations associated with 'Hum Dekhenge' (All India Cultural Resistance Campaign) said: “We all teachers, writers, artists, activists and intellectuals condemn this incident and demand from the university administration that it should take appropriate punitive action against those responsible for this incident and publicly apologise to the invited professor for not taking care of his honour and safety.”

This isn’t the ABVP’s first disruption of events and classes in academic spaces, the PUCL pointed out. In April, ABVP had torn the literature of Bhagat Singh at a book stall at the University of Rajasthan.

“Students of Rajasthan University had put up a book stall selling literature of Bhagat Singh, tearing up literature available at the site, ABVP activists claimed that books written by Bhagat Singh were “treasonous,” and students must only read material that promoted patriotism!,” added the statement from PUCL. Another programme on Mirza Ghalib was stopped in Jhalawar Government College, Jhalawar.

Across universities in the state, there is an undeclared clampdown on events that celebrate democracy, equality, secularism, and freedom of expression, the campaign said.

At MLSU Udaipur

Pandya’s post described what happened at Mohanlal Sukhadia University. He was in Udaipur for three days on the invitation of the faculty of humanities and social sciences, Mohanlal Sukhadia University, for some classes of PhD course work.

On the third day, when Pandya was nearing the end of the lecture, 20-25 ABVP workers entered his seminar hall. “At this time, They stopped my class. They had brought printouts of a very old post of mine - a post I had written in January, titled 'Smriti Babri Masjid'. (That post is currently very low on my timeline, so they must have had to dig it out!). I requested them that my lecture was on some other important topic, let it finish first and of course they too can sit down and listen,” he wrote in the post.

Pandya was mainly teaching the selection of research topics or problems, study and review of previous literature and writing research drafts. He added, “In the meantime they continued shouting and declared me a traitor, anti-Hindu etc. The course coordinator Dr Kushpal Garg had arrived in the meantime and he was more worried about my safety than me. He asked me to leave the class and go with him (which I was going to do anyway because it was impossible to continue the class now.”

Garg asked a researcher to drop Pandya but the ABVP members took away the keys of that researcher's bike and started threatening him. Pandya left on foot, with the ABVP walking with him, shouting slogans and filming the procession.

Pandya also mentioned that no physical violence happened on June 8. He added: “I salute the courage of Sudha ji who stands firmly in this environment. She was the real target. Perhaps their misdeeds against her will continue for inviting a 'traitor' to the university.”

He ended his post saying, “I take full responsibility for every post I write and am ready to communicate with them on any of my posts. The great tradition they were displaying by shouting slogans against me, threatening me to leave and never set foot in this campus again is called hooliganism in simple language. This is not patriotism.”

Support for Palestine

The statement from the All India Cultural Resistance Campaign added that the ABVP had misrepresented the incident on YouTube and social media. It stated, “In these presentations, Prof. Himanshu has been described as a Palestine supporter and it has been said that this was the main reason for the anger of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. In this regard, it is noteworthy that the Government of India itself has repeatedly said that it will continue its support for Palestine.”