Hyderabad: Mild tension prevailed in the University of Hyderabad (UOH) when a program was allowed to be held by right-wing think tank ‘Pragna Bharati’ on the campus. After students got to know of it, many of them were prevented from entering the event. The situation got tenser after a man, alleged to be an RSS member, showed protesting students a middle finger while walking in.
At the event in UoH, known speakers such as right-wing ideologue Rajiv Malhotra and BJP Rajya Sabha member Subramanian Swamy attended the event. Malhotra is most infamous on social media for featuring in a video with rape-accused Swami Ntiyananda and discussing a bizarre idea of how to get money from the billionaires in the world to deliver it to them in the next life.
During the program organized by Pragna Bharati on Monday, several students were prevented from entering the talk. Students claim that only people who are affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) were let in. Many who were unhappy with the presence of the right-wing speakers in UoH turned up to protest at the event.
Over the last few years, the University of Hyderabad administration has also prevented various speakers from entering the campus to speak with the students (like Yogendra Yadav).
Pragna Bharati organised an interactive session with Rajiv Malhotra, Subramanian Swamy, and Vijaya Viswanathan on Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. in the Zakir Hussain lecture hall.
Among videos shot during the protest in UoH, one of those shows a man in a kurta who was being escorted into the lecture hall. In that video, he responded to the sloganeering students by whistling at them and pointing his middle finger toward them.
“We were stopped from attending the session under the pretext that we did not register for the program. We only came because we wanted to listen to the speakers and interact with them,” said Kripa, the UoH’s Students Federation of India (SFI) joint secretary said while speaking to Siasat.com.
She said a complaint against the man was given to the Gachibowli police and the University of Hyderabad administration also.
Gachibowli police informed that they have filed the complaint and are investigating the incident to ascertain the identity of the man in the video.
In another video, the police and UoH security were seen pulling the students away and preventing them from entering the hall.
The program organisers from Pragna Bharati said that they did not invite him to the sessions and that they had no clue about the incident until the police informed them later. Speaking to Siasat.com, one of the organisers from Pragna Bharati, who identified himself as Sharmaji, called the students ‘anti-nationals’.
Various university students shared the video of the incident on social media, accusing RSS and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) of bringing the man (who showed the middle finger) into the university.
Commenting on the incident Rajiv Malhotra shared a video of the students making slogans on Twitter and said, “Hooligans from SFI tried to storm my book discussion at U of Hyderabad today”. He said that the Vice Chancellor of the university was present at the event.
In response to the incident, UoH’s ABVP said that, “A violent mob led by SFI gathered there deliberately intended to create an annoyance so the program would get cancelled”.
ABVP statement was released on Tuesday “condemning the communist and communal hooliganism”. It alleged verbal abuse on the guests by the SFI cader and said that one of the guest’s car was also attacked.
SFI in its statement on Tuesday said, “The university is unabashedly facilitating the cowardice of RSS and its flunkeys by banning democratic discussions and dissent from student community”.
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