Campuses must play a key role in spreading the protests against the alleged gang rape and murder of a Dalit woman in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras, said college and university students who organised a torch rally on Wednesday evening to denounce the barbarity.
Hundreds of students descended on the streets and marched from the Jadavpur University campus till Golpark. Many of the marchers were holding a flaming torch and carrying posters that read: “Only two months ago the Modi government had performed Bhoomi Pujan at Ram Mandir. Two months later Sita was murdered and set ablaze. Welcome to Ram Rajya”.
“This sheer treachery forms the bedrock of Ram Rajya where women are dis-respected blatantly. The Hathras incident reflects this treachery,” said Abhratanu Chowdhury, a BTech student at Jadavpur University and one of the protesters.
“Sita is extremely unsafe in this Ram Rajya. They are now blaming the woman’s character to shield the culprits. But the BJP will not utter a word advising men to mend themselves.”
Wednesday’s march was the third protest rally led by students in as many days, triggered by the Hathras horror.
Campuses are closed but still students assembled in hundreds as they did not want the spirit of protest to extinguish.
“The ruling dispensation will do everything to suppress the protest. But we cannot let the voice of dissent die down. As students it is our duty to sensitise and awaken the common man. Campuses must play a lead role in spreading the protest,” said Prerana Bhowmick, an MSc student at JU.
She walked with a poster that had the words “Women will destroy Hindu Rashtra” written on it.
Across the road from the university’s gate number 2, from where Wednesday’s protest march started, a JU teacher had been assaulted by some men and women when she protested alleged hate speeches against the institute at a BJP rally in support of the amended citizenship act on December 30. A case was started under IPC sections related to outrage of modesty following a complaint by the assistant professor.
Mekhla Bhowmick, a student at Calcutta University who came from Salt Lake to join the protest march, said outraging the modesty of a woman had become a routine affair in Uttar Pradesh and incidents like the one that happened in Hathras must be protested so long as they happened.
“The intersection of caste and gender violence, which we see in UP, is something we condemn. We know, as students, that it has a long history. But this is something we have to fight as long as it is there. The torch that we are holding aloft expresses the smouldering rage that we carry among ourselves,” said Mekhla, who is doing her MPhil in economics.
“Whether classes are being held or not, we will take to the streets. Campuses will rise in rage and spread the protest to the farthest corner”.
Duhita Biswas, a student at IGNOU who was walking next to Mekhla, said she did not know “what else is required to happen to a woman for the students and the entire society to come out in protest”.
“How long can this go on? One after another rape is happening. I cannot keep myself quarantined at home. I had to hit the protest path,” said Duhita.
