Casteist graffiti on JNU campus walls: BJP ups ante, police complaint filed

Tribune News Service

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, December 2

Campus politics returned to haunt JNU on Friday with a police complaint filed at Vasant Kunj station over a range of casteist and threatening graffiti on the walls of the prestigious central university.

Advocate Vineet Jindal filed the complaint after students and professors of JNU woke up to shocking slogans splashed across the walls of the School of International Studies.

The slogans ranged from: “Brahmins leave the campus”; “We will avenge”; and “There will be blood”.

Outside the campus chambers of at least three professors — Parvesh Kumar, Nalin Mohapatra and Vandana Mishra — graffiti read “Go back to Shakhas (read RSS branches).

JNU ABVP president Rohit Kumar slammed a section of students for pasting casteist graffiti on walls in clear defiance of Delhi High Court orders that bar defacement of varsity property and vandalism.

“Vandalism continues. It has come to light because this time even teachers have not been spared,” Kumar said.

The JNU VC is learnt to have instituted an enquiry with sources saying exclusivity tendencies won’t be condoned on campus.

The BJP was quick to denounce the development with Adesh Gupta, Delhi unit president, terming the slogans a reflection of a deep-seated “anti-India mindset”.

He referred to “Bharat tere tukde honge” slogans that were raised when Congress leader Kanhaiya Kumar, the then JNUSU chief, was in charge of student union.

“This is not new. These people are being troubled by nationalistic narratives taking root in the JNU,” Gupta said.

Haryana Home Minister Anil Vij also reacted terming “anti-Brahmin and anti-Baniya graffiti dangerous and part of a larger conspiracy to break up India. Such tendencies should be crushed.”

The JNU has had a history of clashes between the left and right wing ideologies, with the campus witnessing unprecedented violence in January 2020 when some masked miscreants entered the campus and attacked some students and teachers besides damaging property.

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