After JNU row, Lady Shri Ram College calls off BJP leader's event

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 14

Delhi’s prestigious Lady Shri Ram College today cancelled a talk by BJP spokesperson Guru Prakash Paswan organised on the occasion of Ambedkar Jayanti following “objections” by Left student unions, particularly the SFI.

Left pressure?

An institution can’t be an echo chamber. As a teaching faculty, this saddens me even more when students close their horizon! Guru Prakash Paswan, BJP spokesperson

As per a text message received by Paswan from the coordinator of the event, “the talk was cancelled keeping in view the recent incidents in Karnataka and Jawaharlal Nehru University”. A disappointed Paswan, a Dalit scholar and Assistant Professor at Patna University, questioned on social media if “subaltern could speak (sic)... not at one of the premier institutions of the country, LSR. I was informed this morning that the event has been cancelled at the behest of my political affiliation and my role as national spokesperson of BJP”.

He said an institution couldn’t be an “echo chamber”. “As a teaching faculty, this saddens me even more when students close their horizon!” he tweeted. The session, “Ambedkar Beyond Constitution”, had been organised by the college’s SC/ST cell. Slamming the college for “succumbing to pressure from the Left”, BJP leader Amit Malviya said, “The intolerant ideological and political assertion of Communist-sponsored student bodies, that permeates our academic institutions, is a bane. It obstructs the free expression and assimilation of competing ideas.” —

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