ABVP goes on rampage at Ramjas, pelts stones at seminar featuring Umar Khalid

An academic seminar at Delhi University’s Ramjas College turned violent on Tuesday, as cadres of the RSS-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) protested the participation of JNU student Umar Khalid. The college was eventually forced to cancel the two-day event.

ABVP protestors pelted stones at the windows of the seminar hall while another session was going on, and some speakers and students were also reportedly beaten up outside the campus.

While those inside the seminar hall were safely escorted out by the police, things escalated outside the venue as non-ABVP students also started sloganeering and countering the ABVP members, who were around 150-200 in number.

Khalid, a PhD scholar who was arrested last year after the 9 February sedition row at JNU, was still on his way to the college when the principal called off his session, following the police's advice.

Khalid was slated to speak about his doctoral research on Bastar in a presentation called the ‘The War in Adivasi Areas’.

A session on Wednesday meant to be addressed by Shehla Rashid, vice-president of the JNU Students’ Union during last year’s controversy, was also cancelled.

Eventually, the seminar, titled ‘Cultures of Protest’ and organised by the Literary Society and the English Department of the college, was called off entirely due to security reasons.

Dr Jacob, the head of the department of English, who was in-charge of the seminar, told Catch, “The ABVP members had been protesting since around 11 in the morning. Fearing for the safety of students and taking police advice, the principal decided to cancel Khalid’s and Rashid’s sessions. But when the ABVP mob started throwing stones and breaking windows of the seminar hall around 1.30 or 2 pm, we decided to call off the whole event.”

But he maintained that academic spaces have always stood for freedom of expression.

“We’ve always believed that in universities and colleges, there should be complete freedom to express one’s views and debate ideas. In fact, this openness has been the tradition at Ramjas. But this time the ABVP has effectively managed to shut us up,” he said.

Among the speakers who were attacked outside the campus were Vikramaditya Sahai, a queer rights activist, and Dhrubo Jyoti, a journalist who focuses on queer and Dalit issues.

Recounting what happened, Jyoti told Catch, “We were waiting at a red light signal inside an auto near Ramjas, when a group of four to five people came and attacked us. They even identified themselves as ABVP members. They were slapping, punching and trying to choke us. We managed to escape when the traffic signal turned green.”