Ramjas violence natural response to ‘anti-national’ slogans, says BJP

NEW DELHI: The assembly witnessed a heated exchange between AAP and BJP members on Tuesday over the recent violence at Ramjas College.

While AAP accused BJP and RSS of trying to destroy democratic spaces in colleges and universities, BJP justified the violence calling it a “natural response of a common man to anti-national sloganeering”.

Chandni Chowk MLA Alka Lamba, raised the issue and played the series of 36 slides made by DU student Gurmehar Kaur last year even as leader of opposition Vijender Gupta protested against it. The slides included Kaur’s controversial remark, “Pakistan didn’t kill my father, war did.”


“Delhi University is not an isolated case of right-wing violence. It started with Hyderabad University and the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula and then went on to JNU. Two students, Umar Khalid and Kanhaiya Kumar, were accused of shouting anti-national slogans but the police have not been able to file a chargesheet even after a year,” said Lamba.

Defending Kaur, who protested against the Ramjas violence saying she was not afraid of ABVP, Lamba said an old slide made by the LSR student was used to threaten her with rape by fake nationalists. She also slammed minister of state (home) Kiren Rijiju for saying that someone was influencing Kaur instead of taking action against those threatening her.

Rajendra Pal Gautam, MLA from Seemapuri, said colleges used to be spaces for discussion and debate which BJP and its affiliates were trying to hijack. “If debates and discussions stop, so will the development of students. Our Constitution gives us the right to freedom of speech and expression with reasonable restrictions. In this case, it didn’t seem that anything was said outside of these reasonable restrictions.”

Gupta told AAP to stop supporting “anti-national forces” and said it was playing with fire by supporting people like Khalid. “The department of English at Ramjas did not have permission for the event. People from JNU went to the college and protested against Ramjas officials, raising slogans like ‘Bharat tere tukde honge, Inshallah’, ‘Bastar ko kya chahiye, azadi’.”

Claiming that even a poor man will die of hunger but not hear a word about dividing the country, he added, “A true Indian will react to such slogans. If you politicise the issue, our soldiers defending the country will feel cheated.”