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Is the thuggery at Ramjas College and the ensuing violence in Delhi University making colleges in the capital go into self-censorship mode?
Are potentially contentious college events being scrapped in fear of violence?
Take, for instance, the Delhi School of Economics (DSE). On finding out that several students of the DSE were planning a slam poetry session on 27 February to protest the DU violence, the college promptly issued a notice.
Students were banned from hosting any gathering or event on the premises of the college with immediate effect, until further notice.
Not only was the poetry session denied permission, the message from the college administration was clear. The authorities saw no point in risking a Ramjas repeat.
Says a well-placed DSE source close to the poetry slam event:
The mood was hardly any different at Delhi's Khalsa College. A street play event scheduled to be part of an inter-college festival on campus was suddenly called off on the morning of 23 February, the morning after the initial violence at Ramjas College.
All nine college contingents that had turned up ready to perform their act had to return disappointed.
According to Kuljeet Singh, Assistant Professor at Khalsa's English Department, ABVP students within the college had warned that if anti-national statements were made in plays, the event would be disrupted by nationalist sloganeering by the ABVP.
On 23 February, Ambedkar University, Delhi, was to host an event commemorating the 26th anniversary of the alleged mass rapes by soldiers of the Indian Army in Jammu and Kashmir's villages of Kunan and Poshpora. But curiously enough, that event too was postponed.
Media reports asserted that it was an immediate fallout of the Ramjas ruckus, quoting a corroboration from a speaker at the event.
The past one week has undoubtedly been a tumultuous time for university spaces in the capital. But will the violence in Delhi University on the 22-23 February leave a lasting impact on its colleges, maiming their tradition of free speech?
Is the self-censorship at DSE and Khalsa a transient phenomena? Or will these college administrations continue to silence themselves in the fear of violence?
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