Around 15-20 students of Delhi University who are affiliated to the SFI (Student Federation of India) protested outside the Arts Faculty after a Muzaffarpur court, on 4 October, ordered the police to lodge an FIR against celebrities who had written a letter to PM Narendra Modi on charges of sedition.
Around 50 noted public personalities like Aparna Sen, Shyam Benegal, Ramchandra Guha, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and others had written an open letter to the PM earlier this year in July on mob lynchings and the increasing incidence of hate crimes across India.
‘Lynching is not a crime but writing letter against it to PM is a crime’, read one of the posters by the students, who also took to writing postcards to the prime minister.
‘There is no democracy without dissent. People should not be branded anti-national or urban naxal because of dissent against the government’, read one such postcard being penned by a student.
Noel Benny, a student of the Zakir Hussain College, participated in the protest with a poster which read, ‘Muslim lives matter, Dalit lives matter’.
Emphasising that India is among one of the largest democratic countries in the world, Noel said, “This is totally unacceptable. As an Indian I condemn this thing.”
According to Sumit Kataria, Vice President of SFI, “This is not the first time when such a thing is happening under the BJP government. Such instances have increased after 2014 and we strongly condemn the act of filing an FIR against 50 public personalities.”
The students will continue with their campaign of writing letters to the prime minister as part of a mass protest being led by the SFI in Delhi University. They claim to have written around 20 letters thus far.
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