DU Marches Against Gundagardi

Thousands of Students, teachers and many others march yet again. A large number of people gathered today in the “DU Against Gundagardi” protest.

Thousands of students and teachers from DU, JNU, Jamia and AUD joined in the protest.

This was in stark contrast to the “tiranga march” called by the ABVP yesterday. Reportedly about a hundred and fifty students gathered with most of them being ABVP cadre. Clearly no common student supported them.

The ABVP’s claim that the violence unleashed by them two days ago, was actually a two-way clash, gets debunked. Today’s march which had a huge number of people and yet it was a peaceful one. There was no violence whatsoever. The protest was against the hooliganism of ABVP. Ironically some people from ABVP stood holding posters which read “we want peace in campus”

Raising slogans against ABVP violence they marched on.

Several political parties expressed their solidarity with the protest including Congress, CPI(M), CPI, CPI(ML), RJD and AAP.

Leaders from various political parties joined in to show their solidarity.

Sitaram Yechury, K. C. Tyagi, D. Raja, Yogendra Yadav and Pankaj Pushkar were among some of the leaders who addressed the gathering.

“They cannot win this with their intellectual skill and want to replace it with violence”, said Sitaram Yechury

 “I want to tell the media, this fight is not Right Vs. Left, It’s actually right Vs. wrong”, said Yogendra Yadav

 “This is a collective fight to defend our constitutional rights. We will be raising the issue of DU in the parliament”, said D. Raja

Kanhaiya Kumar, Sister of Najeeb, Shehla Rashid, Mohit Pandey also addressed the gathering.

Nandita Narain, DUTA president said that the government has been trying to give autonomous status to some DU colleges. This is an attempt to privatise. Teachers and students had been opposing this move. She said that all this ruckus has been created as a ploy to divert attention from the voices against government’s intentions to privatise

This is an important moment for DU in terms of exposing the politics of ABVP. Clearly the students will not be intimidated by the brutal, lumpin politics of the ABVP.

The protest concluded with a call for a march on Saturday 4th March at 2 pm, from Mandi house to Parliament.

Photos: IndiaResists