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At around midnight on Monday, Vikas Dahiya, joint secretary of the Delhi ABVP, Rakesh Sharma, state organisational secretary, and Manvinder Singh, executive member, were arrested by the Maurice Nagar Police from their shelter outside the Arts Faculty where they were on hunger strike. The other five are absconding, including Rohit Chahal, joint secretary of ABVP.
The three arrested leaders were produced on Tuesday before the Tis Hazari Court on charges of “rioting and obstructing a public servant”. The court sent them to Tihar Jail in judicial custody for 14 days, drawing criticism from the ABVP, which feel its activists are being attacked for political reasons.
“The Ramayana issue is no longer limited to the campus. Top leaders from the Congress are pressuring the police to act against ABVP,” Chahal told Newsline. According to him, the police had remained a mute spectator when the NSUI members participated in similar acts of violence in Shivaji College and PGDAV College last week. They also pointed out that DUSU president Amrita Bahri of the NSUI was involved in violence at the Geology Department in February without attracting police action.
DCP (North) Devesh Srivastav said that in the last cases of agitation, nobody had launched any complaints unlike this time. “Trouble in the campus is not unknown, but attacks have not taken place in the other agitations,” he said.
Yet, the police are not the only ones cracking down on the ABVP, which found itself cornered when various groups organised a counter rally on Tuesday. Members of the SFI, AISA and KYS joined students of the History Department to restore “freedom of expression and democratic functioning in the University”.
In a memorandum submitted to the Vice-Chancellor, the group demanded police action against the protesters. They also asked for action against the police personnel who failed to stop the mob from entering the Department premises. “The police could have stopped the History Department from being destroyed if they had acted on time,” said Maya Joseph, a student.
How the Ramayana issue erupted:
* A chapter “Three Hundred Ramayanas” by A K Ramanujan included in the reading material of History 2nd year concurrent course calls Hanuman “a henchman” and “a tiny monkey”. It also says that Sita was the daughter of Ravana.
* The chapter reads: “Rama was sitting on his throne when his ring fell off (into a hole). His trusted henchman Hanuman took a tiny form and went down the hole”.
* On Sita: “The word Sita means ‘he sneezed’ ; Ravana calls her Sita as she was born from a sneeze”.
* The ABVP calls these an attack on religion and has demanded the removal of this the reading material.
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