Inviting terrorism sympathizers to deliver talks and glorifying terrorist organizations seems to have become the standard practice in the Humanities and Social Sciences departments of many Bharatiya universities.
Coming close on the heels of the incident at OP Jindal Global University where a talk was delivered on the university campus in which a terrorist organization like Hamas was glorified, and the Bharatiya army called a terrorist organization in the context of the Pulwama incident, another such incident has come to light at IIT Bombay.
A group of students at IIT Bombay have launched a police complaint against an event that took place at the premier educational institution on the 6th of November. The event was organized by Professor Sharmistha Saha from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, and in the guise of showcasing a documentary, radical leftist Sudhanva Deshpande was invited to deliver an online lecture in which he reportedly glorified Palestinian militants Zakaria Zubeidi and Ghassan Kanafani.
The news of this event was first shared on the X Handle called “IIT B for Bharat” on the 8th of November. A 5-minute video recording of the event has also been shared along with.
At the beginning of the clip itself, the invited speaker Sudhanva Deshpande can be seen proudly announcing that he was lucky to meet Zakaria Zubeidi in 2015. And then subsequently, the speaker can be seen justifying armed struggle that to have liberation one must have armed struggle and if we don’t have the culture to take recourse to guns, guns will turn on us. Then he starts to call the Palestinian struggle a freedom struggle and starts saying there has been no freedom struggle in the history of the world that has been 100 percent non-violent.
The guy then goes on to glorify the Palestinian terrorists as freedom fighters. It’s unbearable to even try and see the clipping beyond a minute. The guy is openly advocating violence as a means to achieve one’s ends and indoctrinating gullible minds to take up arms against the state. That IIT Bombay could have allowed such a “talk” to happen on its campus is beyond shocking.
The IIT Bombay students who complained against the talk have issued an open letter against the event in which Sudhanva Deshpande was invited to give an online lecture to the university students in the guise of documentary screening. The letter has now also been shared on the X handle of “IIT B for Bharat”.
The letter tells in detail as to why the students objected to the talk of the radical leftist radical leftist Sudhanva Deshpande. The letter has excerpts directly from Deshpande’s speech at the talk which was video recorded by some of the students. In the same letter, the students also share the reasons for the objections to Mr. Achin Vanaik’s visit to IIT Bombay, the ex-Delhi University Professor who had recently given an inflammatory talk at OP Jindal Global University recently glorifying Hamas terrorists.
We spoke to the students of IIT Bombay who launched the complaint in a telephonic interview. They gave us a detailed insight into the backdrop of whatever happened at the IIT Bombay Campus on the 6th of November. Ultimately, it’s for the authorities to verify the details. But the students told us that the controversial event featuring Sudhanva Deshpande was organized by Professor Sharmistha Saha of the Humanities and Social Sciences Department at Social Sciences under the pretext of a course called “HS-835 – Performance Theory and Praxis”. The students shared that the course was floated by Professor Saha herself and that when the course was approved, there was no mention of this documentary screening in the course details. The whole documentary event said the students came up all of a sudden after the whole Israel Palestine conflict came up.
The students also told us that the Honourable Vice-President of Bharat visited the IIT Bombay campus on the same day at the same time when this parallel event was going on in which Palestinian terrorists were being glorified. The Vice-President interacted with the students and faculty, and cautioned students to not fall prey to any anti-Bharat and anti-national event while this sort of anti-Bharat event was happening simultaneously, said the students.
The students also said that there were some prior discussions through emails at IIT Bombay that such an event should not be allowed to happen, that too exactly at the same time when the Vice-President is visiting the campus.
If the facts that the students shared regarding the timing of the event are indeed true, it’s a serious issue connected to the national security of Bharat. Just think about it. The Vice-President of Bharat addressing the students and at the same time, a radical leftist guy lecturing students on the same campus ( even if it’s online ) on the supposed merits of using violence to achieve “freedom struggle” and glorifying Palestinian terrorists. Was the provocative timing of the event pre-planned? Were the event organizers trying to send some kind of message to the government of Bharat? All these questions come up when one thinks about the strange timing of the event, as reported by the students.
Another thing that the students said was that the talk by radical leftist Sudhanva Deshpande happened in the guise of a documentary. That is, the students were invited for that documentary but they were first subjected to that talk. From what the students said, it seems like the invites or posters circulating before the event might have mentioned only a documentary screening, and not this talk. The documentary, said the students, was screened only after the talk.
The students also shared that the content of the talk was found objectionable by many students sitting there and that because the students raised objections, professor Sharmistha Saha did not hold the Q & A session with the speaker.
During our telephonic conversation with them, the students raised another important point that the course under the pretext of which this inflammatory talk happened is titled “Performance theory and Praxis”. But the talk did not have remotely anything pertaining to performance or theatre. If one thinks about it, students have a point here. What’s the logic of inviting a radical leftist guy to talk about using violence as a means to achieve one’s objectives under the aegis of a course on performance? This calls for a serious investigation into the contents of this course and the rationale behind flouting such a course in the first place. The Humanities and Social Sciences Departments all over the world have become convenient hotbeds for all sorts of leftist propaganda activities under the guise of new-fangled courses with fancy terminology. It’s sad to think about the future employment prospects of students who enroll in these courses. The students and the parents are clueless about this nexus. But one wonders what skills they are imparting to students through these courses. Are they teaching them how to become a terrorist, or how to stage an armed rebellion against the Bharatiya state?
The minds of students are impressionable. That’s why the woke lobby has seized upon this opportunity to indoctrinate the minds of students in the guise of humanities studies. Bharat with its huge youth population is a readymade market for sowing the seeds of woke ideology. That’s why one after the other shocking incident is coming to light from so many Bharatiya universities. It’s not enough to condemn the parties directly involved and attribute the whole thing to the woke mindset of the teacher. The teacher organizing such an event is just an instrument. The government of Bharat needs to investigate this whole nexus. Are these stakeholders given some kind of monetary incentives for holding such kind of anti-Bharat activities in Bharatiya universities? Who are the larger stakeholders involved in this nexus? One needs to investigate the entire chain and its backlinks.
It’s not the first time that IIT Bombay has become a witness to such an incident. The premier educational institute found itself in the middle of a controversy with allegations of caste discrimination levied against the institute merely because the students apparently marked a certain part of the mess as vegetarians only.
It’s indeed courageous of the students of IIT Bombay to come out in the open against the pro-terrorism and anti-Bharat event and launch a police complaint. The mainstream media, of course, is still selective in the kinds of stories it likes to publish. This story doesn’t fit into the woke narrative so they are not interested. Had it been some lecture on Hinduism or Hindutva, it would have been all over the news with fake news peddlers inventing lies and attributing themes and motives that never existed. But when there is a story with all the facts put out in the public domain, mainstream media is not interested because it’s not a woke story.
Let’s end with this quote by the IIT Bombay students who lodged the complaint against the event:
“We, the IIT Bombay students, denounce the blatant attempt by Professor Sharmistha Saha, under the pretext of academic course ‘H 835 Performance Theory and Praxis’ to host such hateful speakers to indoctrinate students with biased and factually false stories”.
