Chennai: Author and activist Arundhati Roy on Saturday criticised IIT Madras’s decision to derecognise a students’ group and maintained that the protesting students had her ‘unhesitating support’.
In a statement she said the reason given is the usual idiotic red herring. “They were spreading hatred among communities. Another reason they were given, the students say, is that the name of their organisation was considered to be too ‘political’. The same does not apply obviously to other student organisations such as the Vivekananda Study Circle”, the statement said.
She asked why Ambedkar’s followers were being targeted at a time when Hindutva organisations and media outlets are outrageously celebrating Ambedkar the man who publicly denounced Hinduism, as though he is their very own man, even as the Hindu nationalists campaign for Ghar Wapsi. Meanwhile Bharatiya Janata Party’s state unit on Saturday criticised the various efforts made to ‘politicise’ the de-recognition of a students’ group by IIT Madras and urged all political parties not to ‘instigate’ students.
BJP state president Tamilisai Soundararajan said the premier technical institute had made it clear that the de-recognition of Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle was done for violating the code of conduct and that it was not against the freedom of expression.
