At IIT Madras’ yearly edition of extramural lectures, a section of IIT Madras students were aghast at the subject of keynote speaker retired army officer Major General GD Bakshi’s lecture.
One among them was Abhinav Surya, who lodged his strong protest in a letter to the IIT director.
Calling it a speech filled with hate-mongering and incitement to violence, Abhinav wrote, “I am still not able to digest the fact the institute has given a platform to such a speech filled with hatred, instigating violence among the students. A lecture that was heavily loaded with brewing enmity, inhumanity and glorification of brutality.”
The student accused Bakshi of instilling a sense of hatred and enmity towards Pakistan and “fostering irrational jingoism”.
The level of hatred in his speech was going out of proportions when he said, “In our generation, we split Pakistan into two. Your generation should split it into four. Only then we can live in peace!” And later he went on to glorify nuclear weaponry and justified the usage of it.
Abhinav also accused the retired army officer of insulting and mocking India’s freedom movement. He claimed that according to Bakshi, “Only Indians in Indian army got us freedom and whatever everyone else was doing in the name of ‘Ahimsa’ was nonsense.”
The student went on to say that IIT Madras giving him a platform to voice his comments on the freedom movement in the name of “Special Independence Day Lecture” shame the institution. He concluded his letter to the IIT Madras Director hoping that necessary action would be taken.
Abhinav further said:
An instance of distorting history is when he said Dehradun was originally called Dehradrone, as Dronacharya’s camp was set there. he said in its spot the Indian Military Academy has come up.
He also said Bakshi’s justification of using pellet guns in Kashmir instigated many students.
Over the past two years, Abhinav says many personalities holding fundamentalist views have been invited.
IIT Madras hosts people with multiple views, but I particularly think there is an intellectual RSS shakha (RSS ideology school) happening that we need to put an end to.
This is not the first time a section of students has protested against IIT Madras’ indirect adoption of Hindu fundamentalist ideology through conferences and events. The Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle previously raised their voices against the Indology conference hosted by right-wing Indology professor Rajiv Malhotra.
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