Tension prevailed at Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia university on Tuesday after a group of students and alleged right-wing activists held a rally and shouted slogans against Pakistan’s founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

The group marched from Okhla’s Sarai Jullena area to the university’s main gate around 5.30 pm, reported The Times of India. They shouted slogans like “Jinnah premi Bharat chhodo”, “Vande Mataram” and “Hinduon ko darana band karo”.

“It’s an attempt to repeat what had happened in AMU [Aligarh Muslim University],” said Mohammad Salim, a PhD scholar. The AMU campus has been tense ever since members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and the Hindu Yuva Vahini entered the premises demanding that the portrait of Jinnah be removed from the students’ union hall. They allegedly beat up students who stood up to them.

Advertisement

The following day, hundreds of them organised a dharna at the AMU campus gate. The university on Sunday rescheduled the examinations scheduled to begin on Monday to May 12 because of the prevailing tension.

The protestors at Jamia, on the other hand, said they held the rally against the discrimination that Hindu students face. “We were receiving complaints of Hindu students being harassed and threatened by fellow students at the campus,” Jatin Jain, a BSc student at the university and one of the protestors, told DNA. “Many students were bullied on social media on the basis of their identity for posting something on AMU-Jinnah controversy.”

Students alleged that most of the protestors were outsiders and demanded that the administration file a police complaint in the matter. “How can outsiders enter our campus and create tension like this,” said Imran Choudhary, the president of Jamia’s National Students’ Union of India’s unit. “The administration should immediately look into this.”

Jamia’s Public Relation Officer Saima Saeed said that the protest was on the road and not on campus. “The protest was on the public road and university has no control over it,” she told DNA.