Several walls of a building at Jawaharlal Nehru University were defaced with anti-Brahmin slogans on Thursday, reported The Hindu.
The graffiti, the photos of which were widely shared on social media, ask the members of the Brahmin and the Baniya communities to leave the campus and the country. The slogans say “we are coming for you” and “we will avenge you”.
Slogans on doors of rooms assigned to faculty members ask them to go back to “shakha”, a reference to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
Rohit Kumar, the president of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, said that the slogans were written overnight and that there were no closed-circuit television cameras in the area that could help in identifying the perpetrators. The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad is the students’ union affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
“From the messages, it is clear that these are intimidation tactics being used by the Left-leaning students on the campus,” Kumar said, according to The Hindu. “We have filed a complaint and submitted a memorandum against these messages with the administration.”
The university said in a statement that the vice chancellor has taken serious note of the incident, reported ANI.
“The dean, School of International Studies, and grievances committee have been asked to inquire and submit a report to VC at the earliest,” it added.
Meanwhile, the Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers’ Forum demanded setting up an independent committee to look into the incident. It said that the forum believes the incident to be akin to “subtle violence to intimidate, threaten, demoralise and degrade the academic space”.
The JNU students’ union claimed that this was not the first time that such acts have been committed in the university, PTI reported.
“Such statements are clearly meant to disturb the normalcy of the campus by vitiating the campus environment,” the union said.
The union also said that the right wing forces have “tried historically to caricature claims to social justice in such a deplorable manner.”
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