The National Institute of Technology Calicut on Wednesday suspended a student for participating in a protest against the celebration of the Ram temple consecration, The Hindu reported.
The Ram temple in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya was inaugurated on January 22 in a ceremony led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
On the same day, a group of students attempted to celebrate the event inside the campus by painting a saffron-coloured map of India comprising a bow and arrow, reported Manorama. They were confronted by another group that displayed placards with the words “India is not Rama Rajya”.
An altercation had broken out on the campus following this.
On Wednesday, the Dean of Students’ Welfare of the institute issued a circular stating that the disciplinary committee’s investigation found that the “unlawful gathering” that involved the suspended student had resulted in “campus unrest”.
It said that student was “solely accountable for inciting unrest within the community, as well as for lowering the esteem of the institute both inside and outside the campus through his irresponsible behaviour”.
Calling the student a “repeated offender”, the institute suspended him for a year and prohibited him from entering the “institute campus, including hostel premises” without permission.
The Ram temple, which is still under construction, is being built over 2.77 acres of land on the site where the Babri mosque once stood. The mosque was demolished by Hindutva extremists on December 6, 1992, because they believed that it stood on the spot on which the deity Ram had been born. The incident had triggered communal riots across the country.
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