On Friday Vivek Agnihotri’s film Buddha in a Traffic Jam was screened at the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus. The filmmaker, along with actor Anupam Kher – who appears in the film – spoke at the University’s campus on the current debate around nationalism and azaadi.

Agnihotri, who maintains a high profile as a right-wing activist on Twitter, says (video above), “I can guarantee you that no boy in any Indian university knows what Manuvad is.” (He uses the word “ladka”, excluding women students.)

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Agnihotri adds, “Manuvad talks about varna and not caste, so a Brahmin can become a Shudra and vice versa. Which is a different matter."

And if that's not enough, Agnihotri caps it with: “We don’t want freedom from Brahmanism because that has led to the upliftment of this country."

A report in MidDay, quoting Agnihotri, says that he wrote the film “a few years ago when he was disturbed by the way a nexus of professors-intellectuals-NGOs and Naxalites was brainwashing students and using them as ‘intellectual terrorists’”.

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In light of the debate over the necessity of using the phrase "Bharat Mata ki jai", Agnihotri tweeted this:

Anupam Kher also spoke at the University. In the clip below a student asks him about the depiction of an ugly face for the radical left in the film, but not for the radical right. Kher’s answer: “I am sure you have a lot of financier friends, you make a film against the RSS.”