People's Democracy

Naxalites On The Rampage At Jadavpur University

Photos of Marx, Engels, Lenin & Anil Biswas strewn around in the room after the attack.

B Prasant

SHOUTING slogans in the dark of the midnight, flaming torches held aloft with glee that ‘Jadavpur University shall go the way of Nandigram,’ a bunch of armed and patently drunk (and not just with heady mischief) Naxalites, some students of various faculties, other hardly so, set fire to the Science Club and then went ahead to ransack the Karmachari Bhavan, all on April 6-7. 

They pulled down photos of Marx, Engels, and Lenin and stomped upon them. They vandalised electronic goods, furniture and slogans were raised that Jadavpur University would soon be a ‘free zone where the writ of the state government would be allowed to run.’

Earlier throughout the day, the vandals, who call themselves students, had attacked supporters of SFI, threatened democratic-minded teachers with dire consequences, and by evening the repeated assaults on the SFI workers saw ten of them having to be removed to hospitals with head and body injuries. ‘Burn the SFI workers alive,’ shouted the hoods. The occasion was the Naxalite-SUCI combination winning an election in the university’s arts faculty.

When these hooligans later went out of the campus and tried to attack houses of known SFI workers, they met with united resistance of the people of the locality who bare-handed drove the goons back to the safety of the campus. Once inside, the hooligans indulged in more vandalism. Moreover, they would not allow fire tenders to enter the university to douse what had become by then raging flames threatening to spread.

The hooligans, once having done the misdeed, at once climbed onto jeeps and cars and made off for Nandigram, it was noticed. Later, on reaching Nandigram they were whisked into ‘safe houses’ run by the Trinamul Congress, setting up yet another example of the right-left cooperation, unprincipled and opportunistic, against the Left Front and the Left Front government.

The SFI has organised a successful one-day students’ strike across Bengal on April 9, and have undertaken continuous demonstrations and marches in the Jadavpur University condemning the semi-fascist attack and calling upon the authorities to apprehend the culprits, a large number of whom have already been clearly identified.

Educationists across Bengal including vice-chancellors, principals, teachers’ organisations, and eminent teachers have condemned the incident and they are at one in believing that the heinous attempt was made to disrupt the education scene in Bengal as part of a calculated effort.