Naxalites On The Rampage At Jadavpur University

http://pd.cpim.org/2007/0415/04152007_bengal_jv%20vandalism.htm

From:

People's Democracy

Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
Vol. XXXI No. 15 April 15, 2007






Naxalites On The Rampage At Jadavpur University

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.