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October 19, 2016

ABVP Khabardar - Call for Demonstration at Delhi university North Campus against intimidation and moral policing by the right wing students organisation (20 Oct, New Delhi)




On the 23rd of September, a gang of ABVP men along with ex-DUSU president Satender Awana walked into a Pinjratod night vigil at Vijay Nagar. On being challenged, they started misbehaving with the students present there and one of them flashed a note right into the face of a Pinjratod woman activist and then on her pushing him back he grabbed her wrists and started building force on her. Women responded by pushing back the ABVP gang resolute in our collective strength and galvanised by our refusal to tolerate their nonsense any further. Even as Awana kept making frantic calls for reinforcements and the gang kept swelling with more men joining in, they were clearly out-numbered and had to eventually back off. Ever since, the everyday aggressions being faced by the movement has constantly escalated. Over the past year, ABVP has repeatedly lashed out at us, torn down our posters, tried to disrupt our public programs etc. However, of late, the gravity of the instances has reached alarming proportions. They have followed our members on the streets of Vijay Nagar when they have gone out at night, pointed and glared at activists whenever they have been noticed alone in and around campus, tried to intimidate by cornering an activist as she passed through the Faculty of Arts by herself and breaking into "Bharat Mata ki Jai" slogans unprovoked, and just last week, holding up a student and threatening and bullying him for many long hours on a late evening when they found him alone and vulnerable, sending across an open threat to anyone and everyone associated to the movement in any capacity.


With the escalation of violence on campuses all across the country and particularly in Delhi, the attack on Ved Kumari, the dean of Law Faculty, also known to be a strong feminist voice on campus, the assault on a woman student in south campus, the assault and disappearance of a Muslim student in JNU and the showcasing of guns by the current DUSU president right in the student union office among innumerable every day incidents, small and big, reported and unreported, the campus no longer feels like a place that students, particularly women students can inhabit in a secure manner.

Whatever lip service that forces like the ABVP might give to the concerns of women in the country or women students on campus, this trail of aggression only reveals their inability to tolerate women refusing mere assimilation into their brahmanical and patriarchal order and instead seeking a definition of freedom that can really transform our lives and our world. As voices for aazadi gain strength in DU as on other campuses in the country, this inability is spilling over as desperation -- to silence, by force of threat and fear if not by open violence. The only answer available to us is to strengthen our collective struggle even further, take it even wider, scream out at them, against them, louder. louder. even louder. Till the strength of our voices drown out their fear mongering abuses and their war cries of Bharat Mata ki Jai for good!

Lets fight together for a secure and democratic campus!

JOIN US FOR A PROTEST DEMONSTRATION AT 1.30PM ARTS FACULTY, Delhi University, North Campus

Bharat ki Mata Nahin Banenge!

Sabhi Pinjron ko todenge, Itihaas ki dhara modenge!