Nishikant Khajuria
It was 2.55 a.m. when a frantic call on my mobile phone forced me to wake up within an hour of going to bed in the late night. After a few seconds of being undecided over attending a call from unknown number, I picked up the phone and there was an anxious voice on other side seeking to know whether it was Daily Excelsior number. As I replied in affirmative, the caller identified himself as a student of NIT Srinagar and informed that all the non-local girl students were still continuing with their day long protest since yesterday morning despite intermittent rain at that time. Before getting my response, he continued to explain the prevailing situation on the campus and sought to know whether I could interview the protesting girls at that time through Skype.
As I tried to explain him my constraints of interviewing at that time and asked about urgency of the same, the student on other side of the phone, probably a South Indian as was evident from his dialect, worriedly informed that the protesting girls in open were
shivering with intense cold but were not ready to go back to their hostel. They are demanding their immediate evacuation to home from the campus, he added and feared that some of them might fall ill.
On my being informed to him that a group of students had a meeting with Deputy Chief Minister Dr Nirmal Singh at the later’s official residence in Srinagar on that evening and there were some announcements over their list of demands, he quipped that there was
no fun of such talks as the Government was allegedly least bothered about the real issue of their security. He reiterated their main demand of shifting the NIT to outside Kashmir and listed the reasons for the same vis-à-vis sense of insecurity on the campus.
Even as my immediate reaction after the end of our few minute telephonic conversation was a little bit fuming as I felt annoyed over getting my sleep disturbed, very soon thoughts of state of mind of these agitating students made me ponder over the reasons, which forced these NITians to resort to such an extreme agitational mode and insist on immediate shifting of the college from Kashmir to a safer place.
The trouble erupted on the campus last week following an incident of clash between some Kashmiri and non-local students over the defeat of Indian cricket team in T20 World Cup on March 31. Even as the college authorities immediately suspended the routine work to avoid further tension and the classes were resumed on Monday, brutal
Police lathicharge on peacefully protesting non-local students on Tuesday invited attention of media towards the burning issues and demands of the victims, who are gripped with a sense of insecurity in Kashmir.
Ironically, notwithstanding country-wide support to these students and media coverage of the same, the State Government is apparently trying its best to down play the issue. While Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and her People’s Democratic Party are quite on the alleged harassment of non-local students, possibly because of their Kashmir centric vote bank politics, the self proclaimed hard-core nationalist Bhartiya Janta Party and its ministers are also treating these NITians as ‘directionless mob’ and this is the purported reason that no one among them visited the troubled campus so far.
Instead of taking the students into confidence and instilling a sense of security among them while remaining at NIT Srinagar, attempts are being made to divert attention towards almost irrelevant issues, such as wi-fi on campus, 24-hour electricity supply, hostel facilities, permission for girl students to enter the campus in late evening etc.
The most dangerous move, which the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the college administration are going to take, is proposed evacuation of the non-local students to their respective homes, for which names of the interested ones are being sought to make necessary arrangements for the same. It is learnt that maximum among the non-local students are applying for the permission to go home. The Government is seemingly under impression that these non-local students might be feeling home sick and after stay with family members for a few days, they would come back and things will be normal after that.
However, it can be said with guarantee that majority of the students, particularly girls, going to the homes in this situation, would never come back to join their studies at NIT Srinagar and it is feared to be similar to exodus of Kashmir Pandits, who had left their homes and hearths in Kashmir Valley with a hope that after a few months, they would be back with restoration of normalcy.
Therefore, instead of taking cosmetic measures and having false assumptions, the State Government, more particularly the BJP ministers, should visit the campus and assure to the agitating students their individual as well as academic security at NIT Srinagar at any cost. Before allowing the students to go home, a sense of security must be infused among them and the same can not be done by a magisterial probe by an officer of Additional DC rank or making assurances through media statements but by treating them as their own wards. The BJP must respond to the SOS calls of these students, who are facing victimization for being patriotic.
(The author is Daily Excelsior Correspondent)
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