The students of Allahabad University including Richa, the first woman President of Allahabad University Union, and various progressive and Left student organisations, are to be congratulated for taking a principled stand to oppose the University’s move to allow the vicious hatemonger, BJP MP from Gorakhpur Yogi Adityanath to inaugurate the Students’ Union Office Hall. Adityanath and his organisation are notorious for vicious hate-speech targeting minorities and democratic values, and for his role in many episodes of organized communal violence. The Students’ Union office bearers from the ABVP unilaterally took a decision to invite Adityanath, riding roughshod over the dissenting opinions of common students of the University as well as the Union President herself.
The students’ success in ensuring that Adityanath stayed out of Allahabad University is reminiscent of the students’ movement led by AISA in 1992, which braved severe repression to keep VHP leader Ashok Singhal out of the same University campus, at the peak of the toxic ‘Mandir’ and anti-Mandal agitations in which the RSS and VHP had a big hand.
