Ambedkar University students to protest removal of graffiti

New Delhi:

New Delhi:

HT Image

Students of Ambedkar University of Delhi (AUD) have called for a protest on Thursday after the administration painted over the walls on the campus that earlier displayed graffiti and slogans made by them.

Soumya Jayanti, convener of AUD Queer Collective (AUDQC), said, “Our university has a strong culture of student movements and resistance. Graffiti and art is how marginalised groups express their voices. The administration could have painted regular areas but the walls they are bringing down are perfectly fine. This is alarming because we feel it is a kind of censorship.”

“This whitewashing is representative of larger systematic erasure of all assertions of student politics and of marginal identities that has already been set in motion. The administration might try to package it as infrastructural betterment, but we all know the extreme-right rhetoric of censorship that it mirrors,” AUDQC said in a statement.

A senior university official said this is a part of renovation work going on in the campus. “The intention is just of upkeep and maintenance. It is an old building and it is in a bad shape. A NAAC visit is also going to happen and these things matter a lot. We have decided that the university will provide a space to the students to express themselves through art.”