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Godse row: Water cannon used on protesters seeking action against NIT Calicut professor
Youth organisations in Kerala, including the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), demand action against the NIT-Calicut professor for “treason”.
A professor at NIT Calicut seems to have unknowingly brought students and youth across political ideologies in Kerala together with her remarks on Mahatma Gandhi's assassin, Nathuram Godse.
The Kerala police on Saturday registered a case after receiving multiple complaints against Professor A Shaija of the National Institute of Technology-Calicut for glorifying Godse in her Facebook comment.
IPC Section 153 (wantonly giving provocation with the intent to cause riot) was invoked against the professor.
Shaija, a senior faculty member of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at NIT, posted a comment on Facebook on January 30 – the day Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 – saying "Proud of Godse for saving India".
She had commented on a post by a lawyer, Krishna Raj, who posted Godse's photograph saying Hindu Mahasabha activist Nathuram Vinayak Godse, a hero of many in India.
However, Shaija deleted her comment after it triggered a controversy.
The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), staged a protest march on Monday seeking action against the woman professor. ABVP activists marched to the institution and burnt an effigy of Godse.
"The professor posted something which is insulting the Father of the nation and praising Godse who assassinated him," a student leader said while addressing the ABVP activists.
Similar protests were held by the Kerala Students Union (KSU), the left-wing student organisation Students' Federation of India (SFI) and the Muslim Students Federation (MSF), the student wing of the Indian Union Muslim League party.
On Wednesday, it was Youth Congress's turn to hold a protest march to the institute demanding action for treason against the professor. They were joined by members of another youth organisation, the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI).
On reaching the institute, the Youth Congress and DYFI members tried to remove barricades set by police to prevent them from moving into the campus. The police resorted to using water cannons to disperse the activists as they climbed on top of the barricades and also tried to pull them down.
(With inputs from agencies)
