‘A cultural protest on campuses’

Kolkata: Students from Presidency University and Jadavpur University plan to screen the BBC documentary, ‘India: The Modi Question’, on their campuses next week as a means of protest against ongoing efforts by a section to block the movie, even from social media.Debayudh Sanyal, a member of Presidency’s Sangharsh unit, said every film banned by the ruling forces would be screened at Presidency “to lodge a cultural protest”. “We had earlier screened Anand Patwardhan’s ‘Ram Ke Naam’ and got a huge response. Many people have reached out to me in the last 24 hours, expressing a desire to attend the screening. We hope that the film will be seen by a larger audience beyond our campus,” Sanyal said. Independents’ Consolidation convener Ahan Karmakar said the screenings would be an effort by the students’ community to reclaim its freedom of expression against the “ongoing efforts to spread intolerance and crush voices of protest”.Presidency University dean of students Arun Maiti denied any knowledge of the screenings.The SFI’s JU local committee decided on Wednesday to have the campus’s first screening on Thursday, which will happen at the university’s Gate 4. SFI JU local committee secretary Tisa Bhandari said the holiday screening would help them reach out to a greater audience. “The government always tries to erase the truth or stifle voices that can disturb it. This screening is also a protest against the JNU blackout,” she added.The campus’s second screening will be on Friday. It will be organised by JU’s All-India Students’ Association unit. “Being critical of the government is now being portrayed as anti-national. We want to uphold the spirit of democracy and show solidarity with JNU by screening this documentary,” AISA JU unit joint secretary Akash Gupta said. Suniti Mukhopadhyay of JU’s Forum for Arts Students said another screening would happen next Tuesday to “protest against the erasing of the documentary from social media”. Mrinmoy Das, leader of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the BJP’s students’ wing, dismissed the screenings as being organised by “so-called Left-backed student organisations that are British stooges”. “They want to spread the BBC propaganda documentary against PM Narendra Modi in educational institutions despite our country achieving so much under his leadership,” he added.