A group of Banaras Hindu University (BHU) students associated with Azad Hind Students Association burnt Jinnah’s effigy at the BHU main gate on Friday.
Holding placards in their hands with inscriptions like ‘kya AMU Pakistan mein hai’, ‘Jinnah ki tasveer kyon’, ‘Desh ke gaddar Jinnah ka Mahima Mandan kyon’, the students staged demonstration and raised anti-Jinnah slogans before burning the effigy.
They said that the anti-national agenda of AMU is not acceptable. Terming the AMU Students Union as Pakistani agent, they demanded NSA against the people involved in putting Jinnah’s portrait in AMU.
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On Wednesday, dozens of Aligarh Muslim University students were injured after ‘armed’ members of the Hindu Right wing group Hindu Yuva Vahini entered the campus with alleged police backing.
They were demanding that a portrait of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, should be removed from the Students’ Union Hall. The portrait in question has been hanging there since 1938.
The incident took place hours before the former Vice President of India Hamid Ansari, who has also been the vice chancellor of the university, had to attend an event.
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According to a report in the Wire, 30 activists of the Hindu Yuva Vahini, accompanied by uniformed policemen, came to Bab-e-Syed – the central gate of AMU. They shouted slogans like ‘We will not let such respect for Jinnah pass in India”, “If you want to remain in India, you must say Vande Mataram’, “Vande Mataram, Jai Shri Ram!’
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday cleared his stand on the ongoing controversy over Muhammad Ali Jinnah and said that “A person who is responsible for country’s division cannot be respected”.
