[Leftists blame ‘goons’ linked to prime
minister Narendra Modi’s BJP party as tensions simmer over citizenship law and
fee increases]
By Staff
and agencies
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Police
in riot gear stand guard outside the Jawaharlal Nehru University in
New
Delhi after unrest on Sunday. Photograph: Adnan Abidi/Reuters
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More than 20 people have been injured at a
prestigious Indian university after masked attackers entered the campus in New
Delhi and lashed out at students with batons.
Amid simmering tensions over the government’s
citizenship laws and student fee increases, videos on social media appeared to
show the attackers roaming Jawaharlal Nehru university (JNU) in the capital on
Sunday and beating students with sticks, leaving 23 students injured.
Police said the clashes were between rival
student groups but opposition politicians blamed the trouble on a student
organisation linked to the prime minister, Narendra Modi.
“Two groups clashed with each other and some
students are injured,” a senior Delhi police officer told journalists. “The
university administration has requested the police to enter (the campus),” the
officer said, adding, “Things are under control right now.”
But Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the
Communist party of India, called the attack a “collusion” between the JNU
administration and “goons” of a student group linked to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata
party (BJP).
“It is a planned attack by those in power,
which is afraid of the resistance provided by JNU,” Yechury said.
Police fought street battles with JNU
students in November after protests broke out over fee increases at the
university.
JNU student organisations dominated by
leftwing factions have since staged demonstrations demanding a rollback of the
fee increase while facing accusations of obstructing administration officials.
At the same time, India has seen a series of
violent clashes that have killed at least two dozen people amid protests over a
controversial new citizenship law Modi’s government passed in December. More
than 100,000 people marched through the city of Hyderabad on Saturday in
protest at the law.
The law allows New Delhi to grant expedited citizenship
to minorities from three neighbouring Islamic countries who entered India by
December 31, 2014, but critics say it marginalises Muslims in the country as
part of Modi’s larger Hindu nationalist agenda.
The government invited numerous Bollywood
stars and film industry personalities to a private gathering in Mumbai on
Sunday in an effort to garner support for the new citizenship law.
The BJP distanced itself from Sunday’s
incident at JNU and Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student
organisation blamed for the violence by the opposition, said that 25 of its
members were injured during the campus attack.
“This is a desperate attempt by forces of
anarchy, who are determined to use students as cannon fodder, (to) create
unrest to shore up their shrinking political footprint. Universities should
remain places of learning and education,” the BJP said on Twitter.
An official at the All India Institute of
Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi said that most of the injured at the hospital
were undergoing treatment for “lacerations, cuts and bruises.”
“The brutal attack on JNU students &
teachers by masked thugs, that has left many seriously injured, is shocking,”
tweeted Rahul Gandhi, a leading politician of the main opposition Congress
party.
Delhi’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal,
said: “How will the country progress if our students will not be safe inside
(the university) campus?”
The prestigious university counts top Indian
politicians including foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, finance
minister Nirmala Sitharaman and this year’s Nobel economics prize winner
Abhijit Banerjee amongst its alumni.