( Picture credit :Kaumudi Online )
SFI Hooliganism at its height in Thiruvananthapuram, this time against Law College Principal and 21 teachers, including ladies. SFI men locked them in a room by 3 pm on March 15, and the ‘magnanimity’ to release them ‘rose to the occasion’ by 12:30 in the middle of the night. There are complaints about the attack against teachers in the ‘deliberate’ blackout engineered by the attackers. One of the lady teachers has been hospitalised. The captives were denied food and water during their captivity. They did not pay heed to their requests to permit them to take their medicines; their requests fell on deaf ears.
When the police came to release the ‘guru folk’, the Principal did not permit them to remove the students by force. The SFI blokes locked the room while the staff council meeting was taking place. Until the Principal and the teachers were released, students, including girls, sat outside shouting slogans. When policemen tried to give food to the captives, SFI workers confronted them.
Asst Professor V K Sanju told the media that she sustained injuries in her neck. She said there were many from outside. They switched off the fan and the light. They dragged her hand. She said the police had recorded her statement.
The reason behind the whole issue does not seem to be adequate to resort to the aforementioned inhuman action unfit for a civilised society. The Principal had suspended 24 SFI workers for allegedly destroying the flags and decorations erected by KSU, Kerala chapter of the National Students Union of India (NSUI), the student wing of Congress.
Atrocities against teachers and Principals are not quite new from SFI. In 2016, SFI guys ‘celebrated’ the retirement of a lady Principal by digging a grave for her and placing a wreath in it. It was the ‘grave’ experience of a woman when she retired, as the Principal of the reputed Victoria College, Palakkad, after 30 years long teaching profession.
The very next year, in January 2017, workers of the same student outfit carried the lady Principal’s chair to the road and burnt it in front of the college. The incident took place in the legendary Maharaja’s College, Kochi. They had ‘sufficient’ reason: Principal carried out moral policing in the campus.
The State of Kerala is not at all surprised; since the people know SFI’s modus operandi and style of functioning very well, what else they can expect! Because SFI’s uncivilised actions are not like bolts from the blue. It is very much in the DNA of those who believe in the Marxian theory of violent class war. The funny thing is, now they do not know who belongs to which class. Their ideological bankruptcy and resultant utter confusion lead them to violence for the sake of violence, whether it is to their friends, teachers, or other ideological groups and then towards to their own comrades once they (their comrades who fall out with them) start to call a spade a spade. Communist lexicon calls them “Renegade”. Pinarayi Vijayan said ‘Kulamkuthi” in Malayalam, meaning renegade. That is why T P Chandraseskharan, one of the former CPM leaders in Kozhikode district, was brutally killed in 2012 by alleged CPM goons. (Incidentally, his widow K K Rema was injured in Kerala assembly violence on March 15).
Coming back to the SFI atrocities against non-CPM people. On March 10, 2011 morning, a girl and two boys were allegedly locked in a classroom for more than two hours in Jogesh Chandra Chowdhury Law College, Kolkota. Some teachers tried to rescue them; but they were manhandled by SFI supporters very much in the campus. As a result, teaching and non-teaching staff observed one day strike on March 11, 2011. Those days, the Principal had reacted that ‘it was unprecedented and unacceptable in any educational institutions. Anything could have happened to those captives’. Since he was absent that day, the teachers and staff submitted a report before him.
Reports suggested that, according to an eyewitness, the issue started when SFI workers demanded the accounts books maintained by the college students’ union. Union was controlled by Trinamool Chhatra Parishad (TMCP), the students’ wing of Trinamool Congress. The girl allegedly threw the books on the SFI men who demanded it. The agitated SFI men locked the girl and two other boys in a classroom. Then, they shouted slogans and refused to liberate the captives. They beat the teachers and the staff when they tried to open the door and release the students.
After some time, Trinamool Congress workers barged into the campus and confronted SFI men. That time police came to the campus and released the students from confinement.
A similar incident was reported from Kerala itself. It was on August 22, 2022. The venue was Karyavattam Government College, Thiruvananthapuram, where SFI workers locked their Principal for more than an hour. Their demand was the readmission of their leader to a course he had already completed. When the police rushed to the scene, SFI men prevented them from entering the camps by locking the main gate.
The leader in question had completed the course, but some papers were yet to clear. Obviously, the Principal refused to readmit him to the same course.
At last, police forcibly entered the campus and released the Principal from the locked room. Consequently, when a clash took place between police and the SFI men, police had to resort to lathi charge. And they arrested the protesters.
Gheraoing and locking the teachers and staff appears to be CPM youths’ favourite ‘cup of tea’. On April 25, 2022, the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court, Thiruvananthapuram, was reported to have issued a bailable warrant against DYFI leader A A Rahim, MP (RS). It was in connection with the alleged mental and physical harassment of a professor during a protest organised by the SFI in 2017. Prof T Vijayalakshmi, the then Director of Student Services, was the complainant.
She accused Rahim and 11 others of harassing her during a gherao at Kerala University Students’ Centre. The JFMC III Court issued the warrants as the accused failed to turn up for hearing. Rahim was listed as the first accused in the case.
Vijayalakshmi was gheraoed by the SFI activists led by Rahim for allegedly blocking the final instalment of funds in connection with the conduct of the university youth festival. Vijayalakshmi had made her stand clear that the union office-bearers had not submitted the bills of the previous instalments of the fund and hence was unable to release the next instalment of Rs 7 lakh. The provoked SFI students gheraoed Vijayalakshmi and Pro Vice-Chancellor N Veeramanikandan for about three and half hours. The incident triggered to a larger controversy as Vijayalakshmi alleged that the SFI girls had pulled her hairs, stabbed her with pens and showered abuses. At last, they made her forcibly sign the cheque and then left, she had alleged.
The SFI leaders had refuted the allegation and said the complaint of Vijayalakshmi was false. Rahim was reported to have claimed, it was engineered by the then Vice-Chancellor P K Radhakrishnan. It was due to the vendetta as ‘he had highlighted the Vice Chancellor’s discriminatory stand against Dalit members of the Syndicate’.
The CPM-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) Government had earlier moved the court seeking to withdraw the case against the SFI leaders. However, the court rejected the plea based on the objection raised by Vijayalakshmi.
This is, in short, the revolution the CPM and their young comrades envisage to explore a new dawn of equality, freedom and dictatorship of the proletariat!!!
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