“Bhagwat go back” and “RSS Murdabad” slogans reverberated through the air as over 25 members of the Congress-backed National Students’ Union of India raised their voices against the visit of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat to Lucknow University on Wednesday and described him as “a symbol of hatred in Indian society”, while one of the students could be heard questioning a private organisation’s centenary event in a university run with taxpayers’ money.
The demonstrators, assembling near the campus entrance, attempted to obstruct the motorcade route through which the RSS sarsanghchalak was to enter the premises for a programme organised to commemorate the centenary year of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, according to The Telegraph online.
Their chants, strident and unrelenting, sought not merely to register dissent but to foreground what they termed the incongruity of hosting an ideological celebration within an academic institution ostensibly devoted to scholarship and public welfare.
A sizeable police contingent, deployed in anticipation of unrest, resorted to mild force to disperse the students as tensions escalated, and several protesters were detained and taken into custody.
According to a student leader who declined to be identified, more than two dozen students were detained in batches and released only after Bhagwat had departed the campus. He maintained that the university administration had effectively fortified the premises to facilitate the RSS chief’s visit, while allegedly denying similar latitude to student groups seeking to organise their own events.
Vishal Singh, national coordinator of the NSUI, asserted that the university’s decision to host programmes marking the RSS centenary amounted to institutional endorsement of an organisation he accused of deepening social fissures. He contended that Bhagwat’s public rhetoric was corrosive to the social fabric and reiterated the students’ opposition to what they characterised as the normalisation of sectarian ideology within public universities.
Responding to the unrest, Vice-Chancellor Jay Prakash Saini described the event as a cultural function attended by numerous dignitaries, thereby framing it as a commemorative gathering rather than an ideological mobilisation.
Bhagwat’s visit unfolded amid an ongoing controversy surrounding the University Grants Commission equity regulations intended to shield Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes and economically weaker sections from caste-based harassment.
On January 29, the Supreme Court of India stayed the regulations, observing that the framework appeared prima facie vague, potentially sweeping in consequence, and liable to engender dangerous societal divisions. Lucknow University itself had recently witnessed vociferous protests against the proposed regulatory regime.
During his two-day sojourn in the Uttar Pradesh capital, Bhagwat, addressing an event at a Saraswati Sishu Mandir school, advocated that Hindu families should have at least three children, arguing that demographic diminution could enfeeble society over time.
He further called for intensified ghar wapsi initiatives and the cessation of conversions by inducement, articulating apprehensions over what he described as a declining Hindu population. He also contended that newly married couples ought to be apprised of what he termed scientific research recommending a minimum of three children per family, and asserted that the country had originally been inhabited solely by Hindus.