Teachers say climate of fear in DU, students come out in support

NEWDELHI:The February 21 stone pelting and protest at Ramjas College and the violence that followed the next day has left the teachers shell-shocked.

A number of teachers said they had never imagined a situation where they would see their own students attacking them and the incident has left them both shocked and terrorized.

Violence had erupted in Delhi University’s Ramjas College on Wednesday when two student groups — one of which was led by Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of RSS — clashed with each other during a protest over a literary event where JNU student Umar Khalid had been invited to speak.

One of the teachers, Prasanta Chakravarty, who teaches English at Ramjas, had been left battered and bloodied during the clash after being allegedly attacked by a group of students. Chakravarty had to be rushed to a hospital on Wednesday, from where he is expected to file a police complaint regarding the incident on Monday.

Chakravarty and a few other teachers on Friday said there was an atmosphere of terror on campus after Wednesday’s violence.

“Now I doubt anyone in Delhi University will want to hold seminars or conferences. The fear that even students can attack us will remain,” said Chakravarty.

Another teacher, who was also a student of Ramjas College, said it was shocking to see students going violent on teachers.

“When we were involved in student politics, we often held protests. But we never went about disrespecting teachers,” said another teacher of Rajdhani College.

Abha Dev Habib, who teaches physics at Miranda House, narrated how a student she had taught, hit her during the clash. “It did not matter to the girl that I