ISLAMABAD - Student activists of rightwing Hindu parties tried on Friday to disrupt a seminar on the Kashmir dispute at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi.
The activists of have tried to disrupt a seminar on the Kashmir dispute at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi.
According to Kashmir Media Service, it was said that a group of rightwing BJP's students' wing, Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), and members of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) tried to manhandle a Delhi University professor when he began his address at JNU's Tapti hostel.
The event titled `The undying spirit of Kashmir: The question of self-determination' had been organised by Delhi-based Democratic Students Union (DSU) in connection with the martyrdom anniversaries of martyred Kashmiri leaders, Muhammad Maqbool Butt and Muhammad Afzal Guru.
Maqbool Butt was hanged in New Delhi's Tihar Jail on February 11, 1984 while Afzal Guru was sent to gallows in the same jail on February 9, 2013. Dead bodies of the two leaders were buried in the jail premises.
Syed Abdur Rehman Gilani, a professor of Arabic belonging to Indian occupied Kashmir, escaped unhurt in the attack as he was escorted by students, most of them Kashmiris. Nearly 500 students, who attended the event, later took out a procession and chanted slogans in favour of Kashmir's freedom from India.
The event organisers said that they had got permission from the university authorities to hold the seminar. The permission was, however, withdrawn at the eleventh hour, they said. "They told us that the event wouldn't be allowed because one of the speakers is SAR Gilani and that it is an anti-India meeting. But we made it sure that come what may, we will hold the meeting," Omar Khalid, a DSU member and one of the event organisers, told a media persons.
During his address, SAR Gilani who was arrested along with Afzal Guru and others in the Indian Parliament attack case but later acquitted, said, "Killings of Kashmiris by Indian forces have made us fearless of death.
These killings always give new momentum to our freedom struggle. It did so when Maqbool Butt was hanged; it is doing now as well."
"Azadi is our destiny, which we will achieve one day," said Professor Gilani, who is also President of the Committee for Release of Political Prisoners. India claimed to be the largest democracy of the world but Kashmiris had no space in India's democratic setup, Gilani said, as the JNU campus reverberated with azadi slogans. He said that it was imperative for India to resolve the Kashmir dispute at the earliest if it wanted peace in South Asia. Arif Ayaz Parray, a Delhi-based Kashmiri writer and Uzma Falak, a writer and poet, also spoke on the occasion.