Chennai: Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin condemned the “cowardly attack on Tamil students by ABVP [Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad] ” and took strong objection to defacing of portraits of Periyar and Karl Marx at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi. He called for strict action from the university administration against perpetrators of violence. The incident has had its repercussions in Tamil Nadu.

Stalin’s statement comes a day after Nasser Mohammed Moideen, a research scholar from Tamil Nadu at the Molecular medicine department, was among the students who suffered a physical attack from ABVP on Sunday, February 19. Naseer suffered bleeding injuries on his neck and head and was rushed to a hospital.

According to the students, they were attacked by ABVP when they tried to hold a meeting in memory of Darshan Solanki, an 18-year-old Dalit student who died by suicide at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) recently. The IIT students alleged to have died by suicide due to caste discrimination.

“The ABVP members had gathered for the Sivaji event and wrote on walls that communists be hanged, Sharjeel Imam and Umar Khalid should be hanged. The students blacked out the writings. But when the screening of Jaane Bhi Yaaro was about to begin, the ABVP members reportedly came back again and heckled the students accusing them of removing the portrait of Sivaji,” said Ilaiya Kumar, a research scholar from Tamil Nadu at Jamia Milia University.

The students alleged that the ABVP has been systematically mounting a campaign against Periyar, the tallest among Dravidian leaders, for months now. “Some of us, including students of JNU, floated ‘Reservation Club’ on September 17 – the birth anniversary of Periyar last year. Since then, the Club has been holding several events, including on the rights of reservation, against EWS reservation, etc. The ABVP did a counter-campaign against Periyar since then,” added Ilaiya Kumar.

Nasser, the student who suffered injuries in the attack, said, “When I went there, I saw portraits of Periyar, Marx and Lenin were vandalised. When I asked who did this, the ABVP members said they did and started attacking me.”

This story was originally published in thewie.in . Read the full story here