The century-old central university has emerged as a flashpoint of the BJP’s majoritarian politics in the last five years as central universities, known to be liberal spaces of learning, have come under attack in the Modi decade.
Aligarh (Uttar Pradesh): If Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s openly communal remarks accusing the Congress of redistributing “mangalsutra”, “gold”, “land” and “property” of “mothers-sisters” to Muslims by misleadingly referring to a speech by his predecessor Manmohan Singh was meant to pitch a communal narrative in a manner symptomatic of the ten years of his government’s rule, nowhere is it more apparent than in Uttar Pradesh’s Aligarh, synonymous with the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). The century-old central university has emerged as a flashpoint of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s majoritarian politics in the last five years as central universities, known to be liberal spaces of learning, have come under attack in the Modi decade.
Along with seven other seats in Uttar Pradesh, Aligarh goes to the polls on Friday (April 26).
Despite the criticism that Modi’s communal speech on Sunday faced, the prime minister doubled down and reiterated a version of the same speech while campaigning for sitting BJP MP Satish Gautam in Aligarh on Monday.
“The ‘Shehzada’ of Congress says that if their government comes to power, they will investigate who earns how much, who has how many properties, who has how much wealth, who has how many properties and homes, they will investigate this,” he said.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.