A few individuals held a protest outside the campus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay today, November 11. The protestors were seeking the arrest of a professor and a guest speaker, for allegedly “glorifying terrorism” while speaking about the Palestinian freedom struggle against Israel.
The protesters claim that Professor Sharmistha Saha of the Humanities and Social Sciences department of the prestigious institution and guest speaker Sudhanva Deshpande had allegedly spoken highly of "terrorists" and armed rebellion, during a talk under the academic course 'HS 835 Performance Theory & Praxis' on November 6, reports PTI.
These people, who were protesting under the banner of the Vivek Vichar Manch claimed Deshpande had glorified Palestinian terrorist Zakaria Zubeidi, and had even admitted to meeting him in 2015. Zubedi is allegedly part of the Palestinian resistance group al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which has been designated a terror organisation by several countries.
The protestors called for a probe into the phone conversations and emails of Saha and Deshpande, in order to find out their “true motive” behind the November 6 talk. Further, they also sought that Professor Saha be removed from her position at IIT Bombay.
The talk was a brazen attempt to “indoctrinate” the students studying at IIT Bombay through “hateful and false narratives”, a student told PTI.
A few students, in a letter submitted to the police on November 7, claimed that Saha misused her position as a teaching faculty at IIT Bombay to invite “radical leftist” speakers like Deshpande, for virtual events.
The letter submitted to the police also claimed that such events have disturbing consequences for “the academic integrity and safety of IIT Bombay” since they “promote ideologies linked to terrorism”.
For context, Deshpande was invited to introduce Arna’s Children, a documentary about a Palestinian Children’s Theatre Group, and the lives of the children in it under Israeli occupation and military violence.
Responding to claims of “glorifying terrorism”, Deshpande, in a statement, said that when he met Zubedi in 2015, the latter had already abandoned violent revolution in favour of more cultural methods. Deshpande also called out media organisations for their “pro-Israel” reporting, and accused them of “whitewashing the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people”.
