No warm welcome for Anurag Thakur at FTII Pune, students protest his arrival

The students of the Film and Television Institute and India (FTII) in Pune held demonstrations on May 5, the day Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Anurag Thakur, visited the campus. The students said that they wanted to take a stand against the Minister’s earlier speech delivered in February 2020, when riots had taken place in the national capital.

“It was a silent demonstration and not much of a protest,” states Avanti Basargekar, the newly-elected president of the FTII Students' Association. “The speech he had given in Delhi affected the minorities. We don’t go by statements and beliefs. Our campus has always celebrated diversity and is secular,” she adds. Anurag Thakur had declared that traitors should be shot in his 2020 speech (“desh ke gaddaron ko, goli maaro saalon ko”), which the students held in contempt.

The students have also informed that since the institute is run under the I&B Ministry and it is the very first time that Anurag Thakur was visiting the campus, they wanted to put forth their concerns regarding the ongoing issues in the campus with their demonstrations. “There is not enough infrastructure in the campus to start with. There also has been academic loss due to COVID-19 and nothing has been done by the institute to help the students. There has been no communication and students are under mental pressure because of this. The fees have kept on increasing every year, which is a matter of concern, as FTII is a government institute that is being run like a private institute. This results in many students being deprived of the chance to study here,” Avanti highlights.

So, were the students able to put forth their concerns to the Minister? “Yes," replies Avanti and continues, "We had a meeting at about 12:30 pm. We were given only about 2-3 minutes and had been asked to present the five most important points regarding the issues. We talked to the Minister, explained our points to him and justified the validity of our concerns. He compared FTII with private institutes, something that we did not agree with or were satisfied with. He also dismissed some of the points. It felt like he was hurrying us along. He commented on some of the points, but the ones which he could not comment or act on were hurried off."

Speaking about the demonstrations held, she states that it was just a silent affair, with a group of students holding placards inside the campus. “The Minister’s Secretary arrived before him and called a few students from the association to talk to him. When he found out a group of students were holding a demonstration, at first he threatened that he would call off the visit. Then he said that they would not implement the initiatives that they had planned if the demonstrations were not immediately stopped,” Avanti states, recalling the Secretary’s words.

She continues, “The Minister visited the campus anyway. He walked past the demonstration silently and attended the review meeting for which he had come. We followed him at a distance silently as he took a tour of the campus, but that was all. There had been no crowding or loud protests.”