The 37-second video which surfaced in the afternoon around the time the Prime Minister landed in Kolkata on a two-day visit on Saturday, quickly went viral.
Aishe Ghosh, president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University students’ union on Saturday came out of student politics to put Prime Minister Narendra Modi in her line of fire with an appeal to the people of Bengal to oppose his “divisive politics”.
In a video message circulated from Delhi, Aishe said, “Modi is coming to Bengal today. I have an appeal to the people of Bengal. BJP is spreading divisive politics across India. We will not allow this politics in Bengal. I come from the Asansol-Durgapur region (of Bengal). They are spreading riots there.”
She did not spare Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee either.
“Modi and Mamata have joined hands in this divisive politics. We have to deal with this strongly. Look at them in the eye. Bengal is the land of Rabindranath and Nazrul (poet Kazi Nazrul Islam), not this politics,” said Ghosh in Bengali.
The 37-second video which surfaced in the afternoon around the time Modi landed in Kolkata on a two-day visit, quickly went viral.
The PM’s visit has already sparked a series of protests in Kolkata by the opposition including Left parties and the ruling Trinamool Congress against the amended citizenship law.
Aishe Ghosh, who was badly injured in an attack by masked men inside JNU on January 5, was one of the nine students named by the Delhi Police on Friday for the violence.
Several students at the university have criticized the police for a “biased probe” after investigators mainly named Left-leaning students’ outfits as the main suspects for unleashing the violence. They claimed that the police are trying to save the ABVP whom the JNUSU members have accused of attacking them.
Also on Saturday, JNU vice-chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar who has been under fire for failing to stop the mob attack, blamed outsiders for last Sunday’s violence inside the campus that left many students and teachers injured.
Prasanta Patnaik