Teachers back Gurmehar

Even as she announced her withdrawal from the anti-ABVP campaign, Lady Shri Ram College student Gurmehar Kaur on Tuesday got the unequivocal support of her teachers.

"We unequivocally and strongly support our student Gurmehar Kaur and her right to express her opinion on issues that embroil our university," faculty members of the English Department said in a statement.

"It is immensely gratifying to us as her teachers that she has responded sensitively, creatively and bravely to events in her immediate context rather than seek the safe refuge of silence.

"We feel it is the bounden duty of educational institutions to nurture sensitive, responsive and critical thinking students without the fear of violent retaliation," they said.

Lauding the 20-year-old Kaur for fulfilling her duty as an Indian citizen, the faculty members slammed cricketer Virender Sehwag and actor Randeep Hooda for ridiculing her.

"The threats of violence and brutality that she faces are absolutely reprehensible.

"Responses on social media by public figures such as Sehwag and Hooda are shameful trivialization of the intimidation Gurmehar faces at the hands of violent mobs whose viciousness the university has recently witnessed," the statement said.

The teachers appealed to everyone to let young Indians to think and articulate their views without fear of intimidation.

Threatened with rape and murder, Kaur, daughter of an army officer who died in the Kargil war, said she was withdrawing from the social media campaign against the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).

The RSS-affiliated ABVP first forced the cancellation of a seminar at Ramjas College and was then accused of attacking students, lecturers and journalists in the campus.

--IANS

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