23

Feb

Elections 2024 : Communal Rhetoric Getting Louder

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Today’s Edition

New Delhi, 23 February 2024

Amitabh Srivastava

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As election 2024 approaches the communal rhetoric in the country is bound to get louder.

Having done with the Ram Mandir spectacle the tempo must be maintained to polarise voters.

So now a seemingly disciplinary issue in the prestigious St Stephens College of Delhi University looks like becoming a tinder box for a communal flare up.

According to a news item 100 students of the college, that provides more than 60 per cent of our bureaucrats, have been given a notice by the authorities telling them that they would be barred from taking the second semester exams.

Their fault-they missed coming to the morning assembly which is mandatory in St. Stephens.

Students have said that they were asked to bring their parents to meet the Principal at short notice which was not possible as many of them were  living far away from Delhi.

Taking up the fight for them some teachers have asked the college authorities to be lenient with them as children could not be forced to attend the morning assembly.

One of them has gone further and said that this was against the Fundamental Rights of children.

And here comes the catch:

Associate Professor Sanjeev Grewal has written to the principal, expressing shock at the development and said that the shortage of attendance in the morning college assembly is not a ground for debarring students from appearing in the examinations.

"Making assembly attendance compulsory may indeed be violative of the fundamental rights of students under Articles 25 and 28(3) of the Constitution and hence illegal. College assembly has always involved religious prayers and reading from the religious scriptures," he added.

In the letter, he requested the administration to immediately withdraw the order of suspension of students from college and also withdraw the threat to debar them from appearing in the examinations for the shortage of attendance in the morning assembly.

"I also request that attendance in the morning assembly and religious instruction should be made completely voluntary, as per the fundamental rights guaranteed by our constitution. Lastly, I also request that penal disciplinary action against a college community member should be taken only as a matter of last resort," he added.

I must admit that St Stephens has always been a thorn in the flesh because it follows it's own admission schedule much before the DU starts admission.

It's bizarre logic is that St. Stephens came up before the DU was set up.

But so were Hindi College and Ramjas College. In fact these three colleges played a big role in setting up DU.

But Ramjas and Hindu have never made this an issue during admissions.

But turning a morning assembly issue into a communal one is not acceptable in Delhi University which accepts all kinds of ideologies who contest elections on their party manifesto.

After the email was made public the Principal John Verghese sent another e mail saying there was a miscommunication.

Reads the new email

"On Saturday (February 17), an email was sent from my office to the students and parents. It was a miscommunication… incorrectly worded. My sincere apologies for that. Even I was not cc’ed on that email, a practice which is usually followed when I instruct my office to communicate, in written mode, on my behalf. Let me, therefore, set the matter right through this email…”

“Every college has its unique set of practices and traditions, and St Stephen’s College is no different. The morning assembly is an old tradition of the college. It is NOT a religious event, even though small portions from several religious and philosophical texts are read out. Any former student will vouch for the fact that the college’s morning assembly is not a religious exercise. It is more of an occasion when the college’s junior members are encouraged to listen to men and women of character, and experienced people who share their wisdom and knowledge…,” said Varghese.

“In the light of the misworded email that was sent from my office, without my clearance, please now note that there will be no suspension with regard to attendance for the morning assembly. Parents are important stakeholders in the broad-based, wholesome education that the college provides, and it is in this spirit that parents were addressed in the incorrectly worded email, with inadvertent and serious errors… My apologies for that,” he added.

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