Jammu & Kashmir

JNU cancels webinar on Kashmir calling it ‘objectionable and provocative’

Photo: WikiMedia/Ganga Sahai Meena.

The vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, M Jagadesh Kumar, announced on Friday that a webinar on Kashmir has been cancelled because the subject was considered to be “objectionable and provocative,” and the organisers had not requested permission for the event, reported Press Trust of India (PTI).

As per the report, the Centre For Women’s Studies at the university was to host a talk titled “Gendered Resistance and Fresh Challenges in Post-2019 Kashmir”.

Ather Zia, a political anthropologist, author, poet, and activist was the speaker at the webinar.

The notice of the webinar says ‘this talk will draw and build upon the ethnography of gendered resistance to Indian occupation in Kashmir’.

“This is a highly objectionable and a provocative subject, which questions the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country. JNU cannot be a platform to this kind of very questionable webinars. The matter is being inquired into,” Kumar said in a statement, as per PTI.

An immediate response was not available from the faculty members of the Centre For Women’s Studies, reads the report.

“As soon as it came to our notice that an online webinar titled ‘Gendered Resistance and Fresh Challenges in Post-2019 Kashmir’ was going to be organized at 8.30 pm today by Centre for Women Studies, the JNU administration immediately instructed the faculty member organising the event to cancel it,” said Kumar.

Kumar added: “The program was cancelled forthwith and the faculty member did not seek the permission of administration before planning such an event.”

Meanwhile, as per the report, he JNU unit of RSS-affiliated Akhi Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad demanded action against the chairperson of the Centre for holding such an event.

Rohit Kumar, secretary ABVP-JNU said, “We demand immediate action against the chairperson of the Centre for Women’s Studies, concerned faculties and JNU registrar who allowed the program and who all have mindlessly organised such an webinar by twisting facts on the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir with the intention to create a distorted narrative on Jammu and Kashmir.”

 

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