A day after students and some teachers remained seated when India’s national anthem was played in the University of Kashmir in the presence of Chief Justice of India, the university authorities on Tuesday said they are now thinking of “sensitizing” the students, apparently to avoid further embarrassment. “It is happening in Kashmir, not in New Delhi where students would know from childhood about respecting the national anthem. A lot of these students are new to the university. We know how to handle them,” Kashmir University Vice-Chancellor, Prof Talat Ahmad, told Kashmir Reader on Tuesday. “We are working on it and we will sensitize the students.” On Monday, Prof Talat and his colleagues faced huge embarrassment when some faculty members and students of the Law Department didn’t stand up when the anthem was being played on arrival of the Chief Justice of India, Justice Altamas Kabir. The students who refused to get up had also signaled others to sit down. KU witnessed similar embarrassing moments several times last year also. On May 11, 2012, many of the students participating in the inaugural function of a 3-day International Seminar on ‘Impact of Peace, Conflict and Disturbances on Economic Development Processes’ remained seated while the anthem was being played in the presence of Governor NN Vohra. Again, four days later, some students and faculty members had refused to stand up for the anthem in a function titled ‘Television and New Media Technologies, the changing paradigm of education’. Vohra was part of the function too, and he, it was learned, had expressed displeasure over both the incidents. The twin incidents had prompted university to issue a diktat to officials ahead of the 8th J&K Science Congress, directing them to stand up or be absent whenever the anthem was played. The stringent directions had, however, annoyed the students, who, under the banner of Kashmir University Students Union, condemned it strongly. Prof Talat, however, seeks to downplay the incidents and refuses to accept that they were any serious. “It is not becoming a trend. Last year everyone behaved well when the Vice-President was here,” he said. “It (disregard displayed by students on Monday) is no big incident. These are some new students of Law department who may not have the idea about how to behave.” Besides the disregard shown to the anthem, the students at KU are seen protesting every time political dignitaries from New Delhi land on the campus. Last year, there were protest rallies for almost the entire day when Congress Vice- President Rahul Gandhi, along with some business bigwigs from India, held a conference in KU’s Convocation Complex, which had been fortified. Consequently,
Posted on: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 05:13:16 +0000
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