According to an email I received from a colleague:
Two of the people mentioned, Ramakanth and Gangadhar Reddy are personally known to many of us. They are sincere and committed condensed matter physicists and teachers. They have worked hard under the difficult conditions that prevail in a state university to build up the physics department there. Ramakanth is a senior professor (more than 60 years old), well respected, both locally and by the condensed matter community in the rest of India. Their academic integrity is unquestionable.
Of course, even if their integrity were questionable, mob violence is not the answer. And this is not the first time the ABVP has assaulted teachers: they murdered a professor in Ujjain not long ago.
The events at Virginia Tech have thrust the spotlight on university violence. But at home, we seem to take it for granted. A search on Google News reveals a grand total of four news items to mention Kakatiya University, of which one is an unrelated story.
3 comments:
Classy guys, those Li'l Rabids.
Why is campus violence in India not a big deal? Because (forgive me, grammarians) unless a Tier 1 institute is affected, it's not news. Kakatiya and Ujjain ain't Tier 1. That or it has to be more than just a few professors "roughed up", to borrow a cliche from Indian newspapers.
It was said in the news item "
reportedly belonging to the ABVP", of which I was a proud member back in India. Kindly refrain from making blatant accusations on organizations. Even the Government never blatantly accuses Kashmiri terrorists unless they have evidence. Are you investigating this case Mr ACP Rahul Siddhartha?
Of course I do not justify the actions perpetrated, but please do not compare such acts with the Virginia Tech one.
Hooliganism is present everywhere in the world. You forget that in North India many exams have students who want to copy getting knives in class. There are so many cases of organized copying, bribing professors, forged mark-sheets and much more all over the nation, which our deranged media never bothers covering. (I guess our news channels infested all our newspapers too).
It was said in the news item "
reportedly belonging to the ABVP", of which I was a proud member back in India.
Tough. I, on the other hand, am ashamed, not proud, to say I half-supported the BJP and friends -- that is, I didn't think they were worse than the others -- until 2002.
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