'Anxious' over latest tensions in Vadodara, Gujarat's 110 citizens seek secular unity

More than 110 concerned citizens of Gujarat, including litterateur Prakash N Shah, veteran academics Ghanshyam Shah and Indira Hirway, Indian Institute of Management faculty Navdeep Mathur, and danseuse Mallika Sarabhai, have expressing “concern” and anxiousness over the “rising tide of communalism in Gujarat and India”, have said the latest in the series is tension surrounding the Fine Arts Faculty at the MS University, Vadodara.
In a letter, sent to the National Human Rights Commission, the National Minorities Commission and the National Commission of Women, said, the tension in the MS University, Vadodara, Gujarat’s cultural capital, follows communal riots and tensions in Khambhat, Himmatnagar, Dwarka and other places.

Kundan Yadav

A student of MS University’s Faculty of Fine Arts was booked by the Sayajigunj police in Vadodara for allegedly creating “objectionable” pictures of Gods and Goddesses that led to tension on the campus on May 5.
Kundan Yadav, a native of Bihar and a student of the sculpture department of the Fine Arts Faculty, was booked after Jaswantsinh Raulji, another second-year student from the same faculty, filed an FIR at the Sayajigunj police station accusing him of creating “artwork of newspaper cutouts in the shape of Goddesses”.

Yadav has since been rusticated for his "objectionable" art work, while the dean of the faculty has been asked to show cause as to how could it be displayed at the annual exhibition of the Fine Arts Faculty.

The clippings were of different newspapers reporting about crime against women, particularly rape, which leading to saffron groups protesting and terming it as “hurting religious sentiments”.

Without once referring to the incident as an example of how freedom of expression is being sought to be attacked and curtailed by saffron forces, the letter, "organised" the civil rights group, Movement for Secular Democracy (MSD), states, “It seems that communal forces are at large. For them, Gujarat has always been a laboratory of communalism.”
It adds, “We all remember how small incidents of Sanjeli, Randhikpur, Bardoli, Ahwa Dang, etc. culminated to the carnage of 2002. After 2002, their experimentation continued in various forms.” It adds, “We cannot be silent or passive on lookers of these incidents.”
Wanting all “democratic and secular minded people” to come together and “nip communal forces in the bud”, the letter says, “We need to create a pressure on administration so that it takes proper measures in neutral way to combat communalism. There is an urgent need to come together, share one another’s idea and determine the course of action.”

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