A month since tumult at Kolkata’s film institute, students firm on protesting till VC goes
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On October 27, students of the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute in Kolkata held a march across campus to mark a month of their agitation against the vice-chancellor, Santosh Ajmera.
It ended with a mashaal jaloos, a procession with torches, which, a senior member of the administration who asked to remain unidentified said, “was scary”. This person explained, “We were worried someone would throw a mashaal at one of our quarters.”
That was a “silly” claim to make, one student retorted, given that “it was a peaceful protest”. Nonetheless, the administration called in the police, who have since stayed in and around the campus.
Members of the administration put the number of police personnel in the campus since October 27 at “four or five”. But some students put it at around 50.
That difference in perception about the number of police personnel is just one sign of the enormous chasm of the distrust between students at the government-funded film school and the administration.
The students have several demands. They want accountability to be fixed for violence that occurred on campus on September 27, when protests greeted an event organised by a group affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh that was allowed to be held in an auditorium.
They want Ajmera to resign...