IIT Bombay professor, guest lecturer face police complaint over pro-Palestine speech

A professor and a guest speaker at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay have been the target of a police complaint from students who claim they spoke in favor of Palestinian militants during a virtual lecture, an official said on Friday.

In a complaint filed on Wednesday, the students sought disciplinary action against guest speaker Sudhanva Deshpande and Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) department professor Sharmistha Saha for their talk on November 6.

A student told PTI, “We denounce Professor Sharmistha Saha’s blatant attempt to host such hateful speakers to indoctrinate students with biased and factually false stories under the pretext of academic course ‘HS 835 Performance Theory & Praxis.'”

In their complaint letter to the police, students claimed that Saha had “inappropriately used her position to invite Deshpande (a radical Leftist as part of her course work HS 835”.

They alleged that Deshpande had glorified Palestinian terrorist Zakaria Zubeidi, and this has troubling consequences for the academic integrity and safety of IIT Bombay.

“During the event, Deshpande made a statement that has raised significant concern. He not only admitted to having met Palestinian terrorist Zubeidi in 2015 but also defended and glorified violence and armed rebellion. Zubeidi is a known figure associated with the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an organisation designated as a terrorist entity by various governments and international organisations, including the United States, the European Union and Israel,” the letter stated.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have been linked to numerous acts of terrorism and attacks targeting civilians, making their association deeply problematic, it said.

The letter quoted Deshpande as saying that “the Palestinian struggle is a freedom struggle. And there has been no struggle in the history of the world, in the history of colonialism that is entirely 100 per cent nonviolent. It is never! Indian freedom struggle was not 100 per cent non-violent and so on and so forth”.

The students expressed concern about the impact such activities would have on the impressionable minds of young students and the potential security risks associated with promoting ideologies linked to terrorism and appealed to the police to investigate the matter.

(with inputs from agencies)