Delhi University V-C’s speech criticising ‘urban naxals’, Pinjra Tod movement draws ire

In a statement, All India Students’ Association (AISA) said that DU has historically been a space for “debate, discussion, and democratic participation,” adding that the Vice-Chancellor’s comments were “contrary to the spirit of academic freedom.”

On Monday, AISA organised a demonstration at Gate No. 4 along Chhatra Marg where students could be seen raising slogans. They described the V-C’s speech as  “an attempt to criminalise student movements and discredit voices of dissent.”  According to the student body, police and university security were stationed at multiple points even as the demonstration remained peaceful.

The Indian Express reached out to Singh but he did not comment on the matter.

The  24-minute speech speech was originally delivered on September 28 at an event titled “Bharat Manthan 2025: Naxal Mukt Bharat Ending Red Terror Under Modi’s Leadership”, organised by the Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation in partnership with the Association of Indian Universities at Vigyan Bhawan in Delhi.

Praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s goal to eradicate Naxalism by 2026, Singh warned that “Naxalism today operates not from forests, but from universities and cities.”

“They hide behind intellectual masks. They can be professors, doctors, employees who can be spotted speaking for the poor, but keeping them in poverty,” he said.

He argued that students entering universities with “dreams and innocence” are being ideologically misled.

Referring to the 2016 sedition row at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Singh referred to slogans like “Bharat tere tukde honge, Inshallah Inshallah” and questioned whether the education system had failed if professors become the source of such thinking

Singh recommended the movie, ‘Buddha in a Traffic Jam’, by filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri, saying it shows “how professors manipulate students emotionally to serve ideological agendas.”

“When did teaching Hindi become anti-national? When did English classes become spaces for indoctrination? When did social science professors start training students against the country?” Singh asked, adding that these shifts were not accidental but the result of carefully built narratives that subvert education.

He cautioned against being deceived by the “soft words and innocent faces” of those pushing these ideas, calling them “a threat to the nation’s future”.

Citing the now-banned political outfit Popular Front of India and its student wing (the Campus Front of India) — both allegedly active during the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests — Singh criticised faculty members who supported such groups. “When did anti-nationalism become part of the curriculum? This is a failure of vigilance,” he said.

Referring to the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case, Singh named DU professor Hany Babu and academics Rona Wilson and Anand Teltumbde, saying, “And these are not isolated cases.”

Calling ‘Pinjra Tod’, a women-led collective protesting hostel curfews, an example of “ingratitude,” Singh questioned what kind of thinking was being fostered in universities. “The university runs on government money. Every citizen contributes to it”  but the students show no gratitude, he said, adding that such tendencies don’t exist in foreign universities.

Recounting his tenure as Vice-Chancellor of Delhi Technological University, Singh recalled an encounter with female students from Pinjra Tod, a women-led collective protesting hostel curfews. “They accused not only the university but the society at large and even their own families of being conservative and patriarchal,” he said. “I asked them calmly, ‘isn’t this for your own safety?’ But their tone changed. One of them told me, ‘our parents are also as conservative as you. This fight is against them and you too’. I was stunned.”

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