Annual festival can’t be named ‘Intifada’, Kerala University tells students union

The festival is scheduled to be held from March 7 to March 11 in Thiruvananthapuram. The university’s students union, which organises the festival, had unveiled its logo last week. The students union is controlled by the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), the student wing of the CPI(M).

On Monday, the VC directed the university’s registrar, the students union and the university’s department of students services to ensure compliance with the directive, and warned that failure in implementing the directive would be viewed seriously.

The VC said the university was bound to ensure that its activities did not hurt the sentiments of any section of students, faculty or the public. “The festival is not a place for any protest. The students union had committed a mistake by choosing a word, which has connotations that could affect many among the students and the public. The platform of the youth festival cannot be permitted to be made a stage to propagate any type of ideology. The word ‘Intifada’ has direct links with the Palestine-Israel issue. The same can have implications on the country’s foreign policy as well,” he said.

In their complaint, ABVP state secretary E U Eswaraprasad had said, “Following the ban of PFI and its student wing Campus Front of India (CFI), many social media handles belonging to CFI have changed their name as Intifada to evade the attention of security agencies. Further, India shares a friendly diplomatic relation with both Palestine and Israel. And Israel is regarded as a strategic partner of our country. A government-funded educational institution of our country indulging in propaganda against one of the friendly countries in the context of their internal conflict is not a good gesture, and it may affect the strategic interest of India.”

The ABVP also alleged that naming the festival Intifada was an attempt by the SFI to legitimise an “extremist and terrorist terminologies”.

After getting the ABVP’s complaint, the VC had sought an explanation from the students union, which replied that naming the festival was within its domain. It also said that the decision to name the festival Intifada was a reaction to the ongoing Israeli military action that has been devastating Gaza. The Director of the Department of Students Service had also backed the selection of the name for the festival and argued that there was no reason for interfering with the union’s decision. However, the VC had rejected the explanations.