While right-wing Hindu organisations continue their protests seeking scrapping of admissions for the first batch at the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence, as 44 of the 50 selected belong to the Muslim community, classes have been on now for the past one-and-a-half months at the institute.
On the campus, located 16 km from the Vaishno Devi shrine, bhajans and hymns to the Goddess play in common areas such as the reception-cum-meeting hall, and large photos of the deity loom over the premises.
Missing are any signs of the tensions being stirred up outside.
And while the protesting organisations – such as the RSS-affiliated Bajrang Dal and VHP, backed by BJP Udhampur MLA R S Pathania – want the admissions restricted to Hindus at the medical college, officials said that even of the six from Jammu who cleared the admission process, only three have joined. The 44 from Kashmir have all taken admission.
Of the batch of 47, more than half are women.
Officials added that the cost of the course seems to be the reason behind many students not taking admission, as the families told them they would try their luck at a government medical college.
The annual tuition fees per student at the Vaishno Devi medical institute is Rs 4.95 lakh, with other miscellaneous charges of over Rs 50,000 annually. Students also have to pay Rs 51,000 as a one-time charge.
At Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, of which the medical college is a part, there are nearly 2,800 students on the rolls across 16 departments. Just about 20% of them are from the Muslim community in Kashmir, officials said. The rest are from all over the country, and belong to different communities.
A senior official said they have not encountered any problems among the students, who study and live together. “There are students belonging to different religions and cultures, speaking different languages and having different eating habits,” the official said.
Even the undertaking taken from students and their parents that non-vegetarian food would not be consumed or cooked on the campus, has seen no pushback.
The medical college operates out of a six-storey building, including a basement, which was constructed within a year of Prime Minister Narendra Modi laying its foundation stone. Another similar sized building is nearing completion.
There are 150 faculty members and staff quarters for 700 employees, apart from hostel facilities for students and nurses. The departments at the medical institute include Anatomy, Physiology, Bio-Chemistry, Pharmacology, Community Medicine, Forensics, Pathology and Microbiology. The Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Super Specialty Hospital is attached to the medical institute.
Students attend classes both at the medical institute and the hospital. Refusing to be identified, they told The Indian Express that while some protesters had also reached the gates of the campus, it had not affected them. “With entry and exit regulated by campus staff and the surrounding villagers exceedingly hospitable, we cannot have a more secure environment,” a student said.
The institute has prescribed a uniform for students (a rarity at college level in J&K), and has a strict attendance policy as well as rules about stepping out of campus without permission. A student said they don’t mind this. “We are here to study, and to serve the people.”
The visits off the campus include mandatory ones to Penthal, a village nearly 3 km away which has been “adopted” by the institute as part of their study programme. Each student is allotted three families in the village whom they must visit every fortnight for medical check-ups, till the completion of their MBBS course.
“Whenever we visit, we are offered tea or lunch,” said a female student from Kashmir.
Come weekend, the students from Kashmir head for the Valley on the Katra-Srinagar Vande Bharat, with the railway station 16 km away from the campus. Almost everyone makes the trip once in a fortnight, leaving Saturday morning and returning Sunday evening, in time for Monday classes, officials said.
The protesters said the “calm” didn’t mean their agitation was off. Asked about the lack of interest shown by students from Jammu, who had not taken admission, Colonel (retd) Sukhbir Singh Mankotia, who is the president of the ‘Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Sangharsh Samiti’, links it to “the white collar” terror module busted following the Red Fort blast in Delhi.
The Samiti is a conglomeration of nearly 60 organisations spearheading the protests, including the J&K Sanatan Dharam Sabha, VHP, Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal.
“Reports about the involvement of doctors from Kashmir in terror attacks and allegations of ‘love jihad’ from across the country have created an atmosphere of scare among parents, who do not want their children to join an institute where the maximum students are from the Muslim community in Kashmir,’’ Mankotia said. “I too would not want my daughter to go there for studies.”
Like other medical colleges in J&K, the student list for the Vaishno Devi medical institute is drawn up by the J&K Board of Professional Entrance Examination on the basis of students’ performance in NEET, the country-wide common medical entrance exam. While the protesters contend that an institute set up with donations offered to the Vaishno Devi shrine should have seats reserved for Hindus, this is not possible as it is not classified as a minority institute.
Officials said the pattern of a majority of the medical students at the Vaishno Devi institute being Muslims from Kashmir is also not a surprise, being in line with a recent trend. While there are more seats available in medical colleges in the Jammu region compared to Kashmir (900, vs 675), most of these seats have been taken up by students from Kashmir in the past few years.
In case of engineering seats, the reverse is true, with students from Jammu more likely to opt for them.
A class at the medical institute. (Arun Sharma)
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