Opinion Mob cannot have the last word at KGMU

On January 9, the day a junior resident doctor at the King George’s Medical University (KGMU) in Lucknow was arrested in a case of alleged sexual harassment and forced religious conversion filed by a colleague, a mob that included BJP leader and vice-chairperson of the Uttar Pradesh Women’s Commission, Aparna Yadav, descended on the institution, alleging a “conversion racket”. Coming on the heels of the recent protests at Jammu’s Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence (SMVDIME) against the admission of a larger number of Muslim students, which led to the subsequent cancellation of its MBBS course, the incident points to a dispiriting pattern. Counting on a climate of apparent impunity, there is a bid to communalise spaces of higher education.

In the case of the SMVDIME, the National Medical Commission sought to justify its decision by pointing to shortfalls in infrastructure at the college. But the connection with the protests staged by pro-RSS and pro-BJP organisations — after 44 out of 50 students who qualified in the free and open admission process in the first batch turned out to be Muslim — was all too clear. In the Lucknow incident, too, there is an attempt to narrow the classroom space by raising spectres and stoking prejudices that have no place in a constitutional democracy that guarantees equality and the freedom to practise and propagate one’s religion.

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For over a century, the KGMU has set a high standard for medical education; its graduates serve in hospitals around the country and many of its alumni are among the leading lights of Indian healthcare. It is classrooms like those at KGMU that prepare a nation to face the future. To allow this very ground to be disrupted by the intolerant mob sends a chilling message. Only a strong signal of accountability, with the perpetrators facing the full force of the law, can counter it.