Madras is burning under the Protests - Protests in IIT Madras

Madras is burning under the Protests - Protests in IIT Madras. The essence of free speech is the ability to think and speak freely and to obtain information from others through publications and public discourse without fear of retribution, restriction, or repression by the government.

Posted 6 years ago in Regional News, updated 6 years ago.

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Male , Lives in India
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The essence of free speech is the ability to think and speak freely and to obtain information from others through publications and public discourse without fear of retribution, restriction, or repression by the government. It is through free speech, people could come together to achieve political influence, to strengthen their morality, and to help others to become moral and enlightened citizens.

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The freedom of speech is regarded as the first condition of liberty. It occupies a preferred and important position in the hierarchy of the liberty. It is truly said the freedom of speech is the mother of all liberties.

India is a very diverse country and with each region so rooted in its own culture that a slight change gets hard to accept. A demonstration of one such example was the protest taken place in IIT-Madras on 28th February 2018. Students at IIT-M protest over recitation of Sanskrit song at an event instead of Tamil song. The event was attended by Union Ministers Nitin Gadkari and Pon Radhakrishnan. Students, who belong to the Campus Front of India, alleged that the management is imposing Sanskrit in the campus.

 

 

Students came out in the streets right outside the IIT Madras. Following the controversy, IIT-M director Bhaskar Ramamurthy said, “We have here students from all over the country. Not all can sing in Tamil. At events, the students sing in Marathi, Hindi, Bengali and other languages too. We don’t tell the students which songs to sing.”

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A teacher said that conventionally, some events at the institute kicked off with Tamil prayers while others, especially the convocations, featured Sanskrit prayers but nobody had protested ever before. At the event, the IIT’s department of ocean engineering signed a pact with the Union road ministry for the establishment of a Centre of Indian Water Transport in Tamil Nadu.

As some students sang Maha Ganapathi Manasa Smarami, some others uploaded the video on social media platforms, triggering protests by politicians and a demonstration outside the gates by students and local people.

While Tamil Nadu has in the past witnessed street violence over the “imposition of Hindi”, Sanskrit- also a North Indian Language- is increasingly being identified with caste Hindu dominance under the current central government.

Issues like this will stop coming up when we realize that future is all about changes and whether we like it or not one day or the other it’s going to happen. As the most educated generation, we should be adaptable to changes. India is a secular and democratic country with a wide variety of languages, so at the end of the day, everyone needs a peaceful environment where we accept to love each other without any barriers.


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