Members of Left student organisations protested outside the Tughlak Road police station on Monday evening. (Express photo by Prem Nath Pandey) A day before violence inside JNU’s Kaveri hostel, the hostel’s mess secretary received a message from one of the wardens asking that non-vegetarian food not be served in the mess on Sunday.
Mess warden Gopal Ram, when contacted, confirmed that he had messaged in this regard on Saturday, but added that it was a “suggestion” to avoid any “clashes” between students.
The menu for the hostel is decided by the mess committee – an elected students’ body, and the wardens don’t have a role in deciding it.
However, mess secretary Raghib, a student at JNU, said he had received a message from the warden Gopal Ram, a teacher on campus. “I was told that there should be no non-veg food made, that there should only be veg. As per our mess menu, non-veg is made on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. I told him if he wants a change in this, he should give it to me in writing. He refused to. There are 170-180 students out of 300 students who eat non-veg,” he said.
He also denied the ABVP’s claim that it was decided a week ago, at a general body meeting, that non-veg would not be served on Sunday, when some students observed Ram Navami. “If there was a GBM, there should be some poster of it, or some minutes of the GBM. There was no such meeting. We decide the menu for the whole month at the beginning of the month; it’s not decided on a day-to-day basis,” claimed Raghib.
When contacted, Ram said, “Students who wanted to perform Ram Navami puja requested that it would be good if non-veg was not cooked on Sunday. Others wanted non-veg since it was scheduled on the menu. Since I’m the acting mess warden, I asked that if non-veg could be shifted to another day, that would be the best way to avoid clashes. That was a suggestion; not an instruction or a written order to pressure them.”
Asked if there was any opposition to the havan being held, he said, “I think yes. There were some students.”
Asked if there was permission for the ceremony, he said, “No permission was taken from us, but neither was it taken for the iftar party. They should have taken permission, but neither did.”
Navin Kumar, Kaveri hostel president from Congress’s NSUI, said he had attended the Ram Navami puja. “It was held without a problem. Nobody objected to it. I also attended it and ate prasad afterwards. The problem started when they shooed away the vendor who came to deliver chicken,” he alleged.
In a video, the vendor, Afzal, is purportedly seen being asked to leave by a group of students on Sunday afternoon.
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