Unique protest at IIT Bombay on cancellation of linguist scholar Ganesh Devy’s lecture.

Students and faculty from IIT Bombay held a unique protest of the abrupt cancellation of the lecture by linguist scholar Ganesh Devy on Thursday.

Here is an account by Shyama Iyer.

They read out extracts from his book outside the venue of the meeting.

The institute canceled the talk, on ‘The crisis within: On Knowledge and Education in India’, part of the Institute series, due to “unforeseen circumstances,” as per their communication to the organisers.

This is not the first time that the Institute has canceled an event for unexplained reasons. A lecture entitled ‘Israel-Palestine: The Historical Context’ by Professor Achin Vanaik, as well as a conference titled ‘Cultures of the Political Left in Modern India’ was cancelled at the nth hour by the Institute.

The IIT Bombay for Justice collective came up with an alternative plan. They hosted a reading session of a chapter from Ganesh Devy’s book “Crisis Within” at the originally scheduled time and venue.

At the event we read out paragraphs from two selected chapters “Inequalities” & “Education and Freedom” of Ganesh Devy’s book.

We will continue to strive for an inclusive, democratic, and secular campus.