Violent attack on Hariti Book Stall at SP Pune University
An Appeal
Hariti Publication is an initiative that we began in 2013 with the aim of spreading ‘reading cultures’. We believe that to develop thinking human beings we need to develop reading cultures. With the intention of looking at ‘reading as a movement’ we try and engage in few activities as a Hariti Publication and that is how we choose our slogan consciously as “Intervention, Dialogue and Change”. For the spread of reading cultures we believe that we need to go more diversified in terms of multiple voices which are emerging in larger intellectual discourses.
Having said that as we carry our own political affiliations with larger anti-caste, anti-class and feminist movement in India we are trying to produce and circulate progressive material of various scholars and academicians. Texts that we were able to publish till now, include Gopal Guru, Late Com. Rajiv Kalelkar, Vilas Sonawne, Keshav Waghmare, P. Sainath, Prakash Shirsat, com. Datta Desai, Charu Gupta, Mithilesh Priyadarshi. Some more are in process of few renowned activists and academicians in various movements such as Vidyut Bhagwat, Dilip Chavhan, Suhas Palshikar, Pratima Pardeshi, Sanjiv Chandorkar, Bharat Patankar, Rajkumar Ghogare. Producing and circulating such progressive material in the form of ‘book stall’ is one of the important initiatives taken up by Hariti Publication.
ABVP members attack Hariti book stall and assaulted distributor Shyam Ghuge in Savitribai Phule University campus on Nov 26, 2018
With the aim of making good reading material available as well as developing culture of reading, discussion on the university campus, books published by Hariti are often made available and are circulated on Savitribai Phule Pune University Capmus in various programmes. Students on the campus also support this activity. ABVP, a right wing militant organization violently opposing this activity of circulation of progressive reading material is not at all surprising! Violent attack on Hariti book stall and incident of beating Hariti book distributor Shyam Ghuge on 26th November on Savitribai Phule University campus thus can be seen as a part of the series of violent attacks on progressive thinkers, academicians and educational institutions such as JNU, that are taking place especially since BJP government has come into power. There has been constant attempt by right wing forces to curb the voice of equality and democracy in the form of violent attacks on speeches as well as writings of progressive thinkers, academicians such as Kancha Ilaiah, Gauri Lankesh, Romila Thapar, Kalburgi, Com. Govind Pansare, Rana Ayyub, Dr. Dabholkar, Ravish Kumar, and S. M. Mushrif est.
We strongly condemn the act of violent attack on Hariti book stall; however we also believe that mere condemning this act is not enough to strengthen the struggle against such regressive forces. So we strongly make an appeal to all progressive, democratic forces to come together and decide an action programme for the same.
Issued by: Kishor Mandle, Keshav Waghmare (7744808257), Dayanand Kanakdande, Dipak Kasale (9067035653), Shailesh Tanabai, Shubhm Chavhan, Sagar Naik, Akosh Donde, Kunal Shirsate
For more details on the incident: ABVP beats up bookseller on Constitution Day
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