Activists attending a seminar on diversity, education and harmony at a Bihar college were surrounded, heckled and called anti-national… only because they were singing Vande Mataram, the national song.
Veteran Human Rights campaigner Shabnam Hashmi, peace activist Yugal Kishore Shastri and transgender rights activist Reshma Prasad were attending a seminar at MJK College in Bettiah district when members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) started raising slogans against them. Hashmi dared them to sing Vande Mataram when they started calling the activists ‘anti-national’. Hashmi then went on to sing the national song from the podium. But the ABVP goons surrounded them and the heckling intensified so much that the trio had to be escorted out by the security team.
Though they were unhurt, this incident highlights the level of intolerance right wing groups harbour against human rights activists and the depths to which these supremacists would sink in order to further their divisive agenda.