A day after the Delhi Red Fort bomb blast, hateful anti-Muslim graffiti reading “Muslims and dogs should not enter the premises” and “No dogs and Muslims” surfaced on the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) campus in Kolkata, Alt News reported.
The graffiti was smeared across both sides of the main entrance door of the boys’ hostel, the CV Raman Hall. On one side, an old message reading “Dog shouldn’t enter the premises,” scrawled in black years ago, had been altered after someone added the words “Muslims &” in white chalk, changing it to “Muslims and dog shouldn’t enter the premises.”
On the other side of the door, fresh graffiti declared “No Muslim” and “No Muslim allowed.” The railing of the hostel’s east-wing staircase was also defaced with the message, “No Dogs and Muslims.”
Students first approached the administration with a verbal complaint, after which ISI Kolkata director Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay, dean Biswabrata Pradhan, and hostel warden Subhamoy Maitra later inspected the graffiti along with members of the campus’s general affairs (GA) committee, a student body informally selected from the senior-most batch, as the institute does not hold student-union elections. Students told Alt News that the director condemned the act publicly.
A written complaint was subsequently filed. “We sought an investigation to identify who was responsible. There is a CCTV camera near the hostel gate that might have captured the perpetrator. We asked to see the footage, but the administration denied the request, though they said they would look into the matter. They also suggested organising a sensitisation programme with compulsory attendance,” a student told Alt News.
On November 12, a group of 10 students, including research scholars and undergraduate and postgraduate students, met Dean Biswabrata Pradhan to request an official response.
“He spoke about holding sensitisation seminars sometime in January and said a guard had been posted at the hostel gate. These were the only steps taken in 36 hours. When we asked about a proper inquiry, he said only the director could decide that,” one of the students said.
The dean also assured them that the institute would issue a public statement, but none had been released by late evening on November 12. A section of students told Alt News that the delay made them fear the administration was attempting to hush up the incident.
The Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), one of India’s premier higher-education centres and an ‘Institution of National Importance’ since 1959, has campuses in Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Tezpur.
This story was originally published in maktoobmedia.com. Read the full story here.