A group of ABVP activists including three students of the college entered the campus and protested nearly for three hours and allegedly disrupted classes urging other students and faculty members to join their protest. The members of the RSS student wing raised slogans against the principal and the management and shouted “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” and “Vande Mataram”.

The members of ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad or All Indian Students Forum) were protesting the college authorities’ refusal to induct the new Student Council in the college after the pro-Hindu students’ wing won the council elections held in December for the academic year 2022-23.

An ABVP activist who was present on the campus said, “We wanted the college authorities to constitute the students council. But they were not responding. The college authorities were unhappy with the student who was elected general secretary.”

ABVP North Goa co-convener Akash Naik said the students resorted to the protest because the authorities were delaying the constitution of the students council as they did not like the general secretary. “We had repeatedly urged them to expedite the process. Even the students who were pleading with college management were not given an audience,” he said.

In a written statement, college administrator Fr Tony Salema said, “The incident on the college campus was unprecedented. It was very unfortunate. A group of boys and girls including three students from St Xavier’s entered the campus shouting political slogans and also abusing the principal, management and staff. Being an educational institute, we categorically state that St Xavier’s College condemns such unruly behaviour and requests all our students to dissociate themselves from such activities.

On the sideline of airing its statement, a part of college authority blamed ‘ABVP as a part of communally motivated RSS’ and alleged ‘its conspiracy of changing the culture and tradition of the college’.

“Our Catholic educational institutions are getting more and more communalized,” with the backing of the ruling pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the state and at federal level, says Jesuit Father Anthony Da Silva, director of Xavier Centre of Historical Research in Goa.

The aim is to push forward the pro-Hindu ideology on Christian educational campuses, the Jesuit priest alleged.

After coming under fire for creating huge ruckus at St  Xavier College Mapusa recently, ABVP  held a press conference on Jan 23 to explain their side of the story. ABVP charged that St. Xavier’s admin deliberately delayed the swearing-in ceremony of the elected Students’ Council of St. Xavier’s College in Mapusa even after 75 days of student union elections, as Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) has won the prestigious General Secretary position of the Students’ Union. They further demanded immediate induction of students’ council in the college.

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__Agencies.