Kochi: The social media activists have ridiculed the pro-CPM Students Federation of India for its bid to dub the Ambedkar Students Association formed on the Mahatma Gandhi University campus as a frontal organisation of Maoists. The social media criticism against the SFI has varied from outright lampooning to serious objections to the arrogance shown by the outfit to others. The observations made by MG University Union chairman and former SFI unit secretary Shyamlal in an online Malayalam journal have triggered the discussions. Shyamlal stated that ASA is only a banner.
“Persons sympathetic to the extreme left Maoists are behind it. The research student Kannan Mon is behind the formation of ASA. He is the son of CPI-ML activist Kallara Babu. He is having links with Maoist Roopesh. Even the Special Branch officials have quizzed us about the political activities of Kannan,” he said. The SFI has been known to slander others who raise a critical voice on the campus, says Ananthu Asha Rajagopal of the Hyderabad Central University. In HCU, the SFI has tried to project ASA as a ganging up of Dalits and Islamists.
The same ploy has been adopted in MG varsity by terming the ASA as drug mafia backed by Maoists, he said. Kannan Mon, research scholar in the MG varsity and one of the persons behind the formation of ASA, has ridiculed the claim by posting a rhyming two-liner in Malayalam. “I had a business of selling Mavu (flour) and yeast. May be because of that I have been stamped with the stigma of Maoist. Hi buddy, the Maoist tag is the same as putting yeast for fermenting flour,” he said. Jaison Cooper, a human rights activist, in his post stated that the comments by the SFI leader were an open invitation for police surveillance on the campus.
