Inside the SRFTI clash over an RSS-affiliated event

What began as an event inside the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI) on Sunday turned into a confrontation involving students, organisers, faculty and police, leaving the campus tense and raising questions over how an external organisation’s programme was allowed to unfold inside an academic space.

The first question is about the event itself. The Akhil Bharatiya Grahak Panchayat (ABGP), an RSS-affiliated organisation, was holding a programme at SRFTI’s main theatre. The Statesman reported that the programme had the permission of institute authorities. Students, however, told later that the Student Union had not been informed and that the theatre was primarily used for academic activities and screenings. They said they had formally objected to the event. That disagreement became the first fault line.

Around noon, according to student accounts, students confronted the organisers over the programme. Reports also carried allegations that speakers at the event had made provocative or inflammatory remarks. The precise content of those remarks has not been independently established in the available reports. What followed, however, is where the dispute moved from an institutional disagreement to physical confrontation.

It was reported that some students entered the venue and removed and tore down flags put up by the organisers, after which an altercation broke out. Students, meanwhile, alleged that members of the visiting group attacked protesters. There were allegations of knife attacks in which at least six students were injured, while other reports put the number of injured at at least four. The conflicting accounts make one question central: who initiated the violence, and what happened inside the venue before the confrontation spread across the campus?

The situation then moved beyond the auditorium.

Reports claim, a large crowd gathered outside the institute and stones were allegedly thrown at students, leaving around 150 students inside the campus. Bricks and water-bottle throwing from outside the gate went on as several RSS supporters were stranded inside. Students blocked the gate and stopped a bus, reportedly believing RSS members were travelling in it.

Police arrived with a large contingent led by Deputy Commissioner of Police Arindam Sarkar. Further reports claim that officers detained a person identified by students as the principal accused, while students alleged that the security deployment was inadequate and demanded an FIR. Faculty members also joined students inside the campus. The Statesman reported that additional forces were later deployed after clashes allegedly continued even in the presence of police.

By then, the problem was no longer simply whether students should have objected to an outside event. It had become a question of campus governance and security.

Who authorised the programme? Why was the Student Union reportedly not informed? What exactly was said at the event before students began protesting? Who brought weapons, if the stabbing allegations are substantiated? How did a dispute inside an auditorium turn into stone-pelting and a crowd outside the institute? And once police arrived, why did the confrontation continue?

Thus incident shows an educational campus becoming a space where competing political affiliations settle disputes through physical force.

The SRFTI incident therefore needs to be examined beyond the label of a 'student clash'. At its centre is a sequence that demands answers: how an authorised external event entered the campus, how objections escalated into violence, and whether the institutions responsible for the space and its security acted before the confrontation became unmanageable.