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The National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), Mumbai has objected to the recommendation made by the Maharashtra government to name the new International Students’ Hostel facility at Mumbai University after the Name of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, commonly known as Veer Savarkar. The student body in a letter addressed to the Governor of Maharashtra said that Savarkar “not only refrained from participating in the freedom struggle” but also “actively supported the English rulers”.
In their letter, NSUI Mumbai urged that the hostel facility should be only named after an eminent personality who has contributed to the welfare of the students’ fraternity irrespective of religion, caste, or creed.
The letter stated, “At the time when Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was raising his Indian National Army to confront the British in India, Savarkar helped the colonial government recruit lakhs of Indians into its armed forces. He further destabilized the freedom movement by pushing his communal ideology, which deepened the communal divide at a time when a united front against colonial rule was needed.”
“Mr Savarkar is mythologized in the popular imagination as ‘Veer Savarkar’ – he not only refrained from participating in the freedom struggle after the British released him from prison on account of his relentless pleas for mercy but also actively supported the English rulers to whom he had declared his loyalty,” added the letter.
NUSI suggested that the new facility should be honoured with the name of Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj who was “a firm believer in the dictum that administration is for the welfare of the people.” In its letter, the student wing said, “many eminently practical steps which he took to improve the lot of the underprivileged and the weak included, even at that distant period of time the abolition of bonded labour and the provision of education and employment for the backward and the depressed classes.”
Advocating to name the new facility after Chhatrapati Shahuji, the student body said, “He pened the gates of education and public offices to all. In Maharashtra he pioneered free education and set up a chain of hostels where the children of the poor would be housed free of charge.”
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