Shivamogga
A protest broke out in Shivamogga on Tuesday as members of the Karnataka Dalit Sangharsha Samiti (KDSS) staged a drum demonstration in front of Kuvempu University. The agitation was held against a seminar titled “Bhagavad Gita and Crime Control”, organised by the university along with the Swarna Rashmi Trust and the Shri Bhagavad Gita Abhiyana District Committee.
Speaking at the protest, KDSS State Convenor M. Gurumurthy said the seminar promotes a right-wing ideological agenda. He argued that such an event goes against the values of national poet Kuvempu and contradicts the spirit of the Constitution drafted by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.
Gurumurthy urged prominent Kannada thinker Prof. Baraguru Ramachandrappa to boycott the upcoming Kannada Rajyotsava programme scheduled to be held on the university campus. He alleged that the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Sharath Ananthamurthy, is encouraging fundamentalism, and said it would be inappropriate for a progressive scholar like Ramachandrappa, known for decades of work in nation-building, to share the stage with him.
The protesters also questioned why a seminar related to religious scripture was being held in a university named after Kuvempu, who famously asserted that “my religion is humanity’’ and opposed the glorification of any religious text. Gurumurthy criticised the administration for organising the event secretly without involving university scholars and for deploying heavy police security on campus. Such actions, he said, undermine Kuvempu’s inclusive ideals.
He demanded that the state government recall the Vice-Chancellor, asserting that promoting RSS-aligned ideas in the university space was unacceptable and violated the values the institution stands for.
