ABVP students perform Ram Navami puja at Jadavpur and Calcutta University gates
Telegraph | 28 March 2026
Members of the Jadavpur University unit of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the RSS, performed a puja on the campus to mark Ram Navami.
The students wore saffron headbands and performed the puja at the gate of the Technology Bhavan, once considered to be the citadel of the Left.
ABVP supporters also performed a puja outside the gate of Calcutta University’s College Street campus.
At Jadavpur, the students placed an idol of Ram in front of the Technology Bhavan gate at noon.
The entire place was decorated with saffron flags and flowers.
The police were posted at the university’s Gate 3 following requests from the authorities.
A poster stating “Shree Ram Pujan by the general students of Jadavpur University” was displayed, while the students intermittently chanted “Jai Shree Ram” and “Vande Mataram”.
A priest performed the puja.
“If Jadavpur University could host iftar, then there should not be any restrictions on observing Ram Navami on the campus,” said Nikhil Das, the ABVP unit president at JU.
The place where the Ram Navami puja was performed had till last year, a graffiti that had “Azad Kashmir” painted allegedly by radical Left students.
On April 29, 2025, the university authorities whitewashed the graffiti, a day after a section of students wrote to the pro-vice chancellor demanding it be erased following the killing of 26 people by militants in Kashmir’s Pahalgam on April 22.
A CU official said that the ABVP supporters were not formally permitted to hold the puja on the campus.
“We told them that apart from Saraswati Puja, no other Puja is allowed on the campus. So they performed the puja at the gate,” said a CU official.