Leftists are known to be the most intolerant of dissent. While various communist groups and regimes in the world have been responsible for millions of deaths, leftist activists have been responsible for creating an atmosphere of intolerance and fear at educational institutions, especially in India.

This ugly face of the left was seen at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi again when students belonging to various left outfits forced the university administration to drop the name of a participant because he had ‘a BJP connection’.

Arvind Gupta, who led Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s and BJP’s digital campaign in 2014, was invited as a speaker for the second phase of “Digital Financial Literacy Campaign” that the university has undertaken. He was slated to speak on Wednesday morning.

Mr. Gupta was invited in capacity of founder-member of “Digital India Foundation”, which is a non-profit trust and think-tank ‘aiming to foster digital inclusion and adoption, and the use of the Internet and related technologies for the developmental process’. He has mentored many start-ups and has been a guest speaker earlier at various business schools and CXO events.

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However, for the leftist students of JNU, only his association with the BJP mattered.

They started protesting against this invitation. To hide their intolerance, the leftists students claimed that Arvind Gupta had orchestrated online attacks on political opponents as part of BJP’s digital campaign.

This claim is based on a discredited book authored by a person, who acts as an abusive troll on Twitter. Apart from abusing, the author of the book has also been accused of lying and inventing facts, including an entirely made up interview of former Defence Minister George Fernandes.

This is an old age tactics of the left where they crush dissent using alibis. They malign the image of someone whom they are afraid to debate with, and then try to shut out all debates and discussions. Further, due to the violent ways that leftist student groups are known to indulge in, their demands are often met by authorities. JNU too buckled under this gundaism, and the invitation to Arvind Gupta was cancelled.

“No official reason was given to me. They (JNU administration) said that they have to cancel it due to unforeseen circumstances,” Arvind Gupta told OpIndia when we got in touch with him.

He further said that he was disappointed as the issue of digital payments and digital inclusion was close to his heart and he had planned to speak on the same.

“By no stretch of imagination I would have thought about any politics in this matter. For me, it was an opportunity to talk on an issue that I am passionate about. I was not going as a BJP person to the event,” Mr. Gupta said.

It is interesting to note that this “unforeseen circumstances” explanation given to Arvind Gupta is similar to what event organisers had given to Tarek Fateh, when his ‘anti-Pakistan’ event was cancelled at Kolkata, allegedly under pressure from Islamists.

This is not the first time left-wing JNU students have shown intolerance and banned people from the campus. In December 2015, they tried to ban Baba Ramdev’s entry on the campus. Filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri too had to face protests when he tried to showcase his movie Buddha In A Traffic Jam at JNU.

So much for free speech, tolerance, and education.