Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee urges govt to establish the truth of JNU violence

Kolkata, Jan 06: A day after the JNU campus violence Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee has urged the government to establish the truth of the incident. Banerjee, who is also a JNU alumnus, has shown concerns over India's image abroad after the masked men attacked JNU students and teachers on campus, on Sunday.

While talking to media Banerjee said that any Indian who cares about the country's image in the world should worry. This has too many echoes of the years when Germany was moving towards the Nazi rule.

Regarding the JNU Registrar's statement that claimed the students protesting against hostel fee hike for the violence, Banerjee, an alumnus of the premier institution added that instead of getting drowned in the chorus of counter accusations the government needs to actually establish the truth of the incident.

The Nobel laureate expressed his concern for those who were injured. And wished the injured speedy recovery.

Reportedly, on Sunday nearly 34 people, including JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh were injured and admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) as violence spread on the JNU campus for nearly two hours, as masked men reportedly armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police which conducted a flag march.

Earlier, after winning the Nobel prize when Banerjee, visited the JNU campus last year she said in an interview with media that he faced police action in JNU back in 1983 when he was a student of MA (Economics) at the university.

Recollecting his JNU days, he explained how he was jailed in Tihar for more than a week over protests against the expulsion of the then students' union president. He also recalled that he, along with other protesters had gheraoed the house of the Vice-Chancellor then.

Banerjee, who is presently the professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2019 for efforts to alleviate global poverty along with his wife, Esther Duflo and fellow economists Michael Kremer.