Our Bureau
New Brunswick, NJ
Prominent Indian-American community organizations have urged the Chancellor of Rutgers University in New Jersey not to allow the display of a separatist Kashmiri flag on its campus. The groups said that it would send a wrong message amidst the current chaos at leading US educational institutions against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Leading universities across the US are witnessing protests against Israeli military action in Gaza by Hamas militants on October 7, killing more than 1,400 people. Israel has launched a massive counter-offensive against the Islamic militant group that has ruled Gaza since 2007.
On Friday, a group representing protesting students said that eight of its 10 demands were met by the Rutgers University administration. Point nine of the demands said, “Display of the flags of occupied peoples – including but limited to Palestine, Kurds, and Kashmiris – in all areas displaying international flags across the Rutgers campuses.”
The university has not conceded to the demands of the protesting group. Office of the Chancellor will take stock of the flags displayed across Rutgers’s New Brunswick Campus and ensure appropriate representation of students enrolled in academics at the university, they said. The group’s claims infuriated several Indian American groups, which urged the university against allowing the display of a separatist Kashmiri flag on its campus.
Rutgers University “has caved,” Suhag Shukla from the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) said in a post on social media platform X. Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA) echoed the HAF’s sentiments.
According to CoHNA in a post on X, Rutgers University “caved in to hate and approved the display of a flag that brought terror to the small surviving indigenous minority in Kashmir.
Thomas Abraham, Chairman of the Global Organisation of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO), wrote a letter to Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway protesting students’ demand to display flags of displaced people on its campus.
