Universities should not be a space for competing ideologies, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said in Delhi on Thursday.

“Universities should not become a wrestling ground for ideological conflict,” Shah said. “Youth should give space to discussions rather than conflict when it comes to ideology. Whatever is best will itself emerge. Why should we worry?”

The home minister made the comments while delivering a speech at a seminar on “Revisiting the Ideas of India from ‘Swaraj’ to ‘New India’” organised by the Delhi University’s political science department.

Several universities in the country, including Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, have witnessed clashes between different student bodies. Prominent clashes have taken place between Bharatiya Janata Party’s Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and Left-affiliated student bodies.

On April 10, several students at the Jawaharlal Nehru University were injured when clashes had broken out allegedly over meat being served in a hostel mess on the Hindu festival of Ram Navami.

In 2019, a scuffle had broken out between student activists of the Left Front, the Trinamool Congress and the BJP during Shah’s roadshow in Kolkata.

In his speech on Thursday, Shah said that if any ideology is causing a conflict, it is “not an ideology and definitely not India’s ideology”, reported PTI.

“No one remembers those who destroyed the universities of Nalanda and Taxila,” he said. “It is said that the library of Nalanda University burnt for months. But the thoughts from those universities continue to live on even till now.”

The home minister warned youth against what he said was a new movement, under which some were fighting for rights and creating disorder in the process.

“The duty that the youth have towards the country, society and the poor, they should always be mindful of that,” he added.

Shah also claimed that India did not have any defence policy before Narendra Modi became the prime minister in 2014.

“We considered our foreign policy as our defence policy,” he claimed. “Even if it existed, it was suppressed under the shadow of the foreign policy.”

On demands of removing Armed Forces Special Powers Act, or AFPSA, on the grounds of human rights violations, Shah said that those who died due to terrorism too have human rights.

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