The poster reading Free Kashmir at a protest at Mumbai's Gateway of India
A controversial poster reading ‘Free Kashmir’ at a protest in Mumbai on Monday has created a big row on Twitter. The poster was seen at an ongoing protest at the Gateway of India, organised to express solidarity with students and faculty members of Jawaharlal Nehru University who were brutally beaten on campus by masked men on Sunday.
The poster at the site was tweeted out by news agency ANI.
Indian Twitter users weren’t impressed by the protestor holding the placard and soon ‘Free Kashmir’ started to trend in India, with close to 39,000 tweets already having been sent out at the time of writing this report.
Senior journalist Aditya Raj Kaul demanded an explanation from Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray over such posters being allowed to be displayed at the protest. Labelling the act as “sickening,” he tweeted,
In another tweet on the matter, he drew a parallel with Jammu and Kashmir of the 90s, warning that such remarks played into the hands of Pakistan’s leadership.
Another Twitter user used the opportunity to bash movie director Anurag Kashyap and a host of other celebrities, who has thrown his weight behind the protesting students.
In the wake of violence inflicted on students and faculty by members of a masked mob, protests erupted in several campuses across the country, including at Jadavpur University, Aligarh Muslim University, Indian Institute of Management- Ahmedabad (IIM-A) and Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) among others.
