Indian student in UK criticises university for ‘bias’ in hate campaign investigations
Satyam Surana, an Indian student studying in the UK, has expressed strong criticism regarding his university’s handling of alleged hate campaigns during college elections in London, claiming “biased” investigations.
The Pune-born student also contended that major university campuses are currently dominated by ‘pro-left’ ideologies, showing intolerance towards individuals with strong Hindu and Indian identities.
In an interview with ANI, Surana discussed the allegations, stating that despite presenting “irrefutable evidence” to university authorities. “Immediately after all this incident of harassment, hate, bullying and all the doxing happened, I immediately approached the university’s authorities for the redressal and through every mechanism possible. I approached the security and the department to withhold the security footage right from getting the accused person’s CCTV footage of scribbling and marking my posters over the campus, to reporting the WhatsApp messages, the hate comments that I got, the abuses that I got on different platforms of social media,” he said.
He also claimed the university deliberately extended the investigation period to benefit the accused students, as many graduated during this prolonged process.
“So that (incident) happened around somewhere in March 2024 and today we are in January of 2025 so it’s been almost 10 months I got the decision in late December 2024. So these authorities in LSE have decided…not to uphold the allegations that I have made and for that they have used the ground that the evidence that has been submitted is insufficient and that of all the multiple instances that I complained of, they have just pin picked one specific incident regarding the scribblings on my poster and they’ve said that the security footage is not available and the student is also no longer a student of the college he has passed out and so we cannot do anything. They’ve ignored almost every other incident that I complained of,” Surana elaborated.
“They (university) have purely said that students are free to express their thoughts and opinions but there needs to be some limitations,” Surana added, noting that controversial remarks were made about his identity. “I was heckled with a slogan called, ‘We don’t want a Hindu nationalist or an Indian nationalist to be elected to the student union’. So, here my Hindu identity is being questioned, my proud Indian identity is being questioned, everything has been questioned keeping the political side of it aside, it is an attack on my religious identity but the university has clearly justified that in their decision letter, that this is well within the ambit of the legitimate exercise of their freedom of speech and expression. How can spewing venom against one religious identity be within the garb of freedom of speech and expression,” he claimed.
He also mentioned an incident where the university cautioned him about his social media posts, in which he claims he was highlighting how the “Palestine movement was used to sympathize with radical Islamist terrorist organizations.” “This is the double standard that these universities are applying while dealing with cases of Hinduphobia as against while dealing with cases of islamophobia,” he stated.
Surana alleges that major global universities have been overtaken by “left-wing ideology” and are using it to promote anti-India sentiment among Indian students. “This is not the first incidence of what I have faced there have been multiple similar incidents in the past be it in Oxford, be it in the same London School of Economics, or be it in other universities as well. So this systematic pattern highlights one very important thing these campuses are not open to accepting people who are vocal about their Hindu identity, Indian identity or any sort of identity or ideology which is incoherent with their well-established left-wing ideology,” Surana said.
He also said, “We have faculties who are consistent in their anti-India stance we have a multiple number of other faculties in other universities…Their anti-India hatred stems from their anti-Hindu hatred which as a political ideology has now manifested itself in these people’s different forms of urban naxalism, and they are using and they are brainwashing these groups of young Indian students and turning them into what we may call, urban nationals, Maoists terror sympathizers and that is why they have hijacked this entire academia.”
Surana, who gained recognition for recovering the Tricolour during a Khalistani extremist attack on the Indian High Commission in the UK in 2023, had previously reported experiencing hate and smear campaigns during student union elections at the London School of Economics. He had previously worked at the Bombay high court, was pursuing his LLM at the London School of Economics when the alleged incidents occurred.
