Over 250 students and peace loving citizens gifted Red Roses to each other with the pledge of love across religion, caste, sex, class, gender and point of view to demand peace in India at the Kolkata press club recently. They all wore stickers saying ‘soldiers, students and all people from Kashmir to Kanyakumari are equally precious’. This meeting was organised in the wake of the killing of jawans in Kashmir and the terrorising of Kashmiri students in the county .The red rose campaign was launched to bring people together and spread communal harmony. It took inspiration from the white rose resistance movement launched by German students to oppose Nazism in the 1940’s.The students and citizens were from Jadavpur University Women’s Conclave, Presidency University, Loreto College, St Xavier’s College, Bethune, Calcutta University and other organizations like Ek Packet Umeed, Prantakatha, ApneAap, Swayam, Anjali, Gender Benders, Sangharsh, WINGS, Parichiti, All Bengal Imams Association, Know Your Neighbor, MaitreeNetwork and Bangladesh Bharat Pakistan People’s Forum.
SehrishHazarika and Rimjhim Sinha offered shelter to any student felling unsafe and appealed to students from all over India to take the movement forward by exchanging roses wherever they are with people who are different religion, ideology, caste to celebrate the differences and stay united with peace and love .
Students also spread the campaign by putting up peace message with the symbol of a rose and the hash tag #liveandlove on their social media accounts.
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