Indian student claims hate campaign in London, saying “they can’t digest India’s rise.”

This year’s London School of Economics student union elections saw Satyam Surana, an Indian student who gained notoriety for valiantly rescuing the Tricolour during an extremist attack on the Indian High Commission in the United Kingdom last year, come out against purported hate and smear campaigns.

Satyam has said that a very “well-planned” campaign was launched against him only hours before voting took place.

He claims that the goal of this operation was to link him to the BJP and call him a “fascist,” ostensibly to encourage a boycott of him and his election campaign.

The student, who was born in Pune, is now doing an LLM at the London School of Economics; his term ends later this year. He has also been a practitioner at the Bombay High Court for a few months.

Speaking about the whole series of events, he said that he submitted his name for general secretary when the LSE elections were announced in early March and February.

“We discovered that my posters were being pulled off and damaged between March 14 and 15. We filed a complaint with the relevant authorities. On the sixteenth, after we had changed our posters, we saw that several of them had been vandalised. ‘Anyone but Satyam’ was inscribed in crosses on my face. I was cancelled,” Satyam said to ANI.

“All of the LSE groups received communications on the afternoon of the 17th. Law school organisations, Indian groupings: “This Satyam Surana is a BJP supporter; he is a fascist, an Islamophobe, and a transphobe,” the messages said. He said, “The remarks were very divisive and seditious against the Indian government and the existing system.

Satyam said that the extreme forces had also taken screenshots of his social media postings under the pseudonym X, in which he had just expressed admiration for the BJP leadership, but that the messages had been exploited maliciously to brand him as a “fascist.”. He said that his manifesto only included the real problems that exist on campus and made no political statements. Despite the huge support he received at first, this hate campaign destroyed his prospects.

“I toured the whole campus with my entire team. We were communicating with departments to clarify our policies. I had a really polished, non-political manifesto that was quite nicely written. It discussed how the LSE has to improve, the need for a grievance redressal system, and the need for free meals on campus. People were saying they would vote for me and we were receiving support,” Satyam said.

But only I was arbitrarily selected out of the three individuals. My whole team was startled when these texts began to arrive, he said. “We were faced with a difficult decision, and our moral compass was completely destroyed.”

“Somewhere around early October, I was in the news because I picked up the national flag outside the Indian High Commission among the Khalistani protesters,” Satyam recalled the incident from the Indian High Commission last year. I was fortunate to be featured in the media. There was an interview with me on national television.” He alleged he was singled out for labelling Khalistanis ‘terrorists’ in one of his postings.

“Look, this is my nation. I will always stand up for my nation. What bearing does Indian politics have on the UK student union elections? My opinions are wholly mine, and I support my country,” Satyam said.