SRINIGAR: A professor of Trinity College Dublin was prevented from giving a lecture by Indian police in Srinagar.

A report published by Hindustan Times states that Dr Mridu Rai was scheduled to deliver a lecture on 'Languages of Violence, Languages of Justice: the State and Insurgent Kashmir', but was banned from doing so.

Dr Rai said, “If people like us are not allowed...it is a tragedy. My lecture indeed was referring to the fact how the greater violence is to ensure that voices are not heard, which in fact happened today.”

The report also said that the authorities had enforced section 144, which restricts the gathering of more than four people at a place.

Dr Rai, an internationally-acclaimed author, researcher and scholar, was invited to an annual talk organised by the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, popularly known as CCS, to pay tribute to late Rughonath Vaishnavi, a well-known Kashmiri Pandit politician and an ardent supporter of Kashmir freedom movement.

The author of the book 'Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects', which had been quite controversial, termed the ban on her lecture as "appalling".

“If the government considers a talk by an academician like me as dangerous, then the state is in for a trouble,” she stated.

The CCS convener, Khurram Parvez, told mediapersons that the authorities threatened of action against the hotel and said, “The hotel management informed us, police threatened them that action will be taken against the hotel if we allowed the event to take place.”

Parvez said, under the law, there was no requirement for any permission for holding such an event at a private hotel. “This ban is consistent with the authorities' policy of disallowing academic, cultural and political activities in Kashmir,” he added.

The CCS convener also said that the annual talk was a tribute to one of the Kashmir's unsung heroes, Rughonath Vaishnavi, who had fought for the Kashmir cause and was jailed seven times for his commitment to the Kashmiris' right to self-determination.