Hyderabad, July 10 -- Students and faculty of the Suravaram Pratapa Reddy Telugu University in Nampally have been protesting for 10 days now against the Telangana government's plans to allot the entire ground floor of the university's four-decades-old building to the Adi Dhwani Trust, which seeks to set up a tribal art museum and research centre there. The agitation entered its 10th day on Friday, July 10.

At the heart of the dispute is a simple, uncomfortable fact. As many as 650 students currently attend classes on that very ground floor. The protesters say displacing them to make room for a private trust's museum, however worthy its cultural aims, amounts to the state shrinking a public university to serve private ends.

It is not the...