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| BJP kettle calling the Hurriyat pot black! | | When Chancellors and Pro Chancellors fail, Vice Chancellors can be no different | |
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 14: Separatist hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s visit to the Kashmir University (KU) campus, inspection of Iqbal Library and a fiery speech at a gathering of the students and officials has stirred a hornet’s nest in the BJP. MLA and President of the party, Ashok Khajuria did not waste a minute in demanding action against Vice Chancellor Prof Riyaz Punjabi. He has publicly complained that Chief Minister and Pro Chancellor Omar Abdullah had allowed KU to become ‘a den of anti-Indian propaganda’ by permitting radical separatists like Geelani to address students and officials.
Fact of the matter is that almost all Chancellors (Governors) and Pro Chancellors (Chief Ministers) have failed to discharge their responsibility of protecting the sanctity of the institutions of learning in the strife-torn Jammu & Kashmir in the last two decades. Understandably, the Vice Chancellors of KU and Jammu University (JU) have either played the politics of appeasement or completely surrendered before the actors whose politics has been patently parochial. Communal and regional divide between two faiths and provinces has been the corner stone of this politics that has been flourishing in the name of democracy and functional autonomy of the universities.
KU is better placed in the sense that its students do not have a recognized union since 1980s and its teachers have not directly practiced party politics on the campus. Services of then lecturer of nuclear physics, Dr Ayub Thakur were terminated after he escorted some leaders of the Iranian revolution in the Valley, organized a rally of students and staff on the campus 25 years ago. In 1990-92, Prof Abdul Ahad Wani of the Department of Law and Mohammad Shafi Khan of the Department of Persian associated themselves with JKLF and Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen respectively. While as Wani was gunned down, allegedly by guerrillas of a rival outfit, Khan has been continuously in jail.
Dukhtaraan-e-Millat chief Asiya Andrabi’s brother, Dr Anaytullah Andrabi, gave up his job at KU and settled in London over a decade ago. Students and members of faculty have been in the forefront of anti-India and pro-Azadi feelings---and occasionally demonstrations---but they have not formally joined parties the way quite a number of their counterparts in JU have done in the winter capital. Former VC Prof Jalees Tareen had observed at an official function that KU had the distinction of being the country’s one-odd university which had not slogans of political parties painted on its boundary walls.
Jalees paradoxically headed to an unceremonious exit as he asserted to enforce discipline by disturbing a powerful lobby of academics and students “indulging in objectionable political practice”.
Things phenomenally deteriorated during the tenures of his successors to the extent that one of the Professors of the Department of Law confronted former Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah, denigrated him as “an advocate of Indian forces” and asked him to “shut up and sit down” on occasion of the inauguration of KU’s Convocation Hall three years ago. This all happened not only in presence of the host and VC, Prof Abdul Wahid Qureishi, but also the chief guest and Chancellor, Governor S K Sinha.
Authorities at a lower level maintain that no action can be taken against the “pro-Azadi” faculty and students until one was initiated against the political practitioners in JU. It has been widely observed and pointed out in the last three days that Mr Khajuria has expressed his indignation over Mr Geelani’s Hazratbal visit and sought “restoration of KU’s sanctity” in just three months of the RSS conclave at JU. Nobody appears to be listening to RSS and BJP leaders’ argument that RSS had hired JU’s Zorawar Singh Auditorium against “cash payment” and that there was nothing “anti-national” at the gathering.
The bigger fact remains that a large number of political practitioners, including those of JU’s different faculties, participated in the congregation that was addressed by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, BJP President, Rajnath Singh, and many others from Sangh Parivar, whose politics and beliefs in terms of region and religion have been patently parochial in J&K.
State’s largest political parties, including National Conference, PDP and Congress, have stayed away and creditably made little attempts to tamper with the sanctity of universities in J&K. With the exception of Congress party’s NSUI, they have not even set up student wings at the institutions of learning. On the other hand, Prof Nirmal Singh of the Department of History and Naresh Padha have established and expanded BJP’s student wing, Akhil Bhartiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP) at JU over two decades ago. Prof Virender Gupta (Retd) of the Departments of Physics outsmarted even senior leaders of Prof Bhim Singh’s National Panthers Party while operating the politics of Jammu’s separate statehood from this platform for several years.
Emboldened by encouragement and appeasement from successive governments, Prof Nirmal Singh subsequently rose to become BJP’s state President and participated in four Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, including those of the current year. Having never been on leave, Prof Singh has been continuously working as a regular teacher with JU. He has been, of late, succeeded as state President of BJP by Mr Kahjuria but has been continuously and proudly working for the party.
Prof Singh found another BJP ideologue in Prof Hari Om of the Department of History who worked more for a party than his university until he made a volte face last year and shifted his loyalties to Congress. He is continuing as head of his department’s Maharaja Gulab Singh Chair in JU. After her not-so-active association with the party, Prof Nirmal Gupta of the Department of Economics joined BJP during Amarnath land row in 2008, months before she reached superannuation at JU. In this war of black kettles and pots, Prof Singh and Prof Hari Om have been taking objection to three of the KU professors enjoying the freedom of making India bashing at international conferences, including few organized by United Nations.
Expecting a government, that has failed to appoint a VC for Islamic University of Science & Technology, Awantipore, in the last 10 months and allowed a PDP promotee to continue in office for 15 months after expiry of his term, may be naïveté. It was only then Chief Minister Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah who used his powers as Pro Chancellor and appointed two commissions---one headed by former IGP J&K, L D Thakur, and another by eminent diplomat and one-time VC of Aligarh Muslim University, Badaruddin Tayyabji---respectively to inquire into a rift between Prof Abdul Ahad Wani and Prof Saifuddin Soz that had affected the academic atmosphere at KU and to propose plans for the university’s academic development.
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