BHU Question Papers to Sanghi Appointments, Seat Cuts and Censorship Across Campuses

BHU Question Papers to Sanghi Appointments, Seat Cuts and Censorship Across Campuses:

Sanghi VCs and ‘Bhakt’ Teachers Are Out to Destroy Serious Scholarship and Turn Central Universities a Matter of Ridicule!

Recently, the M.A, Political Science exam paper of BHU included the questions:

• Write an essay on the nature of GST in Kautilya’s Arthashastra.
• Manu is the first Indian thinker of globalization. Discuss.

Saffron Sanskari Shiksha: Question Paper – and Answers – Dictated In Advance!

According to students, their teacher “dictated the answers” to the questions beforehand, telling them in advance that these questions would be asked in the exam! Quite apart from the ridiculousness of the questions, can any serious exam paper have questions and answers dictated by the teacher in advance! Note: While students at BHU taught by the paper-setter had the privilege to these questions in advance, students of the affiliated colleges affiliated to BHU simply received a nasty surprise on the day of the exam! So much for saffron “sanskars”!

Questions to Test Modi ‘Bhakti’ – Not Political Science

According to BHU students, last year they were also taught the “benefits of demonetization” and how the “characters in Ramayana had used surgical strikes to defeat enemies” – but were not tested on these because they objected. The BHU students lament these “ridiculous and unpalatable questions” and rightly point out that “We are being taught these fictitious concepts just to validate the policies of the present government.”

By the way, Modi, the guru of these ‘Bhakt’ teachers, has a unique degree called- hold your breath- M.A. in “Entire Political Science” – which probably no other Political Science post-graduate in the country has. One wonders is such questions are the stuff of Modi’s “Entire Political Science” degree?!

Degrading Academic Rigour and Promoting Substandard Scholarships

The BJP and RSS claim to have great ‘respect’ for ancient India, but actually such questions are an affront to the serious scholarship and study that the writings of ancient India demand. Instead of a serious analysis of the Arthashastra, it is being reduced to an instrument to validate the Modi government policy of GST!

The Manusmriti is a text that lays down the punishments for violations of the Brahminical code of conduct. Instead of studying the social milieu that gave birth to the Manusmriti and Brahminical attempts to control and subjugate oppressed castes and women, this BHU question paper is seeking to glorify the “Manu” as a “great thinker.” We may recall here that Modi, in an on Golwalkar, had gone to the extent of calling none other than Ambedkar – the man who burnt the Manusmriti in protest – the “modern day Manu”!

So let there be no mistake: Modi or his ‘bhakts’ rewarded with appointments in Universities as faculty or as VCs, seek to mainstream Manuvad in this manner.

In BHU, a teacher was sacked for showing a documentary film, students were suspended for demanding 24/7 library facilities, women students were brutally lathicharged protesting against rampant incidents of sexual harassments, the RSS-appointee VC (now on leave) openly indulged in hate-speech and misogynist propaganda – and these exam paper questions expose the shocking level to which education has been reduced.

JNU’s Fate? JNU is soon to meet BHU’s fate, given the way in which the JNU VC is packing Selection Committees with his own politically handpicked people rather than a panel of subject experts decided by the concerned departments and the Academic Council. As loyalty to RSS rather than expertise in the subject guides faculty appointment, we can fully expect JNU class rooms and question papers also to go the BHU way.

For the first time in 25 years, a public meeting on the occasion of the Babri Masjid demolition and Babasaheb’s Mahaprinibban Day was banned by the JNU Administration this week! The JNU Administration, which censored this meeting of JNUSU, has made it a routine for itself to make the University a platform for saffron political grandstanding by inviting Ministers to demand Army tanks on campus and saffron ‘gurus’ like Sri Sri- the mediator in the Babri Masjid-Ramjanambhoomi issue – to deliver ‘lectures’!

In the ‘Demolish JNU Mission’ by the Sanghi VC: every institution of decision making is being trampled upon; research seats in Sciences and Humanities are being slashed; Engineering and Management courses are being started minus infrastructure; a School of Sanskrit Studies is being created while there is already a School of Indian Languages in existence; integrated BA-MA courses are being pushed out through demands of high CGPA; and integrated MPhil-PhD is being delinked.

But BHU and JNU students – and students all over India – will not allow our education to be destroyed in this manner! We shall fight, we shall win!