BJP national media panellist in Delhi University committee for new Partition Studies centre

NEW DELHI: A national media panellist and former youth wing vice president of the Bharatiya Janata Party is among the eight-member committee constituted by the Delhi University for setting up the Centre for Independence and Partition Studies. In fact, several panellists belong to the BJP and Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh or their affiliates, and have written from the Sangh parivar’s Hindu-right perspective on India’s early history, caste and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. They have also written along predictable lines on Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Congress.

The Delhi University's Academic Council, on Friday, passed a resolution to set up a Centre for Independence and Partition studies. In the concept note, it said that the centre will facilitate research on the "high voltage politics" following India's partition and how the then central leadership failed to contain the "germs of separatism". The university had set up an eight-member committee to set up the centre.

The committee is headed by Prakash Singh,director of South Campus, Delhi University, and includes the following members: Jyoti Trehan Sharma, professor at the department of political science, IPCW; Amrit Kaur Basra and Vipul Singh, professors at the department of history; Bhuwan jha, professor at the department of history, Satyawati College; Ravi Prakash Tekchandani, professor at the department of modern Indian languages and literary studies; AK Prakash, joint registrar, South Campus; and Swadesh Singh, professor in the political science department, Satyawati College.

Swadesh Singh is also a national media panellist for BJP and the former youth wing vice-president of the party.

BJP Media Panellist: ‘Distorted face of history’

Singh, in an article for the India Foundation Journal in 2018, had written that “we currently study a distorted face of history” wherein “we are taught that Aryans came from Iran and ruled India first”.

In the same article, titled ‘In Quest of an ‘Indian Right’’, he wrote that these theories were introduced to prove civilisational superiority of the West and that “two hymns of Manu Smriti and Ram Charit Manas” were used to “prove that caste and woman subjugation has been an integral part of Indian society and philosophy”.

He also said that with the formation of the Modi government “an ecosystem will emerge that will assist the creation of a new narrative to understand the civilisational march of India”.

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Following the abrogation of Article 370, which granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir, Singh wrote that “BJP's revoking Article 370 reconnects India to Kashmir, home of Shaivism and our ancient traditions”. In the article, written in DailyO, he said that “there is a lobby that has advocated a brand of pacifism when it comes to Jammu and Kashmir” and that it is this approach “that has led to the quagmire which the region finds itself in today”.

In another article, Singh wrote that Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure as the sixth prime minister of India is “known for its appeasement politics” and that “the ripples of it are felt even three decades later”. He also accused Rajiv Gandhi of diluting Supreme Court judgments to “please fundamental mullahs”

In an article titled Leftists at JNU pose the gravest danger to India, Singh wrote that some organisations in JNU “get full support from secessionist forces from both inside and outside India”. He also wrote an article on the 25 years of Babri Masjid demolition where he said that according to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) “Ram Temple in Ayodhya symbolises emotional space for Hindus, not anti-Muslim sentiment”.

Savarkar expert

The committee also includes Jyoti Trehan Sharma, professor at the department of political science, Indraprastha College For Women (IPCW). Sharma has written books titled Veer Savarkar: Thought And Action Of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar; Tilak And Gandhi: Perspectives On Religion And Politics; Secularism And Ayodhya Politics In India.

They have also written essays titled “Savarkarism”, “Veer Savarkar and His Times”, for Political Thinkers of Modern India. He also contributed to the Politics In India: Ancient India, Politics Of Change, Modern India with essays on Savarkar, Tilak And Gandhi.

In the essay titled Savarkarism, Sharma wrote that “Savarkar strove to avert the greatest betrayal in human history”, the partition of India and Pakistan, “but was thwarted by levity and betrayal of his contemporaries”. In the same essay, they wrote that “Congress attitude is confined to Muslim appeasement alone” and that “Savarker never hated anyone for being Muslim”.

Sharma also wrote that “those who accuse Savarkar of being narrow-minded forget that the Khilafat Movement Muslim politics remained anti-Hindu and that the British always supported it”.

‘Vedic research methodology’ for Indian thought

Prakash Singh,director of South Campus, and professor at the department of political science, Delhi University, who heads the committee has also written extensively on nationalism. Prakash Singh, who, teachers say, is a part of the National Democratic Teachers' Front, which is affiliated to RSS, has written on the nationalist perspectives of Ambedkar, Pandit Deendayal, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and given lectures on vedic research methodology to study Indian political thought.

Bhuwan Jha, department of history, Satyawati College, specialises in the growth of the Hindu Mahasabha, Arya Samaj and other fraternal organisations; socio-religious reform movements; shuddhi and sangathan movements; development of ideas linked to the formation of Hindu identity during the modern period; formation and interlinkages of various political groups during the pre-Independence period.

Amrit Kaur Basra, professor at the department of history, Delhi University, specialises in history of modern India, communalism and communal riots in colonial Punjab and independent India, historiography, gender studies, sikhism, Processes of identity formations in colonial Punjab.

Ravi Prakash Tekchandani, professor at department of modern Indian languages and literary studies; Vipul Singh, associate professor, department of history; and AK Prakash, joint registrar, South Campus, are the other committee members.