NEW DELHI: Eminent historian Romila Thapar has said Jawaharlal Nehru University and other centres of social sciences have suffered in the last 10 years, and those who were involved in setting them up are appalled by the “decimation” of these institutions.
Thapar, who was speaking at the third Kapila Vatsyayan Memorial Lecture at the India International Centre (IIC) here on Tuesday evening, said maintaining academic standards at JNU in the last decade has been “extremely problematic”. She chose to speak on “The Present Colonises our Past: the Future Forsaken?’’ and her nearly one-hour lecture was listened to in rapt attention by a packed audience, including academics, former diplomats and students.
“Some of us who were involved in establishing JNU in the 1970s have been appalled by the decimation that it has undergone in the last 10 years. This is not confined to JNU alone,” Prof. Thapar said.
She said they had succeeded in establishing a university that was highly respected at home and in the world outside.
“...but in the last decade, maintaining academic standards has been made extremely, to put it politely, problematic. This was done in various ways, through appointing some substandard faculty, non-professionals dictating the curriculum and syllabi, attempts to rescind the earlier appointed professor emeritus, curtailing freedom to research and teach what academics regard as meaningful,” the noted historian said.
Citing the January 2020 incident at the university, in which an armed mob stormed the campus, resulting in injuries to students and faculty, the 93-year-old said that the situation “went beyond academic mechanism”.