New Delhi: A government-run university in Uttar Pradesh has barred a professor of an affiliate college in Meerut from all examination and evaluation work after Hindutva student activists objected to two questions set by her about the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The Akhil Bharatiya Vidharthi Parishad, the student wing of the RSS, protested against professor Seema Panwar, accusing her of being “afflicted with some anti-national ideology.”
After ABVP submitted a memorandum to the administration of the state-run Chaudhary Charan Singh University – a major educational institution in western UP – the varsity decided to debar Panwar from all examination work for life. “She has been debarred from setting papers for life,” Dhirendra Kumar Verma, the registrar of the university, told The Wire on April 5.
The controversy surrounded the private MA political science final-year examination on the paper ‘State Politics in India,’ conducted on April 2 in the colleges affiliated to the CCSU. The ABVP objected to two questions that were about its parent organisation, the RSS.
Question number 87 asked which of the following were considered anomic groups – those alienated from society. Among the options were “Dal Khalsa, Naxalite Groups, Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front and Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh.” Another question, numbered 93, was a match-the-following test. The question seemed to link the RSS to the rise of religious and caste identity politics. The other options linked the BSP to Dalit politics, Mandal Commission to OBC politics and Shiv Sena to politics of regional identity.
The ABVP said the questions had described the RSS as the reason for the emergence of religious and caste politics on the basis of the available options.
“Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has been an apolitical, social, cultural and dedicated organization in the national interest on the basis of equality and national unity for the last 100 years,” the ABVP said.
The outfit said that the professor’s act was “anti-national” and demanded strict legal action by suspending the examiner who set the question paper in the “interest of students and the nation.”
A copy of the memorandum, shared by the ABVP’s Meerut wing, said, “The way Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has been added in the above question, it seems that the examiner who set the question paper, being afflicted with some anti-national ideology, has worked to tarnish the image of the Sangh among the students in the society and create a wrong narrative, whereas doing so is not in the national interest.”
The ABVP also threatened to start a big protest if the university did not act against the examiner.
Registrar Verma said that a team of the university’s vice-chancellor concluded that the questions found “objectionable” by the students were “controversial.” Professor Panwar, who teaches at Meerut College, was asked for a clarification, following which she submitted a written apology.
“She expressed regret and said that it was not her intention. She said she set the questions as there was a chapter on it,” said Verma. The registrar said no further action was taken against her. “She apologised for the mistake. What else could she do,” said Verma.
