No Renaming: Bhopal’s Barkatullah University to Remain Barkatullah University

Newspaper reports cite university officials as saying that renaming was mainly the V-C’s project. He resigned last week.

The Wire Staff

Newspaper reports cite university officials as saying that renaming was mainly the V-C’s project. He resigned last week.

no renaming bhopal’s barkatullah university to remain barkatullah university

Barkatullah University in Bhopal. Photo: www.bubhopal.ac.in

New Delhi: Bhopal’s famous Barkatullah university will continue to be known as Barkatullah University, as before. A renaming proposal has been put into “cold storage” say media reports.

On June 3, the Executive Council of Barkatullah University, had moved a proposal for renaming the university 'Vagdevi Bhojpal (not Bhopal) University,' causing a storm.

Vagdevi is another name for the Hindu deity Saraswati and Bhojpal, the supposedly ‘ancient name’ of Bhopal, is derived from the ancient Parmar dynasty, the Vice-Chancellor of the university, Suresh Kumar Jain, told The Hindu.

Maulvi Barkatullah (July 7, 1854-September 27, 1927)

But opposition parties and others, including faculty and students who opposed this spoke in favour of establishing new institutes in the name of Vagdevi and Raja Bhoj, and this one being left alone as it honours a respected modern Indian freedom fighter and scholar.

Sustained pressure from students and faculty, followed by the resignation of V-C Jain last week has resulted in the abandonment of the proposal. The registrar, Samar Bahadur Singh told The Times of India, that the renaming drive was driven by the V-C and with his departure, has been shelved. He said, “Authorities in the higher education department were not in favour of the name change.” The newspaper quotes an executive council member saying that the focus is now “on stabilising administrative affairs.”

The 400-acre university was established in 1970 and originally named Bhopal University. It was later named after Mohamed Barkatullah Bhopali, a freedom fighter and scholar, in 1988. Hailing from Bhopal, he served as the prime minister of India’s first provisional government in exile. This government was formed in Afghanistan on December 1, 1915, with Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh as president. He was with the Ghadar movement and a scholar, journalist and polymath of repute. He was fluent in several languages, including Arabic, Persian, English and Japanese.

He taught in London, Liverpool and Tokyo, edited the Ghadar Party newspaper and travelled across the United States, Japan, Germany, Turkey, Afghanistan, Soviet Russia, France and Italy as part of his revolutionary activities to set India free.

The proposal, as per reports in the media, played down his scholarship and stated that It stated that, compared to Raja Bhoj, “No significant contribution to this region by Barkatullah Bhopali is evident, other than the fact that he was a resident of Bhopal.”

This article went live on June twenty-fifth, two thousand twenty six, at fifty-five minutes past one in the afternoon.

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