A group of 10 Jawaharlal Nehru University teachers has released a 400-page document prepared last year detailing past controversial events on the campus, suggesting that the flashpoint Afzal Guru event and its fallout could have been avoided had the varsity administration acted on it.
The teachers, who are opposing the teachers' association for their support to students accused of sedition in connection with the Afzal Guru event last month, claimed on that the report was shared with the varsity administration.
"It is a matter of serious concern that some JNU academics masquerading as liberals and feminists have engaged in nefarious and anti-national activities of maligning India publicly through their statements, lectures and extra-academic activties of their NGOs which receive liberal funding from hostile agencies," the report alleged.
"The problem is compounded by the fact that these very few academics brainwash and recruit the gullible and academically weak students into their fold in order to use them as cannon fodder in various rallies organised by them in and oustide the campus," it further claimed.
The report compiled by 10 professors of the university, contained alleged posters put up at the events, some dating back to 2010, titled "Remembering shaheed Maqbool and shaheed Afzal", "One noose three deaths: Afzal Guru, Justice, Knowledge", "Martyrs are not buried they are sown", "Azadi the only way ahead in Kashmir", "Contesting Indian nationalism: Voices of Azadi from Kashmir", among others.
The report also contains copies of few complaints made to the police and administration by different people in connection with events of previous years organised by JNU students and teachers on and outside campus.
The group of teachers, who are members of the JNUTA but has a different stand on the current row, demanded that a thorough probe be conducted in the incidents highlighted in the report so that the "root problems" can be "diagnosed'.
"A group of 10 teachers had compiled this report which was also shared with the administration an year back. Such activities have repetitively happened here if the administration had kept a check or acted in time this incident would not have happened," said Hari Ram Mishra, who teaches at Special Center for Sanskrit Studies, and is among those who compiled the report.
A senior university official when asked to comment on the report said, "Whether or not any report was recieved by the administration needs to be checked with records. Whenever any act violating norms has been brought to notice of university, action has been taken."
JNUTA General Secretary Vikramaditya Choudhary said, "we are not aware of any such report as far as the current controversy is concerned, we are not standing by any activities but by instituional autonomy".
While the JNUTA has been supporting the students agitation, a group of its members have been maintaining that it is teachers' task to "guide" the students and not "misguide" them. JNU has a total of 610 teachers.
The university is caught in a row over an event against the hanging of Parliament attack convict during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised. While the students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar is out on bail in a sedition case over the event, two students -- Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya are still in custody.
