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.

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”.

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”.