Kamal Ghorui
JAMMU: A committee of experts constituted by the University of Jammu to review the syllabus of MA Political Science course has recommended the dropping of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Mohammad Iqbal from the chapter on ‘Modern Indian Political Thought-Minorities and the Nation’.J&K minister Jal for Shakti, Javed Ahmed Rana, and a BJP leader have strongly condemned the reported recommendation by the Department of Political Science at the university to drop poet Iqbal and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan from its academic curriculum.The university set up the committee after protests on Friday by ABVP over the inclusion of Jinnah in the revised postgraduate political science syllabus under the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020. According to officials, during a meeting of the faculty and departmental affairs committee held on Sunday (March 22), the participants unanimously resolved to recommend the removal of topics covering Jinnah, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Iqbal. The recommendation has been forwarded for consideration to the Board of Studies, which is scheduled to meet online on Tuesday to deliberate on the matter, said officials.ABVP Jammu and Kashmir secretary Sannak Shrivats said teaching about Jinnah and the others was unacceptable, as these were the same individuals who propounded the two-nation theory and were responsible for Partition. He also warned of intensifying protests if the syllabus was not revised.Minister Javed Rana, however, said in a post on X that the recommendation to remove Iqbal and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan from the curriculum, was “a laughable, anti-scholarly act of intellectual vandalism”, and “a deliberate attempt to manufacture ideological bigots rather than nurturing inquisitive citizens”. “JU must stop acting as a laboratory for historical revisionism,” he added.BJP leader Jahanzaib Sirwal, too, demanded reconsideration of the proposal, and wrote to Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Monday, seeking his intervention. “The proposed omission of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Iqbal from the syllabus risks diminishing an important part of India’s intellectual and educational inheritance, which must be preserved for future generations,” Sirwal said.
