NEW DELHI: Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan backed the Jawaharlal Nehru University vice-chancellor on Friday in the ongoing controversy surrounding the new course on counter-terrorism.
On August 17, the Academic Council of JNU had approved three ourses — ‘Counter terrorism, asymmetric conflicts and strategies for cooperation among major powers’; ‘India’s emerging world view in the twenty first century’ and ‘Significance of science and technology in international relations’. The Executive Council approved them on Thursday.
“JNU deserves appreciation, I extend my wishes to Vice Chancellor Jagadesh Kumar for starting such a course. When top global universities like MIT can have discourse and debate on terrorism and counter-terrorism, why cannot our varsities do the same,” Pradhan said at a meeting with vice chancellors. Earlier, Kumar had said there was a “needless controversy” about the course without going into its academic merits.
A fellow parliamentarian had written to him on the JNU course, Pradhan said without naming the MP.
“During my interaction with US security experts, I understood how internet and cyber world will be used increasingly for terrorism activities,” Pradhan said. “Why cannot our students, engineering students learn this. At the end of the day, these students will deal with similar problem and find solution to such issues after they have graduated?”
Incidentally, Rajya Sabha MP Binoy Viswam had written to Pradhan in which he had strong objected to “the prejudiced and inaccurate nature of material.” He had flagged the assertions about “jihadi terrorism” and Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and China calling the “historically inaccurate, deeply prejudiced and politically motivated.”
Similarly, a section of JNU teachers and students had objected to the course, alleging it states that “jihadi terrorism” is the only form of “fundamentalist-religious terrorism”. The course also asserts that communist regimes in the Soviet Union and China were state-sponsors of terrorism that influenced radical Islamic states, they had asserted.