KANNUR: It seems that courting controversies has become a regular occurrence at Kannur University. Following the recent mix-up in an exam question paper, the university finds itself in troubled waters as a controversy over the inclusion of portions from the books of RSS ideologues MS Golwalkar and VD Savarkar has sparked protests from the part of MSF and KSU.
That the issue has surfaced the next day after Vice-Chancellor Professor Gopinath Raveendran had asked the students to protest against the saffronisation of higher education sector makes it all the more curious.
On Thursday, KSU and MSF organised protest programmes separately against the inclusion of political thoughts of RSS ideologues Golwalkar, Savarkar and Deen Dayal Upadhyaya in the syllabus of third semester MA Governance and Politics.
They alleged that the expert committee, which had prepared the syllabus,instead of the Board of Studies, had made the contributions of Mahatma Gandhi andJawaharlal Nehru irrelevant. The controversial parts are included in the paper ‘Indian Political Thought’ of the third semester of MA Governance and Politics. KSU district president Muhammad Shammas said the syllabus was prepared by a group of teachers. “As per our knowledge, no discussion had taken place in connection with the preparation of the syllabus,” he said.
The name of the course, which had been MA Political Science, was changed to MA Governance and Political Science from this year. Under Kannur University, the course is being taught in Brennen College, Thalassery.. Though the issue has become a controversy, Vice-Chancellor Raveendran was unavailable for comments.