In a surprise move, Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti Urdu Arabi Farsi University at Lucknow has conferred honorary D Litt on RSS leader Indresh Kumar, who was an accused in a 2007 bomb blast incident at the Khawaja Moinuddin Chisti Dargah in Ajmer, and an accused in the murder of another Hindutva worker Sunil Joshi.
Protesting against the move, top social and political activist Sandeep Pandey, who is vice president of the Social Party (India), and Mohammad Shoaib, advocate, who is the party’s president, said, “The vice chancellor of this university, Mahrukh Mirza, whose own educational qualifications are alleged to be suspect, should be asked what contribution Indresh Kumar has made to the society to deserve a D Litt?”
Pointing out that Kumar was served the honorary degree on at the university convocation held today ( November 21, 2019), Pandey and Shoaib said in a statement, “Ironically Indresh Kumar serves as margdarshak of Muslim Rashtriya Manch (MRM), associated with RSS, and Mahrukh Mirza is associated with MRM”.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) in 2017 filed a closure report in the 2007 Ajmer Dargah blast case, declaring that it did not have "enough evidence" of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Indresh Kumar’s involvement in the terrorist bombing of the Ajmer shrine that killed three persons and injured over a dozen.
The statement says, the move comes amidst the BJP government at the Centre “refusing to enter into a dialogue for the past 25 days with the agitating students demanding rollback of fee hike at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi”, and students “subscribing to sectarian Hindutva ideology are protesting against the appointment of Dr Firoz Khan in the Department of Sanskrit Vidya Dharm Vigyan of Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, merely because he is a Muslim.”
The statement recalls Madan Mohan Malviya, BHU founder, as saying, “This country doesn't belong to Hindus alone. It belongs to Muslims, Christians and Parsis too. It will become strong and developed only when there is communal harmony among different communities living here.”. It adds, “Malviya is known to have brought scholars of different ideological backgrounds from around the world to teach at BHU. The protestors need to ask whether the founder of the university would have agreed with their logic.”
The statement says, the move comes amidst the BJP government at the Centre “refusing to enter into a dialogue for the past 25 days with the agitating students demanding rollback of fee hike at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi”, and students “subscribing to sectarian Hindutva ideology are protesting against the appointment of Dr Firoz Khan in the Department of Sanskrit Vidya Dharm Vigyan of Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, merely because he is a Muslim.”
The statement recalls Madan Mohan Malviya, BHU founder, as saying, “This country doesn't belong to Hindus alone. It belongs to Muslims, Christians and Parsis too. It will become strong and developed only when there is communal harmony among different communities living here.”. It adds, “Malviya is known to have brought scholars of different ideological backgrounds from around the world to teach at BHU. The protestors need to ask whether the founder of the university would have agreed with their logic.”
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