As JNU faces heat for being 'anti-national', sociology centre gains 7 places in international ranking

Ranked 51st, the evaluation is based on quality of knowledge produced, interventions made, and students doing research or placed in universities in India and across the world

At a time when the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has been vilified endlessly for being hotbed of "anti-national" activities and a drain on the taxpayers' money, its sociology department has been ranked among top 100 across the world by a prestigious international ranking agency.

In its report released earlier this week, the UK-based QS World University Rankings has rated JNU's Centre for the Study of Social Systems (CSSS) 51st, up by 7 ranks compared with last year. The Centre was founded by Yogendra Singh in 1971 and has had several illustrious academicians as its faculty, including Professors T K Oommen, Dipankar Gupta, Nandu Ram and Anand Kumar. Incidentally, JNU students' union vice-president Shehla Rashid Shora did her Master of Arts from the Centre.

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"This ranking is based on various credentials - the quality of knowledge produced, interventions made, and students doing research or placed in universities in India and across the world. The current faculty also has a unique representational character, drawn from different social backgrounds," Professor Vivek Kumar, who specialises in sociology of marginalised sections, said. In February, the venue in Gwalior where Kumar was to deliver a speech on B R Ambedkar was attacked by Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) activists.

The CSSS has a 22-member faculty, which includes Susan Visvanathan, Avijit Pathak, Tanweer Fazal, Edward Agapito Rodrigues, Arshad Alam, Surinder Singh Jodhka, Angomcha Bimol Akoijam, Maitrayee Chaudhuri and Tiplut Nongbri. Each semester, the centre takes in 80 to 85 students. As many as two thirds of its 40 to 45 M Phil students go on to work on their doctoral dissertations.

The CSSS has done pioneering research in subaltern, Dalit and tribal studies, social movements and madarsa education. Oommen was the first academician to study social movements from a sociological point of view, with students heading to Naxalbari to study the Naxal movement and in later years to Jharkhand to make sense of the tribal assertion. "The Centre has done seminal work in these fields, although not always recognised within the academia," Kumar, who has been a pioneer in highlighting Ambedkar's role as a nation-builder beyond being a Dalit icon, said. The Centre also houses a Chair in the name of Dr B R Ambedkar sponsored by the Ministry of Social Justice, Government of India which supports and conducts activities relating to the intellectual contributions of Ambedkar and provides scholarships for research to students from Scheduled Castes and Schedule Tribes.

The ranking comes in the wake of a sustained campaign to vilify JNU since a protest on February 9, where some participants had allegedly raised "anti-national" slogans. Some of the video recordings of the protest that went viral on social media were later found to be doctored by the Delhi government probe. However, it led to the arrest of JNU students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar and attacks on journalists when the student leader was produced in a local court in Delhi. Two of Kumar's fellow students - Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya - are still in jail on charges of sedition. There have been demands by elements affiliated to the Sangh Parivar to shut down JNU. Many in responsible positions have even gone on to allege that the university is a waste of taxpayers' money as it doesn't produce "enough doctoral dissertations".

Last week, President Pranab Mukherjee had conferred JNU with the award for excellence in research and innovation. President Mukherjee had presented the award to the Molecular Parasitology Group of JNU for its pioneering work in the area of molecular parasitology, especially anti-malaria, leishmaniasis and amoebiasis.

The QS World University Rankings for 2015-16 which were released earlier this week take into account research quality, graduate employment, student-staff ratios, teaching standards and the number of international students while rating nearly 800 universities from all over the world. The biggest single factor in the QS rankings is academic reputation. This is calculated by surveying more than 60,000 academics around the world about their opinion on the merits of institutions other than their own.