A group of scholars today accused some right-wing outfits of attempting to get chairs established at a noted American university in return for funds, and urged the institution to reject donations that seek to "promote a particular ideology".
The group includes well-known historian Irfan Habib, economist Prabhat Patnaik and theatre personality M K Raina. They alleged that the right-wing forces are trying to establish four chairs at the University of California, Irvine for the study of three Indian religions and modern Indian history.
As part of the agreement, the "donors" in the case have even made suggestions about who should be appointed to the chairs and have indicated that these chairs should "act in conformity" with their intentions, the scholar claimed.
The group said the terms show these donors' objective is "not the furtherance of dispassionate intellectual inquiry", but "promote particular ideological project".
"We urge the University of California, Irvine, not to become complicit in this project of the Hindutva forces and to reject these donations. Any university that seeks to promote modern, rational, critical thought in the humanities must not take money from such sources," the scholars said in a joint statement.
The statement was also signed by D N Jha, Vivan Sundaram, P K Shukla, Shireen Moosvi, Syera Habib, K M Shrimali, B P Sahu, Amar Farooqui, Sashi Kumar, Utsa Patnaik, Biswamoy Pati, C P Chandrasekhar, Geeta Kapur, Ram Rahman, Anil Bhatti, Zoya Hasan, Ishrat Alam, Suvira Jaiswal and Mushirul Hasan.
In the US, an endowed chair is considered as the highest academic honour that a university can offer to a faculty member and is treated as tribute to donors establishing it.
