Amit Bhaduri resigns as JNU emeritus prof

New Delhi, January 13

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Internationally renowned economist Amit Bhaduri today resigned as emeritus professor of JNU protesting against the way Vice Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar handled the JNU affairs and the January 5 violence.

In a letter to the VC, Bhaduri said: “It pains me, but I feel it would be immoral on my part without registering my protest to remain a silent observer in this larger, sinister scheme of throttling dissent which is unfolding now at the university. I am protesting in the only way which I find is open to me. I am giving up my emeritus professorship at JNU.”

Citing reports about JNU, Bhaduri said to the VC that he had learnt with alarm and now with increasing disgust how his handling of situations as the administrative and academic head of Jawaharlal Nehru University had led to its steady deterioration paving the way to its intellectual disintegration.

“I joined the university as a young professor in 1973; with some years’ gap in between, I left it in 2001. During my years at JNU, it passed through various phases of justified or unjustified student unrest; competent or incompetent handling of situations by the administration; and even temporary shutdown of teaching.

“What is different now is not only incompetence of handling of situations by the authorities, but a deliberate attempt to throttle the free, and lively atmosphere of debate and discussion for which JNU was known all over the country,” Bhaduri wrote in a letter he made public. — TNS