BJP leaders back besieged BHU prof

Tribune News Service

Lucknow, November 21

Amid uproar by a section of Banaras Hindu University (BHU) students over the appointment of a Muslim Sanskrit teacher, some BJP leaders have come out in defence of besieged assistant professor Dr Firoz Khan.

Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma, a former professor of economics at Lucknow University, criticised the protesting students, saying subjects and teachers did not have any religion.

The Minister of Higher Education said if merit had been compromised in the selection process, students had every right to question such appointments. “But they had no right to raise questions about the religion of the teacher,” he asserted.

Recalling his own student days, Sharma said he had learnt Sanskrit from a teacher named Waliullaah Khan at Lucknow University’s Jubilee Inter College and the religion of the teacher was never an issue.

BJP MP and actor Paresh Rawal tweeted: “Stunned by the protest against professor Firoz Khan! What language has to do with religion? Irony is professor Firoz has done his masters and PhD in Sanskrit! For Heaven’s sake stop this goddamn idiocy (sic)!”

“By same logic, great singer late Shri Mohammad Rafi ji should not have sung any bhajans and Naushad saab should not have composed it (sic),” he noted.

Retired Justice Giridhar Malviya, grandson of BHU founder Madan Mohan Malviya, who is now the Chancellor of the central university, described the students’ stand on the appointment of Professor Firoz Khan as wrong.

Speaking to a news channel, he said: “Mahamana (MM Malviya) had a broad thinking. Had he been alive, he would have certainly backed the appointment.”

Meanwhile, the Faculty of Sanskrit’s Vidya Dharma Vijnan on Thursday opened after 14 days of protest, days after Prof Khan left the BHU campus for his hometown of Jaipur, citing security concerns.

Bq

‘Can’t target him over religion’

If merit had been compromised in the selection process, students had every right to question such appointments. But they have no right to raise questions about the religion of the teacher”

— Dinesh Sharma, UP Dy CM