When ‘hub of anti-nationals’ wins Best University award, media looks the other way

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Ghazanfar Abbas, IndiaTomorrow.net,
New Delhi, March 07: The Jawaharlal Nehru University, which has been in the national news for last one year for wrong reasons, has won ‘Best University’ award. “JNU has been adjudged the best university for its unrelenting pursuit of academic excellence,” said President of India Pranab Mukherjee while presenting the award to JNU at an event at the Rashtrapati Bhawan here on Monday. However, the news about the award to JNU is conspicuously missing from the front pages of national dailies. And students have noticed it.

“JNU has shown outstanding performance in all key parameters like quality of students and faculty, training of faculty, citations, publications, research projects, foreign collaborations, seminars and innovation exhibitions,” said the President and urged the university to continue the good work.

For the whole one year – since Feb 2016 till date – JNU has been hitting national headlines only for unfortunate incidents – from alleged anti-national slogans to mysterious disappearance of Najeeb Ahmed to UGC notification for admissions. Following the Feb incident, some students including then Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar and research scholar Umar Khalid were arrested and slapped with sedition charges. But they were released on bail and the case is still pending in the court. A section of politicians, mainly from the ruling BJP, and a section of media described JNU as a ‘hub of anti-nationals”. Many demanded that it should be shut down as students are not doing any research work, they are more involved in politics than study and are thus wasting taxpayers’ money.

But now that JNU, leaving about 50 central universities behind, has won the prestigious ‘Best University’ award for “its unrelenting pursuit of academic excellence”, the critics will have to review their stand.

“For last one year, the way media and BJP have been projecting JNU, it has tarnished the image of the university. Even yesterday, when JNU received Best University award, HRD Minister Prakash Javdekar said that this award was not for those who raise slogans to break India. Again and again they (RSS-BJP) try to propagate that the politics of JNU is different from its academics while JNU has had a composite culture of politics and academics,” said Mohit K Pandey, President, JNUSU.

He is sad that anti-JNU propaganda was given space on front page, but the news about the JNU award is missing from there.

“Whatever RSS or BJP wants to propagate is published on front pages in newspapers or gets good space in TV media. Whenever there is something sensational, JNU gets much space but the news like JNU winning the ‘Best University’ award is ignored,” Pandey lamented.

Satarupa Chakraborty, general secretary, JNUSU, is also critical of media for ignoring the award news.

“Since last year media and government both have tried to create debate around ‘nationalist’ and ‘anti-national’ just to defame the university and to destroy the political and academic culture of the university. They never cared about JNU’s academic, education excellence and research. But the teachers who teach at JNU and the students who study here understand the culture of JNU,” said Chakraborty adding that the same media would not highlight the award to JNU.

“Media has played very dubious role in projecting JNU as a hub of anti-national activities. Now if they highlight this news that JNU has got ‘Best University’ award, then whatever they have said earlier about JNU will be null and void.

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