The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the ideological student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has long maintained a trenchant antagonism toward the canonisation of Muslim figures within India’s pre-Independence annals, a posture observers describe as part of a broader endeavour to efface Islamic contributions from the national tapestry.
This campaign has now culminated in a recommendation to remove Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Muhammad Iqbal from the MA Political Science syllabus at Jammu University’s Department of Political Science.
The impetus for this controversy arose during a convocation of the faculty and departmental affairs committee, where officials indicated that the dispute was triggered by Jinnah’s inclusion within a module titled “Minorities and Nations”, a placement ABVP activists argued distorted historical interpretation by portraying the architect of Partition as a representative of Indian minorities.
The ensuing agitations compelled Vice-Chancellor Umesh Rai to establish a scrutinising committee under the aegis of Professor Naresh Padha, an institutional response critics characterised as an encroachment upon academic autonomy.
While Jinnah’s presence had earlier been confined to the analytical framework of the “Two-Nation Theory”, his migration to a broader conceptual chapter drew further objections, alongside demands for the removal of Sir Syed and Iqbal, figures frequently associated with intellectual currents preceding Partition.
Defending the curriculum’s integrity, Department Head Baljit Singh Mann maintained that scholarly engagement necessitates critical evaluation rather than ideological endorsement, even as the controversy revived memories of a 2018 dispute surrounding the characterisation of Bhagat Singh, underscoring the department’s recurring entanglement in politically charged academic debates.