Wardha VC accused of being anti-dalit

NEW DELHI: When police officer and Hindi writer VN Rai joined as vice-chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya at Wardha, there were great expectations from him. But now serious allegations have been made against him for being anti-Dalit, which he denies.

Dalit teachers and students of the university have called Rai a “secular-castesist”.

The latest relates to Rai’s action against Lela Karunyakara, director of the Balasahaeb Ambedkar Centre for Dalit and Tribal Studies, for participating in a candle light procession in the university on Ambedkar’s Mahaparinirvan Day. Rai sought an explanation from him on the ground that the processionists had raised “provocative casteist slogans”. Rai had maintained that such an act endangered peace and harmony in the campus.

In his detailed reply, Karunyakara, while narrating the age-old discrimination against Dalits, even by secularists, gave the context of Dalit assertion and explained that the slogans raised were not casteist but against casteism. He maintained that there was nothing wrong in what he did. Not satisfied with the reply, Rai in an order on December 31 charged Karunyakara with turning a fact-finding exercise into an “unwarranted platform of expression of your ill-conceived prejudices and egoist frustrations”.

Justifying his decision, Rai told TOI, “Senior faculty members told me that very abusive slogans were being used in the procession.”

(Source : Times of India,4 January 2010)