JNUSU accuses School of Social Sciences dean of ridiculing assistant profs; he denies

The JNUSU on Friday accused JNU's Dean of School of Social Sciences of ridiculing and insulting a few assistant professors during an orientation session.

Pradipta Chaudhary, the dean, denied the allegations and said the JNUSU is spreading lies.

Chaudhary was taking orientation of assistant professors from different parts of the country at the Academic Staff College, the JNUSU said.

His lecture was on Caste, Class and Public Policy in India.

In the course of his lecture, he made a comment on caste, that was contested by one of the participants, who requested for an answer, the JNUSU said.

Out of anger, Chaudhary shouted at the person and told him to stay quiet or leave the room. "The dean went on and tried to push the person out of the class. Earlier in the same session, he had ridiculed the English of a Assistant Professor who asked another question," they said.

While these things were happening, all the participants opposed the Dean unitedly and demanded for an apology which he refused to give, they said.

He only continued to display his arrogance to which the participants protested. The director and course coordinator later on offered the participants an apology, they claimed.

A professor, who was part of the orientation programme and saw the incident said most of the classes were focussing on establishing the idea of a mythical golden past and claimed Chaudhary was not taking questions from participants and was inclined towards ridiculing them.

"When the professor presented the notion of Bharathavarsha invoking Kalidasa, a Delhi university Hindi professor who has profound grip on Kalidasa's works asked him a question, to which the professor responded like 'The 'badtameez' people like you should not be there in class, you don't even know English'," he said. This made the entire class erupt in protest.

However Chaudhary said he was discussing about Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi's book 'An Introduction to the Study of Indian History' and citing the book, he was telling professors that Ashoka was the first ruler to think about the welfare of his subjects.

"The JNUSU is telling lies. The professor said I was telling lies about ancient history without evidence," Chaudhary said.