NB: The temptation of our day is to accept the intolerable, for fear of still worse to come: Hermann Rauschning, The Revolution of Nihilism (1939). DS

This is an appeal to the national and global academic community at large, including JNU alumni as well as teachers’ associations, student bodies and individual professors and students across the world. This is also an appeal to all relevant public officials.

In a huge blow to the student and research community, the administration of Jawaharlal Nehru University, India has decided to shut down the library of Centre for Historical Studies (CHS). As such, the Centre is a world-class department for the study of Indian history, and the library is an indispensable, lifelong resource for scholars.

The library is being vacated and replaced by a new Special Centre for Tamil Studies. We welcome the foundation of a new Centre, but it cannot be at the cost of academic resources of existing centres.

Rs 10 crore (100 million) have been allocated to the university (out of which 5 Crores had been handed over in December 2022) by the Government of Tamil Nadu for the establishment and construction of the new Tamil Studies centre. It is needless to state that we demand that those funds be utilised adequately to create a separate infrastructure for the new centre as was expected and implied in the Tamil Nadu Govt grant.

Facilities built for a particular purpose with public funds cannot at will be transferred for other purposes. It was in the 1980s that the UGC scheme for awarding special funds to department of excellence, which was called Departmental Special Assistance Programme (DSA), was mooted and CHS applied for the assistance and we were given the grant after very rigorous process of scrutiny and evaluation where the publications of the faculty as well as the research which was done by the students as well as the teaching played a very big role. The grant was utilised to build and expand the library as no good institution can survive without a library.

The library houses tens of thousands of books and rare documents, many of which are out of print or unavailable elsewhere.  Many of these have been donated or sourced from the private collections of legendary scholars such as Bernard Cohn, Satish Chandra, and DD Kosambi. Liquidation of archived private collections would be a loss in the eyes of any institute. The library collections of CHS are being reallocated and dispersed and with the risk of imminent disposal of the rest.

Even while we are readying this statement, hundreds of books are being packed and shifted to EXIM Bank library, which barely has a few dozen shelves. There is also the issue of seating space and access for the students from the department and visiting researchers. This amounts to destruction of one of the best department libraries in all of India for history, and a lifelong resource for students, alumni and visiting scholars. The decision was made without any consultation and knowledge of the CHS student community.

We appeal to the JNU Teachers’ Association, to all JNU faculty members and teachers’ bodies across the world to intervene to help prevent the destruction of the CHS library. 

We appeal to the global scholarly community, especially to History and South Asian Studies departments in all universities. 

We appeal to the public at large. We urge you to help prevent this injustice by endorsing this statement and being a signatory.

This statement with its list of signatories will be circulated to relevant university and public officials and the media after a certain amount of signatures are collected in order to create public pressure.

We also urge you to:

·   Ask the press to report on this issue and forward this statement to them.

·  Ask the Tamil Nadu govt. to demand accountability from the VC, JNU.

·  Spread the word through social media.

·  Contact the relevant public officials/their offices to register your protest/concern by email or phone, given below

·  Ask History, South Asian Studies and other social science departments in your universities to issue statements protesting the closure of the CHS Library.

Signed,

Student Community, Centre for Historical Studies

Jawaharlal Nehru University

https://forms.gle/PBb2maNjCqeCKisA7

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To contact relevant public officials:

1. Prof. Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit

Vice Chancellor, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Tel : 91-11-26704001, 91-11-26741500(O), Fax: 91-11-26742580

Email: vc@mail.jnu.ac.in

2. Chief Minister’s Office, Govt of Tamil Nadu

Email: cmo[at]tn[dot]gov[dot]in

Phone: 044 25672345 , 044-25665566

3. Heeraman Tiwari

Chairperson, Centre for Historical Studies

Email: htiwari@mail.jnu.ac.in, heeraman98@gmail.com

011-26704456, 26704479

4. Shri Dharmendra Pradhan

Hon’ble Education Minister, Govt of India

+91-11-23782698/23782387

+91-11-23382365 (FAX)

E-mail: minister[dot]sm[at]gov[dot]in