Wanton destruction of a precious library at JNU

The national and global academic community at large, including JNU alumni, teachers and student bodies all across the globe connected with the university, are left aghast with the JNU administrative decision to shut down the library of Centre for Historical Studies (CHS). This is a huge blow to the intellect of India itself.

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. No one grudges promotion of Tamil studies. The Centre has been quite active in wooing Tamil sentiment of late for its political benefit. Everyone welcomes the foundation of a new Centre, but it cannot be at the cost of academic resources of existing centres.

In all, Rs 10 crore have been allocated to the university (out of which 5 crore 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 the demand is for those funds to be utilised adequately to create a separate infrastructure. The TN government did not grant these funds to establish a Tamil centre in lieu of the existing ones. No one in right mind would ever do that anyway.

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 the history centre applied for the assistance and the grant was given 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 you are readying this, 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. Academics have put out a worldwide appeal in this regard to save the library and the centre. Those who assail Nalanda’s burning in the history should not be doing this. Such mean and petty politics with a perceived notion that the centre is the backbone of left studies is horrendous. ‘’Entire Political Science’ and ‘Entire history’ is treasured here sir. Please stop this wanton destruction.