In a surprise move, Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti Urdu Arabi Farsi University at Lucknow has decided to confer honorary D Litt on RSS leader Indresh Kumar, who was an accused in a 2007 bomb blast incident at the Khawaja Moinuddin Chisti Dargah in Ajmer, and an accused in the murder of another Hindutva worker Sunil Joshi.
Protesting against the move, top social and political activist Sandeep Pandey, who is vice president of the Social Party (India), and Mohammad Shoaib, advocate, who is the party’s president, said, “The vice chancellor of this university, Mahrukh Mirza, whose own educational qualifications are alleged to be suspect, should be asked what contribution Indresh Kumar has made to the society to deserve a D Litt?”
Pointing out that Kumar would be served the honorary degree on at the university convocation to be held today ( November 21, 2019), Pandey and Shoaib said in a statement, “Ironically Indresh Kumar serves as margdarshak of Muslim Rashtriya Manch (MRM), associated with RSS, and Mahrukh Mirza is associated with MRM”.
The statement recalls Madan Mohan Malviya, BHU founder, as saying, “This country doesn’t belong to Hindus alone. It belongs to Muslims, Christians and Parsis too. It will become strong and developed only when there is communal harmony among different communities living here.”. It adds, “Malviya is known to have brought scholars of different ideological backgrounds from around the world to teach at BHU. The protestors need to ask whether the founder of the university would have agreed with their logic.”