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After allegations of “Love Jihad”, “Land Jihad”, even “UPSC Jihad”, communal hate has been freshly repackaged into wild allegations of “Marks Jihad”. Recently, after students from Kerala ended up getting perfect scores, Rakesh Kumar Pandey, an associate professor in the Physics department of Kirori Mal College of the Delhi University said that “the invasion of Kerala Board students with perfect 100 percent marks” is a case of “Marks Jihad”.
Following the trend of right-wing supporters calling anything associated with Muslims as a form of “Jihad”, Asst. Prof. Pandey, who holds two master’s degrees, including an M Tech from IIT, Delhi, posted that “Love planned to help spread your religion is ‘Love Jihad’” and that “Marks distributed to help spread your ideology is ‘Marks Jihad'”.
Love planned to help spread your religion is ‘Love Jihad’ and Marks distributed to help spread your ideology is “Marks Jihad”. Make no mistakes, students with perfect 100% marks from Kerala Board is occupying admission seats of premier colleges of DU. @OpIndia_com
— rakesh kumar pandey (@rakesh__pandey) October 7, 2021
According to him, this is why many students hailing from Kerala have scored 100 percent marks, which was also the cut off in many leading colleges of Delhi University. Pandey, tagged the right-wing blog site OpIndia in his tweet, perhaps to seek attention for a column on the subject. He is also a former president of the National Democratic Teachers Front.
Recently the Delhi University (DU) had put on hold 100 admissions of students of the Kerala board, and cleared them once the matter was cleared. According to a report in NDTV, the confusion over marksheets had arisen as “a large number of students from the Kerala board applying to DU colleges, that too a majority of them being perfect scorers.” The issue seemed to have bothered Pandey who reportedly said students from Kerala are not comfortable either in Hindi or in English. Last year he had written a blog titled “Warning trends observed in DU admissions: Measures needed to foil any design to convert it into another Leftist hub”.
He was called out by Shahi Tharoor (MP) who said, “The use of “jihad” as a synonym for any trend you don’t like is exceeding all limits: now a DU teacher has got attention by absurdly decrying #MarksJihad!”
2/2 …is ridiculous. If “Jihad” means a struggle (with yourself above all), the Kerala students scoring 100% have struggled against the odds to get to DU. Interview them first if you wish before letting them in, but don’t demonise their marks! This anti-Kerala bias must end now!
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) October 7, 2021
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