DYAL SINGH COLLEGE HEAD JUSTIFIES NEW NAME
NEW DELHI : Sticking to the “decision” to prefix the words ‘Vande Mataram’ to name of Dyal Singh College, its governing body chairman Amitabh Sinha on Thursday said the administration had done no wrong. He accused the SAD of politicising the issue in the name of minority rights, and said Union minister Prakash Javadekar, who had on Wednesday said the name won’t be tweaked, “should have avoided such words”. “We did what was in the interest of the college. The new name was necessary legally and morally... I am pained to be accused of hurting the sentiments of the Sikh community,” Sinha said.
Delhi University is autonomous to take any decision... What we did was right. The name of the college will be Dyal Singh, we are only prefixing ‘Vande Mataram’. AMITABH SINHA, GB chairman
NEW DELHI: Sticking to the “decision” to prefix the words ‘Vande Mataram’ to name of Dyal Singh College, its governing body chairman Amitabh Sinha on Thursday said the administration had done no wrong. He accused the Shiromani Akali Dal of politicising the issue in the name of minority rights, and said Union minister Prakash Javadekar, who had on Wednesday said the name won’t be tweaked, “should have avoided such words”.
“We did what was in the interest of the college. The new name was necessary legally and morally... I am pained and anguished to be accused of hurting the sentiments of the Sikh community,” Sinha said. ‘Vande Mataram’, Sanskrit for ‘bow to the motherland’, is the title of India’s national song; it is seen by some sections as assertion of the Hindutva concept of nationhood particularly by the country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The college is named after Dyal Singh Majithia, founder of The Tribune Trust (1881) and Punjab National Bank (1894). The philanthropist had set up Dyal Singh Trust, which in 1910 established Dyal Singh College originally in Lahore. It is now affiliated to Delhi University. The row over renaming had erupted some months ago but died down after the Union government assured of keeping the original name. It resurfaced after it came to light that the college had used the name ‘Vande Mataram Dyal Singh College’ on banners put up during its annual day on April 25.
“A lobby of the Dyal Singh College staff members had roped in the Shiromani Akali Dal to cry foul over the ‘hurt Sikh sentiments’ when they failed to think of no other way to halt the educational reforms,” Sinha said here at a press conference.
After Union minister and SAD leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, requesting that Sinha be sacked for changing the college’s name, human resource development (HRD) minister Javadekar had stressed that the college name will not be changed: “There should not be any question about it.”
Sinha, responding to the rap he received from Javadekar on Wednesday, said he wasn’t sure if the minister said what he said “under pressure from someone” and that “he should have avoided such words”.
“Delhi University is completely autonomous to take any decision... the government cannot have a say in its administrative matters... they can take any legal action they want. What we did was right. The name of the college will be Dyal Singh, we are only prefixing ‘Vande Mataram’,” he said.
“The HRD minister should have spoken to me first to know the exact status before making such a statement,” he said.
As there are two colleges by the name (one in the regular shift and another that was an evening college but now operates in the morning), Javadekar had said, “The management can only call them Dyal Singh College ‘one’ and ‘two’, or Dyal Singh College ‘A’ and ‘B’... and we will take strict action against the college management for daring to change the name.”
Sinha said that in his meeting with the minister last November, the latter was convinced of being “misled” by the Akali Dal on the issue and had allowed the matter to be decided between the college authority and the university. He said that the minister went back on his promise and that his current intervention was “misplaced” which “belies the trust” in the office.
As of now, the request for the name change technically lies pending with the university.