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Dismissal of ICHR chief an 'arbitrary act', says CPI

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI DEC. 11. The Communist Party of India (CPI) today condemned the summary dismissal of the Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), M.G.S. Narayanan, and demanded that the Ministry probe order be rescinded and the Council allowed to function autonomously.

Describing it as an "arbitrary act'' by the Human Resource Development Minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, and his Department to "victimise'' Prof. Naryanan, the CPI said that incidentally the latter was an appointee of the Minister and had refused to toe the ideological lines of the Sangh Parivar and accept its interpretation of history.

Prof. Narayanan had also "boldly criticised the shoddy textbooks'' brought out by the National Council for Research, Education and Training.

In a statement, the CPI Central Secretariat said that evidently Dr. Joshi and the Sangh Parivar do not want any impediment or irritant, so as to "distort history in their own image.''

It accused Dr. Joshi of trying to impose a Member-Secretary of his choice at the ICHR, which Prof. Narayanan had refused to accept. "At one stroke Dr. Joshi wanted to end the autonomy of the prestigious apex council and bring it firmly under the administrative control of his Ministry."

The CPI said all educationists, historians and other democratic sections should protest the attempts being made by the BJP Government to bring all apex bodies and higher educational institutions under their thumb and eliminate all independent thinkers from top positions. To suggest that Prof. Narayanan was removed for "financial irregularities'' was adding insult to injury.

The CPI-ML too objected to the dismissal and demanded that Dr. Joshi reinstate him immediately.

The party said the dismissal was a piece of the Minister's systematic campaign to subvert the institutional structure of education and culture and reduce it to a "puppet network for the RSS to impose its obscurantist and fascist communal agenda.''

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