Santishree D. Pandit, who was on Monday appointed the first woman vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, has had a bumpy ride in her first few days in the new role.
First, there was a controversy over provocative tweets from a handle purportedly belonging to her. The tweets referred to religious conversions, opposition political parties, farmers' protests among other thing in derogatory terms. Then, her official statement on taking charge as vice-chancellor was panned for grammatical mistakes.
Pandit spoke about both controversies to The Indian Express on Tuesday. Pandit claimed she “never” had a Twitter account. “I didn’t have a Twitter account… It has been found out that it has been hacked and somebody internally from JNU has done this. The point is, many people are unhappy that I am the first woman VC,” she told The Indian Express. She said she had been informed that people from JNU were involved in the controversy.
She claimed her daughter “closed” a Twitter account for her six years ago. It is unclear whether Pandit was referring to the account that made the provocative posts, which was deleted on Monday evening. She claimed she was unaware of the provocative tweets until screenshots were circulated. She alleged “Nobody told me… In this world everybody is a conspirator.”
Pandit told The Indian Express she was being treated badly because Prime Minister Narendra Modi had appointed a woman vice-chancellor at JNU before the 'Left' could. She claimed, “Why am I being treated so badly and shabbily by the press? What sin have I done? Just because Prime Minister Narendra Modi beat the Left in breaking a glass ceiling, which the Left did not do. Yes I’m a woman from the marginalised section and from the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Why did the Left not do it all these years? Seventy years they were in power. They couldn’t get to JNU? It is their adda (hub).”
Pandit alleged she was being targeted for emphasising the “Indian perspective” in history. “The Cholas, Marathas, Vijaynagar empire, Cheras, Pandyas—where are they? How much percentage is written in history? See history is agenda setting. I don’t blame them for it; I don’t want to go into it. So if they can set an agenda, what is wrong in correcting history? I am a South Indian; I think Rajendra Chola is the greatest emperor India has had. He conquered the Indo-Pacific, contained the Chinese. Why is he not mentioned?” she told The Indian Express.
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Pandit also spoke about a vigilance report on her at the Savitribai Phule University in Pune regarding admissions of PIO students. Pandit said no FIR was registered against her and she was targeted as she was a “non-Maharashtrian who won the Management Council elections”.
When asked about mistakes in her press release, which even BJP MP Varun Gandhi criticised, Pandit blamed the JNU staff. “I dictated… the lady from the previous V-C took it in shorthand and the PRO said she will correct it and put it up. How much can you monitor? I still don’t have a team. Today I told the office staff that 'if you don’t know English, you should have told me you don’t know English'. But nobody says they don’t know. I sat, retyped and rewrote it myself today...” she told The Indian Express.
Pandit declared she believed in a democratic process and different ideologies could coexist.