(HRW/IFEX) – The following is a Human Rights Watch press release: INQUIRY NEEDED INTO CALCUTTA INSTITUTE CENSORSHIP (New York, April 9) – Human Rights Watch today urged the Indian government to ensure that political tensions in the country do not spill over and restrict academic freedom. In an open letter to Indian president K.R. Narayanan, […]
(HRW/IFEX) – The following is a Human Rights Watch press release:
INQUIRY NEEDED INTO CALCUTTA INSTITUTE CENSORSHIP
(New York, April 9) – Human Rights Watch today urged the Indian
government
to ensure that political tensions in the country do not spill over and
restrict academic freedom. In an open letter to Indian president K.R.
Narayanan, the Human Rights Watch Academic Freedom Committee called on
the
government to launch an investigation into reports of politically
motivated
censorship at the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute, a
government-funded
Asian studies center in Calcutta.
Researchers at the Azad Institute and other Indian academics report a
number
of troubling developments since appointees of the Bharatiya Janata
Party
took control of the institute in November 1998 and named Dr. B.P.
Saha, a
retired policeman, as new director of the institute. Since his
appointment,
Dr. Saha has halted the publication of academic articles and a
book-length
study of border issues in the region, and he has restricted
researchers from
attending outside seminars without his permission. Publicly he has
emphasized that he is merely ensuring that institute staff are
“accountable,” but in meetings with institute staff he reportedly has
cited
his displeasure that work at the institute has not been adequately
promoting
the greatness of Hindu India.
“At best, the circumstances are suspicious and demand an
investigation,”
said Joseph Saunders, who tracks academic freedom for Human Rights
Watch.
“It is important to take the allegations seriously because pressure on
academics to toe the line is often a warning sign of more insidious
forms of
censorship to come.”
The letter was signed on behalf of the committee by Jonathan F.
Fanton,
president of the New School University in New York and a co-chair of
the
committee. The committee membership includes internationally prominent
academic leaders and scholars, including presidents of Harvard
University,
Columbia University and over a dozen other universities in the United
States, and figures such as Lord Ralf Dahrendorf, formerly of St.
Antony’s
College at Oxford and currently a governor at the London School of
Economics, Krzysztof Michalski of the Institute for Human Sciences in
Vienna, Ariel Dorfman of Duke University, John Kenneth Galbraith of
Harvard
University, and Fang Lizhi of the University of Arizona.
