Higher Education Minister K.T. Jaleel has said that the attempts being made to cast aspersions on his academic integrity were fuelled by long-running animosity and prejudice.
Reacting to a petition submitted by the Save University Campaign Committee to the Governor demanding a revaluation of his 15-year-old doctoral thesis, Dr. Jaleel rubbished the claims raised by the complainant to besmirch his research work.
The forum had called for a scrutiny of the thesis ‘Kunhahammed Haji and Ali Musliar – Their Role in the Malabar Rebellion’ that studied the role of Variamkunnath Kunjahamed Haji during the 1921 Malabar Rebellion.
Referring to the allegations of irregularities in registering the research work, Dr. Jaleel pointed out the thesis had been evaluated by subject experts 15 years ago (in 2005), when a United Democratic Front (UDF) government was in power and a Vice Chancellor nominated by them was at the helm of the university. Lashing out at the claims of bias in approaching the topic, the Minister said that he had sought to deconstruct the sequence of events pertaining to the rebellion with scientific backing and by formulating research hypothesis.
Sign of intolerance
He also viewed the allegations as a sign of intolerance towards any attempt to defy the purported narrative propagated by the Congress and Sangh Parivar on the Malabar Rebellion. He said a few spelling and grammatical errors were natural, considering the length of the thesis.
