After a controversy broke out on social media on the 8th of February over objectionable tweets posted by a unverified twitter account running by her name, new JNU Vice-Chancellor (VC) Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit has clarifiedthat she has “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 V-C,” VC Pandit said in an interview to the Indian Express (IE). She also alleged that some individuals from the university are behind this mischief as per a certain of her reliable sources.
She said that she was surprised at the criticism she was getting without anyone bothering to get any clarification from her. “It came to my notice only when these pictures came out. Because I’m not on Twitter, so unless I’m on Twitter, how will I know that an account is there… Nobody told me (about the tweets) … In this world everybody is a conspirator,” she alleged in the interview.
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She further clarified the account does not belong to her. “Never. I never had. My daughter is a cyber-security engineer. Six years ago, she closed it for me because she was applying for some jobs in the US and she told me, ‘Mom, you are not going to be on any social media sites’. I’m not at all active on social media,” she stated.
She alleged that this controversy was spun because she supports the “Indian perspective” while understanding the region’s history as well as her association with the Indian right. “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? If I ask such questions, I become the enemy… I won the Management Council elections from the Right and I was the only one from the Right from 2001,” she further told the IE.
She further questioned the left on their commitment to social upliftment of marginalized community. “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… 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,” she said.
The twitter handle by her name had posted objectionable tweets regarding Indian minorities and had termed Jamia Millia Islamia and St. Stephen’s College as “communal campuses.”
