New Delhi: The Center’s decision to name the new campus of a biotechnology institute in Kerala after an ideologue from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has sparked protests from the state government and also from its opposition party.
Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan has urged the Union government to reconsider naming the second campus of the Rajiv Gandhi Center for Biotechnology in Thiruvananthapuram in honor of MS Golwalkar.
Vijayan has written to the Union Minister, Harsh Vardhan, asking him to name the institution after a world-renowned person with some contribution to science.
Harsh Vardhan had announced at the opening of the curtain of the Indian International Science Festival that the new campus would be called ‘National Center Shri Guruji Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar for Complex Diseases in Cancer and Viral Infections’.
Golwalkar is considered one of the first to shape the Hindutva ideals that the Bharatiya Janata Party wishes to implement. His writings are vast but they are not about science.
The RGCB, which was initially run by the state government, was handed over to the government of the Union with the aim of turning it into a center for international standards in research and development.
“The institute is a top-tier research institution and has been above political divisions,” Vijayan said in the letter.
The convenor of the LDF and secretary of state of the CPI (M), A. Vijayaraghavan, said that this was yet another example of the BJP’s efforts to “communalize everything.”
Dr. Palpu
Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor and opposition leader in the assembly Ramesh Chennithala also spoke out against the decision.
Tharoor, in a series of tweets, asked if the Center wanted to “commemorate a fanatical Hitler fanatic, who in a 1966 speech to the VHP, asserted the supremacy of religion over science.”
As for RajivGandhi’s contribution, he inspired scientific innovation and allocated funds for it. Aren’t there any BJP icons that have at least tried to do the same? Should GoI commemorate a fanatic Hitler admirer who in a 1966 speech to the VHP asserted the supremacy of religion over science?
– Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) December 5, 2020
Tharoor suggested that the institution be named after Dr. Palpu, a renowned bacteriologist and social reformer, born in Thiruvananthapuram in 1863.
Palpu was a Cambridge tropical medicine and serum therapy expert and director of the Vaccine Institute and a member of the Royal Institute of Public Health, Tharoor said.
This forward-thinking scientist and physician would be far more appropriate than an obscurantist ideologue with no scientific achievement and no discernible contribution to public health. It is a BJP insult to Thiruvananthapuram and he must resist. @drharshvardhan
– Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) December 5, 2020
Dr. Palpu College of Arts and Science is also named after the social reformer.
Mullakkara Ratnakaran, leader of the CPI and former minister, also suggested the name Dr. Palpu for the institution, saying that he “fought against the caste abuse of the oppressed while providing his services to the medical sector.”
In contrast, “There is no other person in the history of this country who has spread so much hatred,” Ratnakaran said.
(With PTI inputs)
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