IIAS member protests Joshi8217;s interference

The governing board, chaired by former Allahabad University Vice-Chancellor G C Pande 8211; and including Vice-Chairman and fellow of the Chennai-based swadeshi centre, Centre for Policy Studies, M D Srinivas, Joshi8217;s friend and former education secretary Kireet Joshi 8211; also declared that minutes of the meeting would not be maintained and those in the governing bodywho wanted to add members to make it quot;more balancedquot; were welcome to do so.

The selection committee is the most instrumental panel in the IIAS as it selects the 30-odd fellows who carry out research in social studies. The committee prior to this included noted liberal scholars Romila Thapar, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Andre Beteille, U R Ananthamurthy, Harish Trivedi and Amiya Deb.

Pande has invited Joshi to address the society before it meets at 4.30 pm and there is speculation that the scholars might boycott it. Sobti had earlier written a letter of protest to Pande about his invitation to Joshi to deliver the Radhakrishnan Memorial Lecture in September this year.

In her letter of November 11, 1998, she had written that Pande was damaging IIAS by inviting a politician to deliver such a prestigious lecture. She had suggested the name of President K R Narayanan instead. In his response, Pande described Joshi as a scholar of quot;international reputequot;. He had also decried the attempt by her to quot;misinterpretquot;his invitation to Joshi.