KU Prof booked for ‘vulgarity’ after receiving award from President Patil

It’s academic terrorism to please hardline separatists: Shaad Ramzan

It’s genuine Police action against promoters of obscenity: SP, DIG

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Dec 23: Days after initiating criminal action against a College teacher for setting ‘objectionable’ question paper, Srinagar Police have booked a senior Professor on the charges of ‘promoting vulgarity’ among the young examinees in Kashmir valley. The high profile academic has received prestigious Sahitya Academy award for his literary works from President Pratibha Patil in Goa in August and has been associated with UPSC, UGC, NBTI, CIIL, Sahitya Academy and J&K PSC as an advisor, jury and expert of Kashmiri language and literature in the last over 15 years.

SP Hazratbal, Maqsood-uz-Zamaan, and DIG Central Kashmir, Abdul Gani Mir, maintained that Prof Shaad Ramzan, a Professor and former Head of Post-graduate Department of Kashmiri Language and Literature at the University of Kashmir, has been booked by Police on December 21^st on the charge of ‘promoting vulgarity among the young Kashmiri examinees of undergraduate level’. They told Early Times that Dr Shaad Ramzan had set a question paper for students of B.A. First Year in which students of Kashmiri subject had been asked to translate “an objectionable passage” from English to Kashmiri.

SP and DIG said that Police Station Nageen, Hazratbal, had registered case FIR No: 89 of 2010 under sections 294, 292 and 34 against the identified accused as also others who would be found involved in the ‘criminal act’ during the course of investigation. They said that the accused KU teacher would be arrested and prosecuted like a teacher of Gandhi Memorial College, Noor Mohammad Bhat, who had been booked under Unlawful Activities Act earlier this month and has been languishing in Srinagar Central Jail since last fortnight. Two judicial magistrates have dismissed Bhat’s bail application.

Bhat had been booked and arrested by men of Police Station Nageen, Hazratbal, after mediapersons in Srinagar reported that he had set a question paper and asked the examinees to reply whether Kashmir’s stone pelters were “real heroes”. The text suggested that the Indian State had been committing “genocide” in the Valley.

SP Hazratbal elaborated that during investigating Bhat’s crime, Police learned that Prof Shaad Ramzan too had set “an objectionable” question paper, asking the young examinees to translate an ‘explicitly vulgar’ biological passage from English to Kashmiri. He asserted that Police took a suo motto action and insisted that there were no complainants in the second case.

The passage that Ramzan asked students to translate reads: “From the ancient times, women have been concerned about the shape and size of their breasts. Breast development is the vital part of reproduction in human females. Unlike other mammals, however, human females are the only ones who develop full breasts long before they are needed to nurse their offspring.”

Both SP Zamaan as well as DIG Mir justified the Police action with the argument that “promoting vulgarity among the young examinees” could not be tolerated at any cost. They asserted that protection of society and the social value system was a duty of Police and other law enforcement agencies everywhere in the world. “It was not a question paper of anatomy for MBBS students of a Medical College. It was a language paper for which the teacher could have easily selected a passage from any other subject. Why was he constrained to only pick up a text from biology that generated concern among the society in October?”, SP Hazratbal asked.

He admitted that the passage selected would not be ‘vulgar’ for students of higher classes or even the young students living in different cultures in other states and countries. He, however, asserted that translation of the biological text in Kashmiri language was “offending” even for the students hailing from culturally over-exposed families.

Defending himself firmly, Prof Shaad Ramzan asserted that there was “nothing objectionable” in the text he claimed to have selected from a prescribed textbook of Unani Medicine. He dismissed registration of FIR against him as “academic terrorism” and alleged that Police had resorted to the action “only to appease hardline separatists”. He said that Police had been finding itself at the receiving end since the day of arresting a College teacher as certain political circles had blown it over as interference in academic activity. “They were desperately looking for a neutralizer that could silence the separatists”, Prof Ramzan said.

Shaad Ramzan pointed out that his question paper had been taken by the examinees without any objection and the examination had been conducted as long ago as on October 25^th. He pleaded that if there was still anything objectionable, that would have been addressed by the University authorities in due course of time. He said that a couple of days after the day of examination, some of his “professional rivals” had approached some hardline politicians and forced them to issue a statement in which he had been publicly denigrated as an “Indian agent”.

He argued that in case his controversial passage was described as “objectionable”, Police would have to also book senior Ministers, bureaucrats, officials and many other academics for allowing “hundreds of objectionable texts of prose and poetry” that, according to him, existed in syllabi of schools, colleges and universities in J&K. He pointed out to “more explicit references to breasts” in the poetry of legendary Kashmiri poets, including Mehmood Gami, Rasool Mir and Maqbool Kralwari.

Working as a Professor of Kashmiri language and literature for the last about 25 years, Dr Shad Ramzan functioned as Head of Department (Kashmiri) at University of Kashmir until October this year. Author of as many as 20 books on Kashmir’s literature and culture, he received the country’s top most literary award from Sahitya Academy for his publication “Anhaar te Akas”, Kashmiri translation of short stories in different Indian languages. He was honoured on behalf of Sahitya Academy by President of India, Pratibha Patil, in Goa in August this year.

Shad has functioned as an advisor, jury and subject expert of Kashmiri for the last over 15 years with Sahitya Academy, Central Institute of Indian Languages run by Ministry of Human Resources Development, University Grants Commission, Union Public Service Commission, J&K State Public Service Commission and National Book Trust of India.

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