Deoband vice-chancellor expulsion a blow to secular fabric: BJP

The Bharatiya Janata Party was careful in its response to the removal of Maulana Ghulam Mohammed Vastanvi as vice-chancellor of Darul Uloom.

Party spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy acknowledged that Darul Uloom had a right to make its own choice of a vice-chancellor and others had nothing to do with it. But the party felt compelled to make the point because the major controversy surrounding Vastanvi was his praise for Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.

The decision of the seminary was a blow to the social and secular fabric of the country, Rudy said, adding that an educational institution should be above religion and politics.

Vastanvi’s removal is a reflection of the inner politics inside the orthodox wing of the community, the BJP said. He was the first non-UP person to be named the head of the seminary, which played a key role in opposing Partition and the British rule.

Vastanvi had felt that it was necessary to modernise the seminary’s syllabus and make Deoband a contemporary educational institution, something which he had done through his own educational network in Gujarat and Maharashtra.