JNU teachers, former faculty oppose plan to shift CHS Library

Historians urge JNU to reverse decision to relocate CHS Library; students campaign to save it from being shifted to unsuitable location. JNU admin defends move, cites need for modern infrastructure.

Following an appeal by students of the Centre for Historical Studies (CHS) at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) to the academic community against the move to relocate the CHS Library, several historians and former teachers have urged the university to reverse its decision. 

Last week, the university said that as part of an internal arrangement, the university planned to relocate the existing CHS Library to an adjoining building, to make way for a new Special Centre for Tamil Studies.

Sixteen former faculty members of the CHS, including historian Romila Thapar, have written to JNU Vice-Chancellor Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit expressing shock at the move.

The signatories to the letter said the CHS received a Department of Special Assistance (DSA) status from the UGC in the late 1980s and instead of using the grant to hire more faulty, it was used to construct the CHS library building. “CHS faculty, in fact, gave up its own promotion avenues by choosing to build the library and brought resources from archives and libraries across India and the world to facilitate teaching and research,” the former faculty members said. They added that a rich collection of primary sources, in the form of volumes of inscriptions, literary texts, and archival documents, as well as important secondary sources of high academic standing were housed in the library. It was able to bid for and get from the University of Chicago the rich personal collection of eminent scholar Bernard Cohn.

“Given this history of the CHS library, as faculty who have nurtured this institution over the past several decades, we feel that the library’s relocation and dispersal would essentially destroy this fine institution, which was funded specifically for the purpose,” they said.

The university plans to relocate the CHS Library to the adjoining building that houses the EXIM Bank Library. “The proposed arrangement would not only facilitate the activities of one of the important Indian languages but also ensure prudent use of space on the campus without affecting the academic activities of CHS or any other centre,” the JNU Registrar has said, seeking the cooperation of students and faculty.

The Tamil Nadu government has allocated an amount of ₹10 crore to the university (of which ₹5 crore was handed over in December 2022) for the construction of the new Tamil Studies centre.