Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan backs counter-terrorism course introduced in JNU

Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Friday backed the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) vice-chancellor (VC) in the controversy over the new course on counter-terrorism. This course is meant for engineering students. While speaking at a meeting of central university VCs, the Union Education Minister congratulated M Jagadesh Kumar and his team for introducing the course, which has been greatly criticised for singling out religion as the only form of fundamentalist religious terrorism. 

Dharmendra Pradhan on counter-terrorism course

Pradhan questioned why an Indian university discuss counter-terrorism measures if MIT can. The course on counter-terrorism is titled "Counter-Terrorism, Asymmetric Conflicts and Strategies for Cooperation among Major Powers". This course asserts that 'Jihadi terrorism' is the only form of "fundamentalist-religious terrorism" that influenced "radical Islamic states". The course will be offered to students pursuing an MS with specialisation in International Relations after a BTech in Engineering. Online classes for the monsoon semester start on September 20.

Pradhan said, “Recently a colleague from Parliament wrote to me about asking why JNU has introduced a course on terrorism. Friends, some time ago, when I was in the US, I was getting briefed by senior American officers on terrorism.. during that briefing, I learned that technology and cyber warehads been adopted by terrorists to further their objectives.”

Remarking that engineers today are not just engineers, the Union Minister said that engineers are involved in building social products. "So, if a course helps engineer students understand the kind of hindrances they could face in the development of social products, then I congratulate JNU for introducing such a course," he added.

(Image: Twitter-@DrPradhanBJP)