Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit seems to be pursuing a rigorous extremist path with the threat that she would also be inflicting her destructive views in the academic and administrative spheres as her controversial predecessor, M. Jagadesh Kumar.

Her appointment was announced on Monday, February 7. Kumar was made head of the University Grants Commission last week.

The Union government’s approval of Kumar’s antagonistic right-wing rule in the university also mirrors its mind in their support of Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit.

In a message to students and faculty, Pandit said her primary priority would be to provide an environment for “academic excellence” (sic). Praising the ideology of the Modi regime, she said the “focus would be in constructing Indo-centric narratives”

She released a letter, which was heavily criticized for its bad grammar and style of writing depicting the fall of such a prestigious institution.

Letter from JNU’s new vice chancellor, Santishree Pandit.

Pandit, known for her proximity with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has backed calls for genocide and attacks on students and farmers in the recent past.

For example, she named the Left-liberals “Jihadis” in response to Times Now editor Rahul Shivshankar’s comment condemning the suspension of Kangna Ranaut’s Twitter account after she called for a genocide against Indian Muslims.

In yet another tweet, Pandit has also advocated the persecution of civil rights activists, whom she brands as “mentally-ill jihadists” in “Chinese” style.

In another of her tweets, while calling Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination “sad”, she justifies Godse’s action as arising from the thinking that only Gandhi’s murder was a “solution” for a “united India.”

On multiple occasions, she has put out her Hindutva right-wing political views out in the open unhesitatingly. In one instance, she also urged people to vote for the BJP while slamming the “Italian-origin” Sonia Gandhi.

On other occasions, she has attacked the Left activists of JNU calling them “Naxal Jihadists” and advocated the weeding out of Rohingya refugees, and called the government to stop the funding of prestigious educational institutions like the Jamia Millia Islamia and St. Stephens College. She has also urged “non-Muslims” to wake up to prevent “Love Jihad”, which she qualifies as “terror by other means”.

More recently, she struck at the farmers’ movement by calling the agitating farmers “parasites, middlemen, Dalals”, and used similar expletives for anti-CAA protestors at Shaheen Bagh.

She has often retweeted troll handles on social media, an example of which is when she tagged a picture of The Wire’s senior editor Arfa Khanum and renowned historian Audrey Truschke with the caption that says, “vulture with a predator”.

While she now claims someone else had written that, the truth is this reflects her own mindset. It was certainly embarrassing to her when her tweets got exposed and she hurridly deleted her Twitter account.

Is it safe to leave young minds developing for the nation, in the keep of such a radical, hate-infested commander of the most reputable universities not only in India but the world? JNU has raised some of the greatest most open-minded inclusive leaders of India who have touched the globe.  To designate someone a vice-chancellor with such a regressive mindset would clip JNU’s wings.