A 35-year-old doctoral student at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has moved the Delhi High Court accusing his professor of forcing him to alter the course of his research in order to endorse the view that Hindi is a ‘communal language’, reports The Indian Express.

The matter was heard by Justice C Hari Shankar, who has sought replies from the university and an associate professor on the matter by 23 April.

The student in question is Ashutosh Kumar Roy, pursuing a PhD at the Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences at JNU. Roy alleges that the professor’s advice to him to adjust the direction of his research to support the conclusion of Hindi being a ‘communal language’ was an arbitrary decision.

The petition contends that the acting supervisor’s and others’ actions “coax the petitioner to carry out a motivated research against Hindi language, against stalwarts of Hindi language, and the arbitrary denial of permission to pursue PhD is a blatant violation of his fundamental rights as well as university rules”.

The petitioner also states that after his previous research supervisor left, his requests to be granted a new supervisor were met with deaf ears by the university authorities. Roy says he continued his work without any supervision and submitted his PhD synopsis last year, which was approved by faculty members with some verbal suggestions for changes.

However, upon submission of the work to the Committee for Advanced Studies and Research, a professor allegedly derided the pro-Hindi nature of the work and stated, “There is no place for such pro-Hindi research in JNU! You better go to Delhi University….and idolise Bhartendu Harishchandra!”.