Professor Joseph has reason to cheer

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As Eid festivities lit up Muvattupuzha town in central Kerala on Friday, professor T J Joseph, a Malayalam professor who lives on the outskirts of the town and whose right palm was cut off by radicals over a controversial question using the name Mohammed, also had a reason for cheer.

Kerala education minister M A Baby, who decried the decision of the college authorities to sack the professor, said the government would consider stepping in if the college management was unable to solve the issue. “It was like giving a life sentence to a person for a trivial issue,” Mr Baby commented about the college management’s decision. He added the move to sack the professor was against academic procedures.

The CPM minister’s statement comes a day after the syndicate of the Mahatma Gandhi University, to which the Newman College where professor Joseph taught is affiliated, also felt that the college authorities had not followed procedures in acting against him.

The management’s decision to sack him has triggered a sympathy wave for the professor, who is currently undergoing physiotherapy following a surgery that restitched his severed right palm. On the first working day after the announcement of his sacking, his teaching colleagues abstained from work for a day and the students observed a black day in support of their professor.

Monsignor Thomas Malekudy, manager of the Newman College that is run by the Kothamangalam diocese of the Syro Malabar Church, has written to the professor stating that the punishment could have been reduced had he unconditionally apologised in writing for the controversial question and also undertaken moral responsibility for all the damages that have occurred as a result.

Monsignor Malekudy added in a letter that makes seven key points that since the punishment had been decided and announced, any retraction would now be possible only through a legal process.

Following the hacking of the professor, police have raided the offices of the Popular Front of India across the state. In all, 51 people are suspected to have been involved in the conspiracy and attack on the professor, which was carried out on July 4, in retaliation against the controversial question given in an examination in March. Police have so far arrested 24 of the suspects.