Freedom series -- Editor faults ICHR

Freedom series -- Editor faults ICHR
UNITED NEWS OF INDIA

NEW INDIA, FEB 21

In a fresh turn to the ongoing controversy, Prof S Gopal, general editor of the Towards Freedom series, on Monday expressed surprise that the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) had accused Prof K N Panikkar and Prof Sumit Sarkar of sending the volumes they edited for the project directly to the Oxford University Press (OUP) without ICHR's knowledge.

``These volumes were submitted to me by the editors and after incorporating the changes suggested by me were forwarded to the OUP by the chairman of the ICHR,'' Prof Gopal said in a release.

The unilateral decision by ICHR to withdraw the volumes edited by Prof Panikkar and Prof Sarkar and subject them to a review without consulting Prof Gopal and the volume editors was a violation of the terms under which the project was conceived.

``It also amounts to an infringement of the academic rights and freedom of the authors who were invited by the ICHR to undertake this work. Apart from the professionaldiscourtesy, it is disturbing and unethical that a purely academic exercise should involve intervention by officials,'' Prof Gopal said.

He said he had learnt from newspapers that the volumes edited by Prof Panikkar and Prof Sarkar had been withdrawn. The duo have demanded a public apology from ICHR chairman B R Grover for alleging that they had sent their manuscripts directly to the publishers.

In a communication on February 3, ICHR asked OUP to temporarily withhold publication Prof Panikkar's êITowards Freedom-1940êR and Prof Sarkar's Towards Freedom-1946 and return them for perusal by a review committee of the council.

Prof Pannikar and Prof Sarkar, who addressed a press conference on Saturday, stoutly denied that they had sent the manuscripts without knowledge of ICHR. ``We had sent the manuscripts to the then ICHR chairman in 1995-96 and were informed last year that these had been sent to the publishers. The allegation is an attack on our professional integrity and we demand apublic apology from ICHR,'' said Prof Pannikar.