KOCHI: It has all the makings of a major scandal that could well result in a major loss of face for Sree Sankara University of Sanskrit (SSUS) at Kalady in Kochi.
According to Megha S, former student of the Department of Dance at the varsity and researcher in comparative literature, the content of the thesis submitted by Venugopalan Nair, Head of the Department of Dance, had allegedly been illegally sourced from other published works on dance.
“ The thesis titled ‘A Critical study of Bharatanatya Mudra in the light of Karanas in Natyasastra’ was submitted before the varsity in 2009 and Venugopalan Nair was awarded the doctorate for this. The thesis was later brought out as a tome,” Megha said.
Megha, who analysed the thesis, said there were 214 pages, excluding bibliography and appendix. Of these, the content in 190 pages was allegedly copied from other books. It did not have a preface or conclusion either. The title of the thesis was also not discussed in detail anywhere in the work.
“ I came across passages taken from ‘Balaramabharatam, A Critic on Dance and Drama’ by E Eswaran Nampoothiri; ‘Dynamics of Dance Celebration of Life : A Study of Sculptural and Mural Depictions of Dance and Music in Buddhist Art of India Aesthetic theory Underlying Asian Peforming Arts’ by Kapila Valsyanan; ‘Natyasathra Text with Introduction, English Translation and Indices in Four Volumes’ by N P Unni and ‘An Approach to Bharatanatyam by S Bhagyalakshmi in the thesis submitted by Venugopalan Nair.
Besides, content from ‘Dances of Kerala’ brought out by the Kerala Public Relations Department(PRD) was used in Chapter VIII titled conclusion.
Moreover, Megha questioned Venugopalan Nair’s educational qualifications.
Claiming that she had incontrovertible evidence provided by an RTI query to prove the charges against Venugopalan, Megha also declared her intention to seek a Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau(VACB) probe against the HoD.
“ It is pathetic that the HoD of Dance at a university is not able to put down something of his own on dance,” Megha said.
Meanwhile,Venugopalan Nair in a chat with Express, sought to rubbish the charges levelled against him.
“ I was the first person from the entire South Asia region to be awarded a doctorate on dance. This being the case, where could I have copied the text from?” he said.
Further, Nair claimed that professional rivalry was behind the episode. “I also suspect a conspiracy behind Megha’s allegation.
She had been my student for seven years. She had been one of the candidates interviewed for the post of guest lecturer. But she was not selected as she did not have the expertise needed for the vacant post. She is being incited by another teacher in the varsity who holds a grudge against me,” he said.