The Glaring Academic Inadequacies in 'JNU Study' on Rohingyas Raises Questions

Released ahead of Delhi polls, the 'report' was cited widely by the same forces that once dubbed JNU 'anti-national'

The quality of the research in JNU's report on Rohingyas leaves much to be desired.

(Vibhushita Singh/The Quint)

A few days before the recent Delhi Assembly elections, a report titled 'Illegal Immigrants to Delhi: Analysing Socio-Economic and Political Consequences' was put out in the name of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). 

An accompanying press release also found its way into the hands of journalists. The release made its own set of claims – including those that could not be derived from the report – on the impact of illegal migrants from Bangladesh on Delhi’s demographic composition. 

Notable, however, is the fact that there has been no official circulation of the press release or the report, of what is supposed to be JNU’s own study, and neither of these documents can be found on the official website of the university.  

The JNU report was cited by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders during election campaigning, to claim that illegal migration from Bangladesh and Myanmar had significantly increased the Muslim population in Delhi. Just a few months ago in November, ahead of Maharashtra elections, a report almost identical to the JNU report had emerged, from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), and echoed its conclusions.

The circumstances surrounding the emergence of both the reports should raise significant questions about them as academic exercises arising from a genuine spirit of inquiry. 

Who are the Researchers? No Transperancy

The inexcusable compromises the JNU report makes with the rigour that academic inquiry requires are ultimately attributable not to incompetence, but to a willingness to surrender academic integrity to the cause of the vicious targeting and persecution of people who are citizens of the country, and at least human beings in distress, even when they are not, on the grounds of their religion alone.

Details of the research team that conducted the JNU study is shrouded in mystery. According to the JNU press release, it was made up of a group of TISS and JNU students. The report itself, however, mentions a research team consisting of ten members: two research associates, one project officer, one GIS expert, and six field investigators—whose identities have not been revealed for 'security reasons'.  

The research team is also stated to be including two professors of JNU, one of whom is the Dean of Students, designated as the principal investigator, while the other is the principal co-investigator. However, it is also said that the report was prepared under their ‘guidance’, which accords them a different status than that of being the principal investigators.

The two professors concerned are also appointed as faculty in two centres (departments) of the university whose focus areas of inquiry and research, even under the broadest and most liberal interpretation, would not stretch to include the study of illegal immigration in Delhi – namely, the Centre of Russian Studies of the School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, and the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies of the School of International Studies. 

The circumstances surrounding the two reports raises important questions. Why and when were these ‘reports’ undertaken? At whose behest? The answer is so clear that they should be dismissed as not being worthy of any genuine academic engagement. Even a cursory examination of the JNU report, for instance, would show that it would not pass muster if subjected to any real academic scrutiny.

However, if something else still needs to be said about it, it is because it is more than a classic and transparently crude case of pre-determined opinions being presented as conclusions derived from research and reasoned interpretation of evidence.

Discrepancies Between Claims and Evidence

The 'quality' of the research in the JNU report leaves much to be desired. It would take more space than the report itself to fully describe the sloppiness found throughout.

Not only has the most basic requirement of justifying its conclusions not been met, but it has even been contradicted by what is in the report. 

In the executive findings, it is claimed that illegal immigration to Delhi of Bangladeshis and Rohingyas has significantly altered the city’s demographic landscape, put excessive pressure on the city’s infrastructure and its health and education facilities, undermined legal and electoral processes, increased crime, disrupted social cohesion, etc. The list is endless, and almost all the city’s woes are attributed to these illegal migrants, even in situations where they are victims.

Yet, the study admits that while politicians keep saying that the number of these migrants are large, no accurate data on the number of such illegal migrants in Delhi is available. The primary study supposedly conducted as part of the research underlying the report does not even attempt to address this gap.

Moreover, the secondary data cited—chiefly from the Census—shows that nearly 90 percent of the migrants to Delhi are from within India (inter-state migrants), and that international migration has declined to under three percent by 2011. 

The study also notes that net migration to Delhi has turned negative in the 21st century. Additionally, the study cites different estimates of numbers of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in India as a whole – which not only show them to be a tiny fraction of the country’s population and largely concentrated in the border states but also indicate that the growth in their numbers has slowed down over the last two decades.

Despite this overwhelming evidence suggesting that illegal migrants constitute a very small proportion of Delhi’s population, the report presents a vastly different narrative. This contradiction raises the question: how else could the conclusions of the study have been reached, if not through a predetermined agenda? 

The Use of JNU for Political Propaganda

It is ironic that the same political forces that attacked JNU for being “anti-national” and the hotbed of the “tukde tukde” gang are now invoking the university to legitimise their political propaganda.

However, these contradictory positions share a common thread: the instrumentalisation of a public university for political purposes. This is facilitated by the ‘cooperation’ of Vice-Chancellors controlled by the government, who are willing to compromise the autonomy of the institutions they lead.

This has been an integral part of a process of academic destruction of the university, in which the imperatives of propaganda trumped the truth ascertainable from the facts and the evidence.

The JNU report on illegal migrants has the appearance of being a study that was commissioned as well as endorsed by the university itself. However, the University is a body corporate created by an Act of Parliament, with officers and decision-makers whose powers are defined in the Act and the Statutes.

The mandate of the university is "to disseminate and advance knowledge, wisdom and understanding by teaching and research and by the example and influence of its corporate life".

It is governed by a rigorous academic framework, ensuring that any study produced under its name meets high academic standards and is subjected to scrutiny by experts.

JNU does not have a collective point of view; rather, individual students and faculty have their own perspectives, and they are not all the same.

But all of these involve scrutiny of everything from the angle of academic soundness. They are not supposed to restrict academic freedom and debate, or favour one point of view or perspective over others. 

The presentation of the report on illegal migrants as a ‘JNU study’ violates these basic principles, is unprecedented, and also illegal as it does not emerge from the decision-making processes sanctified by the Act and the Statutes.

That those who have illegally usurped to themselves the power to speak on behalf of JNU are unlikely to be punished for what is actually a grave offence is only another symptom of the malaise gripping JNU in particular, and Indian higher education in general. 

(Surajit Mazumdar is Professor of Economics at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University.  This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)