The Centre’s proposal to name the second campus of the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology here after RSS ideologue MS Golwalkar seem to have prompted politicians of all shades to come out vociferously for or against, as Kerala goes into the first phase of local body polls on Tuesday.

It was Union Minister for Science and Technology Harsh Vardhan who had kicked up the row on Friday while addressing from Delhi a curtain raiser session of the sixth edition of India International Science Festival scheduled for December 22-25.

The curtain raiser was organised by the Rajiv Gandhi Centre.

Major innovation hub

The upcoming campus would be a unique knowledge centre and hub for mid and high-level innovation founded on advanced level technical platforms and multi-disciplinary courses to seed growth and innovation, the Union Minister said in a video message.

The campus would be developed in three phases, he added.

Both the ruling CPI(M) and the Opposition Congress have opposed the move to name the second campus of the Rajiv Gandhi Centre as the Shri Guruji Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar National Centre for Complex Disease in Cancer and Viral Infection.

Taking on BJP challenge

Acting Secretary of the state CPI(M) unit A Vijayaraghavan charged that the Centre’s move did not surprise him since the party in power is only too well known for covert and overt moves to create communal divisions for political gain.

Party Politburo member MA Baby echoed Vijayaraghavan’s sentiments and demanded that the Centre choose the name of a scientist for the new campus.

Palpu’s name suggested

Congress leader and local MP Shashi Tharoor wondered in a Facebook post if the Centre should ‘memorialise a bigoted Hitler-admirer who in a 1966 speech to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad had asserted the supremacy of religion over science.’

Tharoor called Golwalkar an ‘obscurantist ideologue of no scientific achievement or discernible contribution to public health.’

The MP instead suggested the name of P Palpu, a 19th-century social reformer and renowned bacteriologist.

He pointed out that Palpu was an expert in serum therapy and tropical medicine from Cambridge, and Director of the Vaccine Institute and Fellow of the Royal Institute of Public Health.

Muraleedharan comment

Meanwhile, Union Minister V Muraleedharan supported the Centre and said that there is ‘nothing wrong in naming the new campus after a patriot.’

He ticked off a controversy by airing a poser as to how the Nehru Trophy Boat Race in Kerala was named after Jawaharlal Nehru when the latter has never competed in sports.

Agencies quoted Muraleedharan as saying that Golwalkar was a Professor in Zoology at the Banaras University.

“One can’t quite understand the reason behind his name being found unacceptable by some people,” he added.