New Delhi: Historian Romila Thapar has said Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and other social science centres have suffered in the last 10 years, leaving those involved in their establishment "appalled by the decimation".

Speaking at the third Kapila Vatsyayan Memorial Lecture at the India International Centre on Tuesday, Thapar said maintaining academic standards at JNU in the past decade has been "extremely problematic".

"Some of us who established JNU in the 1970s have been appalled by the decimation it has undergone in the last 10 years. This is not confined to JNU alone, as other strong centres of the social sciences have also suffered," she said.

She cited issues such as appointment of substandard faculty, non-professionals dictating curriculum, attempts to rescind professor emeritus posts, and restrictions on research and teaching.

Referring to the January 2020 mob attack on the campus that injured students and faculty, the 93-year-old said the situation "went beyond academic mechanisms". Without naming Umar Khalid, she pointed to his arrest as an example of "political control over education silencing intellectual creativity".

"There have been arrests of students for criticising authority, and some remain in jail without trial for six years," she said. "Intellectually purposeful education requires thinking with freedom. Speech can be silenced, but thought cannot be stilled."

Thapar also criticised current methods of history education, arguing history is being distorted by "discarded colonial theories" repackaged as new. She questioned whether India's plural society could be reduced to a "single uniform heritage" under majoritarian ideas.

"History has to be reliable and accurate, not manipulated for political reasons. This requires competent teachers who encourage students to ask questions," she added, lamenting the decline in quality education in state schools.