Plaque bearing names of Gurjar kings defaced, claims community
Choudhary Praveen Bhartiya, a Gurjar leader, said that the move aims to suppress the Gurjar community’s historical contributions
A group of people belonging to the Gurjar community submitted a memorandum to the district magistrate’s office in Noida on Thursday, alleging that a poster of Vijay Singh Pathik, an Indian revolutionary and freedom fighter, was pasted on a nameplate bearing the names of some Gurjar kings in the gallery of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Institute of Archaeology at Greater Noida.
Choudhary Praveen Bhartiya, a Gurjar leader, said that the move aims to suppress the Gurjar community’s historical contributions. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi had inaugurated the Institute on March 9, 2019. The government had developed a Gurjar gallery in the institute where the nameplate was installed. We recently came to know that the nameplate was defaced by some people with vested interest. We have submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister of India through the Gautam Budh Nagar district administration and urged the authorities to fix the issue at the earliest,” he said.
Sanjay Manjul, the director of the archaeology institute, said that the gallery is closed for the general public. “We are not aware of the issue and have not made any changes in the nameplate. It seems it’s an old video/image that is being circulated,” he said.
The institute is under the aegis of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which operates under the Union ministry of culture. The institute provides archaeological opportunities to citizens and plays an important role in furthering the understanding of the archaeological and historical past of the Indian subcontinent, said sources.
Umesh Chand Nigam, deputy collector, Gautam Budh Nagar, said he received a memorandum from the delegation in this regard. “We have forwarded the memorandum to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO),” he said.
In September 2021, a dispute between the members of the Rajput and Gurjar communities erupted over a statue of the 9th Century king, Samrat Mihir Bhoj, at a college in Greater Noida’s Dadri. The Gurjar community members had alleged that ‘Gurjar’ was deliberately removed from the plaque of the statue, which resulted in a protest.