The entrance to the Gurukul Kangri Vishwavidyalaya

New Delhi, Jan. 7: Factions of the Arya Samaj have dragged a 105-year-old university into what they claim is a battle for supremacy within the Hindu reform movement.

Tucked away in the foothills of the Himalayas, about 6km from Hardwar, Gurukul Kangri Vishwavidyalaya was set up by Swami Shraddhananda in 1902 to spread the message of the samaj — chastity and renunciation.

The centrally funded university has been rocked by allegations of corruption and nepotism levelled by the Haryana and Delhi wings of the movement against the university administration, currently controlled by their Punjab counterparts.

The administration has also been charged with shielding officers allegedly implicated in distributing a “sex CD” involving a female teacher, a charge the university has denied.

At a recent meeting with education minister Arjun Singh, the Haryana and Delhi chapters accused the administration of using the university to spread the message of right-wing Hindu organisations.

The gurukul administration said its opponents were “plotting” to gain control of the university, a crucial training ground for Arya Samajis.

The Centre has launched an inquiry into the allegations against the university, based on a 16-page complaint the two state wings tendered to Singh at the meeting.

A five-member team of the University Grants Commission (UGC) will start investigations with a visit to the university later this month, sources said.

“They are ruining the university. They are using the money given by the Centre for their personal luxury and are ruining the values of this great institute,” alleged Mantu Ram Bhagat, the general secretary of the Haryana Arya Samaj.

Although the university is completely funded by the UGC, the Punjab samaj was allowed to control the board of governors of the gurukul in its initial years.

Once Haryana was carved out of Punjab in 1966, a new “unwritten rule” was created, a senior HRD official said.

“The understanding within the Arya Samaj was that the Delhi, Punjab and Haryana chapters of the movement, which came up only after the state split, would take turns at controlling the gurukul board of governors,” the official said.

In the letter to Singh, Swatantra Kumar, the gurukul vice-chancellor, has been accused of billing transport costs for personal visits to Jalandhar and Pathankot to the university.

The letter cites a report from the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), Uttarakhand, which, among other queries, asks the administration to explain how it had used money given by the Centre to buy computers.

But Kumar claims the questions in the cited CAG report had “already been answered satisfactorily”.

“This is an attempt by the Haryana and Delhi wings of the Arya Samaj to take control of the movement in India and elsewhere. The university is just a part of their larger scheme of things,” the vice-chancellor alleged.

Kumar, also the general secretary of the Punjab chapter, has his own share of allegations against his opponents. Before he took over in 2002, the Haryana and Delhi samaj had “conspired to loot” the university, he said. “Money allocated for books was used for personal purposes by them.”

Kumar’s opponents have dismissed the allegations. Swami Agnivesh, a social activist who heads the World Council for Arya Samaj, claims the Punjab faction wants to dethrone him.

“Despite all their corruption, staying in power at the university is necessary for them to have any legitimacy within the Arya Samaj. Their ultimate aim is to take control of the world council,” he said.

Agnivesh alleged that the current administration of the university was preaching the “ideas” of the RSS and the VHP at the university.

“The Arya Samaj movement has always been opposed to the kind of Hinduism the VHP and the RSS preach. The administration, however, is working at the behest of these very people,” he said.

Kumar dismissed the allegations as “untrue”.