The leaked educational slides from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia that depicted Hindus as ‘dirty’ and misrepresented the founding of Sikhism. — Picture courtesy of Facebook/P.Kamalanathan

PETALING JAYA, June 16 — Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) claims to have no knowledge of who is responsible for the controversial slides that misrepresented Hinduism and Sikhism.

A source in the administration yesterday said investigations were ongoing, with no leads or clues so far.

“We do not know whether the slides were created or edited by students or lecturers, or whether it is in a lecture or from Malaysia Massive Open Online Course (MOCC),” the source said.

“Nevertheless, things have happened, we just have to wait (until the investigations are completed).”

The source said no deadline was set for the investigation to be completed.

MOCC is an online learning platform for public universities, offering 63 courses to more than 140,000 students.

The slides, which were believed to be part of UTM’s Islamic and Asian Civilisation Studies (Titas) module, had stated among others that Hindus considered dirt on their bodies as part of religious practise to achieve nirvana. Another slide contained inaccurate text on Sikhism.

UTM Indian Student Council president Logadhasan Suwedan said the university had tasked a lecturer to get feedback from affected students about the slides.

“They want to know how they feel about the subject and its content,” he said.

Logadhasan claimed that before the slides became viral online, students had brought them to the attention of the university via a Facebook page.

“The student who studied the subject found that information on the slides are inaccurate and shared it in UTM’s community Facebook page to get the attention of the vice-chancellor,” he said.

“Unfortunately, people have shared in their wall and it went viral.”

Logadhasan said the university had claimed the slides were not an official slide for the subject.

“I was quite surprised with the slides. I studied Titas a few years ago, and never came across such content,” he said.

On Tuesday, Malaysia National Sikhs Movement, former lecturer Ravinder Singh and Malaysia Hindu Dharma Mamandram had lodged police reports against UTM over the slides.