Stifling academic spirit

Apoorvanand

THE suspension of  Rajshri Ranawat, who teaches English at the Jay Narayan Vyas University, Jodhpur should be a matter of national concern. Not only for the academic community but for society as a whole. For, neither has she  been penalised for any financial irregularity, nor for dereliction of duties as a teacher. The university has started this process of punishment to her for having convened a national seminar and giving platform to an eminent scholar like Nivedita Menon. Menon allegedly made derogatory remarks against the soldiers of the Indian Army, questioned the claim of India over Kashmir and insulted the integrity of the Indian nation by showing its map upside down. 

Suspension is no punishment is what the university would say in its defence. Also that it was bound to act as it was reported that the platform of the seminar was used to air anti-national views and denigrate the nation ,which could not be tolerated.  Nivedita Menon has clarified at her blog kafila.online, in great detail, that nothing that is being put in her mouth by the local media is correct. She was invited as a scholar in an academic seminar and was expected to talk about a different notion of nation and nationalism. She was not there to participate in a sloganeering event. She was duty bound, as a true scholar, to complicate the notion of nationalism and encourage her co-participants to think and discuss it in a more complex way. That is what she did.

The seminar that Ranawat organised was again not an exercise in propaganda. It had scholars, activists and political workers from diverse disciplinary and ideological backgrounds. She could not have given them a brief suggesting what to speak and they would not have accepted it as self-respecting scholars either to say something that was not a thought that they themselves had arrived at after scholarly deliberation. It would have been deceptive of them to hide from the students something they knew was crucial but could invite the wrath of the simpletons. This is the risk scholars have always lived with. You have the examples of Jesus, Buddha, Socrates, Mansoor, Galileo, Bruno, etc. The list is long and cuts across religions, faiths and ideologies. That is how knowledge has progressed. Fortunately for the humanity, there have been minds who refused to compromise themselves for mortal safety and longevity.  

Menon, who teaches at the JNU has been under attack from the extreme Hindu right-wingers for nearly a year. It would have been safe for her to take classes, write papers and books and visit universities abroad without getting into the muddy waters of the Indian public space. After all, she does not seek to derive authority for people at large as a politician, she is most happy  being recognised by her students and her peer group which is international in nature. But it also means that she does not have to appease any sensitivity. Her duty is to controvert and not conform. 

Similarly, Ranawat should not have taken the trouble to organise a seminar of this magnitude. She would have kept herself confined to the classroom and her family as all good Indian teachers do, who after getting  a permanent position never go out of the syllabus. They get a good salary, get married after getting this coveted job and raise their families, buying houses and putting money in the share market to enhance their material fortunes.

Rajshri  Ranawat, like Sudha Chaudhary of Mohan Lal Sukhadia University and Snehsata Manav of the Central University, of Haryana belongs to a different league. She is not an insecure academic and therefore she wants her students to come in contact with scholars who are the best in their respective fields. It is tough but she did it, for the love of her vocation as a teacher.

Ranawat is now being made to pay for having performed her duty. This is, of course, not the first case of its kind. As mentioned above, Snehsata was targeted for having staged a play based on  a short story by Mahashweta Devi and Sudha Chaudhary was attacked for having organised a seminar in which Ashok Vohra of the Delhi University spoke. His speech was painted as an insult to the Hindu deities, a totally false and cooked-up charge, but which again was spread with glee by the local media.

A common factor in all these stories is the ABVP, the student arm of the RSS and its other affiliates. Instead of engaging intellectually and academically with the persons they think are their adversaries, they target them physically and drag them in the legal quagmire by filing criminal cases, with the media becoming a willing accomplice. 

Other political parties have become so narrow in their thinking and action that they do not even think incidents like this as issues they need to grapple with. We have lost a common ground on which all differing political actors can stand, the ground of academics which cannot be queered for short-term or petty gains.

What is most unfortunate that the internal life of most of the state universities has become so rotten that persons like Ranawat are left alone to face this assault, which the colleagues know is totally unwarranted and mala fide. If we go deep into it, we find that even the ideological anger that is expressed is only a veneer for some local grudge and the teachers being targeted are chosen simply because they make themselves vulnerable though such extra-academic activities.

Rajasthan is fast turning into an academic arid land. It has introduced textbooks in its schools which are horrible, damaging for the mental health of the children and teachers. Protests from experts have gone unheard and unresponded. Universities have Vice Chancellors who cannot think and act independently. Universities are at the mercy of local strong-arm people.

Rajshri Ranawat has been threatened with dismissal by her Vice Chancellor.. Would  the larger academic community of India silently watch her become a martyr to the cause of education and knowledge creation? Do we really need such martyrs?

The writer is a Professor, Department of Hindi, Delhi University