‘Our man’ at BHU

THE one-page handwritten letter by girl hostellers is poignant in its simple expectation from the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) authorities: relief from the incessant hounding from the lumpen crowd that had made their lives a living hell. Instead of a hearing, they got the knuckle-duster: bandaged limbs, calumnies and featuring in prime time news. Student agitations are not a novelty in democracy. Several Central Cabinet ministers, including Arun Jaitley and Ravi Shankar Prasad, have cut their teeth in student politics. So it was ingenious of the BHU VC to link the demand for relief from stalking with political activity and to blame leftists who have stood marginalised in UP universities for nearly two decades.

But the old formula to tar students of JNU, IITs and IIMs is not working, if it ever did in the first place, as the string of ABVP defeats in recent university elections testifies. It is bizarre on the part of the university authorities to suggest the paternalistic formula of one-size-fits-all. By claiming the Opposition had infiltrated the protest dharna is also well worn by now and predictably failed to make an impression.

In university after university, there has been a breakdown in communication because the quality of VCs is suspect. They have been rewarded for their political views rather than professional expertise. The problem is they have been exclusively handpicked from the Sangh Parivar school of thought. They are a mediocre bunch; academically suspect, administratively inept and intellectually uninspiring. Aware of their limitations and blessed with a limited world view, the VCs are unequal to the task of consultation and conciliation; instead they try to impose outmoded norms and customs. So instead of reaching out to the restive girls, the BHU VC opted for a sledge hammer approach. The impulse to coerce the students into submission was also driven by a misplaced sense of priority: the PM was in town and his optics must not be impaired. The Centre’s summoning of the VC to Delhi suggests trepidation has set in. After all, student unrest does not take much time to seep into the body politic.