The dismantling of our education system

Months after India won Independence, the country was still engulfed in extreme communal propaganda and violence. Weeks before Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu communalist consumed by the hate propaganda, Jawaharlal Nehru delivered (on 13 December 1947) the convocation address at the diamond jubilee of Allahabad University.

He spoke of the role of universities in building a secular, democratic India where “communalism, separatism, isolationism, untouchability, bigotry and exploitation of man by man have no place, and, while religion is free, it is not allowed to interfere with the political and economic aspects of a nation’s life.”

On the place of universities, he said: “A university stands for humanism. For tolerance, for reason, for the adventure of ideas and the search for truth... If universities discharge their duty adequately, then it is well with the nation and the people. But if the temple of learning itself becomes a home of narrow bigotry and petty objectives, how, then, will a nation prosper or a people grow in stature?”

These words are inscribed under the magnificent statue of Nehru, sculpted by Biman Das and installed in the university named after him — Jawaharlal Nehru University or JNU, in New Delhi.

For decades, Indian universities tried to implement the Nehruvian dream. Independent institutions of learning sprang up all over the country, and a fair number won global recognition. My university JNU, set up a few years after Nehru passed away, tried, from its very inception, to institutionalise Nehruvian ideas of fearless independent thought, a scientific and secular ethos and equal opportunity for all.

In its admissions policy, it factored in disabilities emerging from caste, class and regional backwardness. It demonstrated that affirmative action, giving opportunities to the deprived, does not compromise standards. JNU soon began to be rated, both in India and abroad, as the best university in the country.

It is this education system that is now under attack from the Hindutva ecosystem — and after 2014, when the BJP came to power with an absolute majority at the Centre, the attack has taken on a most virulent form.

Historically, all authoritarian and fascist forces have concentrated their attack on universities because these are nurseries of free thinking. In his memoirs, Peter Drucker, the famous management guru, discusses why and how Hitler and the Nazis attacked Frankfurt University in Germany, which he had to leave once the repression started.

‘Frankfurt was the first University the Nazis tackled, precisely because it was the most self-confidently liberal of major German universities, with faculty that prided itself on its allegiance to scholarship, freedom of conscience and democracy… Its social science faculty, one of the finest and freest in the world, was virtually wiped out overnight... The Nazis knew that control of Frankfurt University would mean control of German academia.’

The attack on the Indian education system follows the Nazi playbook. It is not surprising because the Hindutva ideologues — , who headed the RSS, and Savarkar, who headed the Hindu Mahasabha — had great admiration for the Fascists led by Mussolini and the Nazis led by Hitler.

Shortly after the Hindutva forces came to power at the Centre in 2014, articles began to appear in their journals sharply criticising JNU, which was ranked repeatedly — by the government too — as the top university in the country.

On 12 February 2016, within weeks of the appointment of an RSS-aligned vice-chancellor, JNU came under an orchestrated attack, abetted by propagandist media, which not only cooked up a fake narrative but did worse to make the lies stick. Our students Kanhaiya Kumar, and Anirban Bhattacharya were arrested — and then jailed. Kanhaiya was beaten up in police custody.

There has been no let-up in the campaign to vilify the university and crush dissent by any means possible. Faculty and students who dared to speak up have been targeted — chargesheeted for participating in a peaceful silent march during lunch hour; refused permission to go abroad, even to receive prestigious awards; their pensions and other benefits withheld.

Despite all this, JNU students and faculty have continued to fight back. Over 200 cases were filed against the university in Delhi High Court; most were ultimately won, but at what cost?!

Since the resistance could not be crushed, the effort now is to change the mix of students and faculty. JNU’s time-tested, inclusive admissions policy has been scrapped; faculty recruitments are now based allegedly on ‘lists’ provided by the powers that be; all previous norms for appointment of chairpersons, deans et al, which worked so well for more than four decades, have been abandoned.

The attack is by no means restricted to JNU. Delhi University, with easily one of the best and largest undergraduate programmes in the country and a first-class record at the postgraduate and research levels, is also in the line of fire. So are universities like Jadavpur, Jamia Millia, AMU, BHU and now even the IITs, IIMs and ISER-like institutions facing government interference, and the resultant shrinking of their academic autonomy.

Syllabuses are being framed by the UGC, which was supposed to be only the funding agency. Suddenly, it has become an expert on all subjects. The ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad), the students’ wing , can now determine what can be discussed in a university and who can be invited there to talk. Now the government wishes to control not only what you say in Indian universities but wants to vet what you might say abroad.

A few weeks ago, Prof. Apoorvanand, trenchant critic of the government, was denied his rightful turn (by virtue of his seniority) to become the head of the Hindi department of Delhi University. More recently, he was denied permission to proceed to the US — on invitation from the New School in New York — on grounds that he refused to of his talk for vetting by the home ministry. This must be a new low: never before have faculty in Indian universities been asked to get their talk vetted by the home ministry or their views approved by the ABVP.

‘The temples of learning’ of Nehru’s dreams have indeed become ‘a home of narrow bigotry and petty objectives’. “How, then,” as Nehru asked, “will a nation prosper or a people grow in stature?”

Is it any wonder, then, that lakhs of our students prefer to go abroad for a decent education? And those who cannot afford it — unlike the children of the political and bureaucratic elite — must make the most of a dying public education system or suffer a rapacious private sector that the government will nudge and support.

Aditya Mukherjee is a retired professor of history at JNU and author most recently of Nehru’s India: Past, Present and Future