THE UNIVERSITY UNDER SIEGE

The University and Its Outside

Udaya Kumar

In the new conception being

put forward by the government,
the university is considered as
a skill factory which, through
mass production, will address the
needs of the countrys economy.
This model thinks of universities
not as laboratories of thought
but as factories where activities
are performed in unison. Instead
of a cohabitation of differences
in friendship and respectful,
heated disagreement, you have a
paranoid fantasy that gets rid of
all real diversity.

ecent events in the Jawaharlal

Nehru University (JNU) and the
strong, widespread responses
they provoked indicate two things. First,
what is at stake in the JNU crisis goes
beyond the destiny of a particular
university, or even questions of higher
education, foreboding wider repression
of freedoms in society. Second, in the
current contestation over the scope of
democracy, the public university as an
institution and intellectual space is
placed in a position of vital significance.
Similarities between the situations that
arose in the Hyderabad Central University, Jadavpur University and JNU have
been instructive. In all these instances,
the state and a section of the population
sought to reconfigure the university
space and enforce new limits to what
can take place there. Has the Indian
university become the visible site where
the imminent futures of freedom and
democracy are being thought and
fought over?
Special Relationship

Udaya Kumar (udayaxkumar@gmail.com)

teaches English at the Jawaharlal Nehru
University.
Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

MARCH 12, 2016

The university as an institution has a

special relationship to society at large: it
is commonly recognised that its larger
societal functions can be fulfilled only
under certain conditions of autonomy.
At the same time, shifts in the relationship between the university and its outside can have a vital impact on its space
and the energies mobilised there: they
may enhance the universitys autonomous
responsiveness to society or hamper its
institutional integrity.
The past four or five years, dating
from the last years of the United Progessive Alliance (UPA)-II government, saw
an intensification of government interference in the functioning of university
administrations. Fresh dimensions have
been added to this under the new regime:
now government intervention has become
more blatant and direct; it is often
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prompted and accompanied by aggressive political campaigning against the

freedoms enjoyed by universities, sometimes leading to violent onslaughts from
politically organised vigilante groups.
Student protests have been increasingly
confronted by belligerent mobs and a
police force that seems to abdicate all
autonomy of functioning. The events
that unfolded in New Delhi in the Patiala
court compound on 15 and 17 February
offer the starkest example of this, but
they are by no means unique. Occupy
UGC (University Grants Commission)
protests and the students march near
the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)
office in Jhandewalan in the wake of
Rohith Vemulas suicide were handled
with brute force, with newspapers and
television channels reporting the participation of plain-clothes men in the latter
crackdown.
Catchword of Anti-national
The catchword anti-national has been
prominent in these aggressive campaigns
as a tool for mobilisation and self-justification. Although the phrase has been
in active use in right-wing political
discourse for some time, it has acquired
a new salience in the attack on universities. It was heard repeatedly during
the developments in Hyderabad Central
University that led to Rohith Vemulas
suspension and later his suicide. It has
acquired a new, deafening loudness in
the past weeks in the context of JNU.
Whether it be capital punishment, or
judgments pronounced by courts, or
human rights violations by armed forces,
or the suppression of political dissent
by the state, the expression of views
critical of them within university campuses are portrayed as anti-national
actions. Devoid of conceptual specificity, the phrase anti-national does
not allow patient scrutiny: it does not
permit critical unpacking, invalidation,
or self- delimitation. Without any foundation in the Constitution or legal
structures, the phrase works as aggressive name-calling which singles out
persons and views to publicly incite and
direct punitive action.
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THE UNIVERSITY UNDER SIEGE

Branding adversaries as anti-nationals

allows political formations to mobilise
an irate public whose self-authorisation
as spokespersons for the nation resides
solely in the divisive force of accusation
and in the violent demand for punishment. Courts have in the past cautioned
that opinions against the government or
belief in an alternative vision of society
cannot in itself be termed as illegal, in
the absence of evidence of actions
aimed at destroying the state. Such vital
distinctions are erased by the punitive
rhetoric of offended nationalism. The
alarming frequency with which cases
are registered and people arrested for
expression of views on social media or
campus publications indicates that the
harassment of prosecution is being used
as a form of punishment, regardless of
the legal tenability of the charges. The
convergence of state machinery, political
discourse, and mob aggression has produced an atmosphere of siege in many
university campuses.

The recent escalation of government

intervention has made the university
alarmingly vulnerable to an outside
beyond its control. Over the past year,
newspapers reported several stand-offs
between the government and the administration of central universities and
Indian Institutes of Technology. Many
vice chancellors and administrative
heads now face the same sense of disenfranchisement that faculty members in
universities experienced for the past
few years. Press reports on the highhandedness displayed by the government in its interactions with university
vice chancellors and other institutional
functionaries seem to confirm the change
in the relations between the state and
the university. The earlier pretence of
non-expertise on the part of the Ministry of Human Resource Development
has given way to the discrediting of expertise and autonomy with an ugly
insistence on showing who is the boss,
taking the form, if the press is to be
believed, of asking who pays your salary?

Link to Other Changes

These recent developments, however,
cannot be viewed in isolation. Under the
UPA-II regime, major changes in higher
education were initiated and imposed
on universities without consultation or
public discussion. This was dramatically
demonstrated in the case of Delhi
University, where a series of hastily
formulated curricular reforms were forced
without serious academic deliberation
by making a mockery of institutional
mechanisms. Ironically, the very argument
about university autonomy was used then
in order to pre-empt critical scrutiny by
courts or Parliament. Autocratic methods
of bullying the academic community
into submission have been used in other
Indian universities as well. Such moves
have often been viewed by critics against
the backdrop of a projected transformation of Indian higher education through
increased privatisation and globalisation.
Their immediate consequence however
has been a dramatic erosion in institutional procedures and academic standards
caused by the hasty cobbling together of
syllabi and teaching programmes, questionable appointments, and a cynical disregard for collective deliberation.
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Reconfiguring the Relationship

This question may be read as a sign of
current attempts to reconfigure the relations between the university and its
outside in a language of hostility and
control. This is present not only in
governmental intervention in the universitys functioning; we also find it in
the recent prominence of the figure of
the taxpayer in public discussions on
education. Although tax regimes are
devised for the fulfilment of larger societal
objectives and do not confer any special
rights to those who pay personal taxes
as opposed to sections of the population
that are exempted from taxation, the
taxpayer is projected as a figure of
special entitlement in contrast to the
public or society.
The rhetoric around the taxpayer
subverts inclusive conceptions of public
interest by producing a distinction between taxpayers and spongers, and
arrogates a differential right to dictate
the terms on which public funds should
be spent. Education is seen less as a
vital resource valued and maintained in
collective interest than as a site of economic investment where the funders,

that is, the taxpayers, have a right to set

societal agendas and objectives. This
differentiation of the publicdividing it
on the basis of graded rights in deciding
public mattersis interestingly accompanied by a trend in the opposite direction. That which is excluded appears not
as an inclusive, deliberating public before which contesting views on public
interest and public spendingranging
from military expenditure to health and
educationcan be raised. It assumes
the form of aggressive trolls or politically
organised mobs that regard inclusive
public discussion as an enemy.
Expansion of the University
We should not think that shifts in the
relationship between the university and
its outside have always been towards hostile confrontation. The most significant
change in higher education in independent India has perhaps been the expansion over the last decade of reservation
to backward classes, and this has led to
major changes in the texture of central
universities. This, combined with the
award of scholarships for MPhil and PhD
students who did not have funding
through the UGCs competitive Junior
Research Fellowship (JRF) examination
(a measure whose withdrawal provoked
the Occupy UGC protests) made it possible for the first time for students of
weaker social backgrounds to pursue
university education to advanced levels
on a large scale. This has significantly
altered the predominantly upper-caste,
middle-class character of the student
body and redefining the relations between the intellectual activities in the
university and the world outside. This
unprecedented enhancement of diversity
in economic, social and linguistic backgrounds has posed important challenges
for mass higher education in India in
terms of facilities, infrastructure, provisions for close academic support and
mentorship,
andimportantlyattitudes, much of which remains insufficiently addressed till now. However, the
presence of a large student population
from socially underprivileged sections
has increasingly inflected and transformed idioms of political thinking and
practice on campuses.

MARCH 12, 2016

vol lI no 11

EPW

Economic & Political Weekly

THE UNIVERSITY UNDER SIEGE

Many institutional habits which remained invisible, naturalised and unchallenged over the decades have been questioned in recent years for their discriminatory character, and a new, more inclusive academic culture is being demanded.
The public university seems placed at
the moment at the crossroads of these
two forces: the state and a punitive public
trying to curtail its autonomy as a space,
and the democratisation of the student
body altering the character, concerns
and relationship of the university to
society at large.
The last government and the present
one have emphasised the need for a
massive expansion of higher education
to larger numbers of students. However,
this is not conceived as an expansion of
what we have known as the university
space. Mass higher education is increasingly conceived as a technological endeavour realisable through online courses
or mass contact classes which does not
need to create the time and space for
debates and discussions typical of university campuses. Projected descriptions
of the public university dispense with
critical thinking, an idea that has been
central to the universitys self-image as
knowledge-creator for a long time. The
vital contribution of the university to the
world was understood not merely as
supplying skills needed by society but
also critical and innovative thinking
which enabled social transformation in
accordance with the times. Criticism
works by an inherent tension with dominant norms and structures, through a
refusal to accept the authority of ideas
as given and by opening them up for
scrutiny. The acquisition and dissemination
of knowledge within the university takes
place within the horizon of this larger
aspiration to innovate and critically
transform existing fields of knowledge
and life.
University as a Skill Factory
In the new conception being put forward
by the government, the university is
considered as a skill factory which
through mass production will address
the needs of the countrys economy. Critical thought is regarded as an outmoded
ambition, an irritant that impedes the
Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

MARCH 12, 2016

smooth accomplishment of this aim. In

the protected space of the university, the
implicit valorisation of critical thinking
has served to link the classroom to its
outside: political debates and intellectual
conversations on campus connect in
creative ways with the classroom, and
serve as much as sources of education as
formal academic instruction. Universities
can foster critical thinking only if they
permit students to engage and experiment with diverse points of view in an
atmosphere free of fear and the threat of
violence. New policies seem to envisage
a different kind of public university,
where disciplined acquisition of skills is
the only role assigned to students. They
are not imagined as possessing any
non-curricular intellectual subjectivity.
Thought and expression outside the
classroom are being considered as part
of the domain of discipline. The suggestion seems to be that governments will
decide what sorts of non-curricular
activities are permissible.
This approach does not recognise the
university student as an adult, as an
autonomous individual. He/she has voting
rights and can thus participate in the
most important political choice exercised by citizens, but does not have the
right to thought and expression and the
freedom to experiment with ideas in the
free and protected space of the university.
Such activities are becoming matters
for surveillance and disciplining. The
increasing obsession on the part of the
UGC and university authorities with
surveillance measures such as closed
circuit TV (CCTV) cameras and police
presence on campuses illustrates this. This
is particularly pronounced in relation to
women students. This new idea of the
university denies adulthood to students,
and considers them as in a state of tutelage and intellectual heteronomy. The
university is being thought of as an
extension of the school, where external
guidance and necessary force are seen
as essential to the maturation of the
child into the adult.
These moves place not only the university student in a state of tutelage; the
university itself as an institution is
reconceived as properly belonging to
such a state. The university is divested of
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the rights to decide for itself, to govern

itself, and set its norms and objectives.
It is treated as a child who cannot be
trusted to decide what is best for it. Who
decides then for the university? Who
has the right to say what is right for
higher education? In the current situation, the government seems to be usurping that position from the university,
aided by political formations and selfauthorising sections of the public. RSS
publications have compiled detailed
information on events that take place in
campuses like JNU and have outlined
plans of course correction. In both
Hyderabad and New Delhi, right-wing
legislators, armed with such information, asked the government to intervene
in the university space and set limits to
permissible activities.
Nationalism is used as a tool to legitimise efforts to determine from outside
what the university ought to allow by
way of independent thinking. The government, in a recent meeting, decided to
install large-sized national flags on
appropriately high flagpoles in central
universities to help induce a spirit of
nationalism. It has been suggested that
military tanks on display on university
campuses will have the necessary totemic
force. Instead of critical practices that
draw their energies from multiple voices
and debate, an intellectual ethos of
silent veneration or choric acclamation
is being proposed. This model thinks of
universities not as laboratories of thought
but as factories where activities are performed in unison. Instead of a cohabitation of differences in friendship and
respectful, heated disagreement, you
have a paranoid fantasy that gets rid of
all real diversity.
Which Future?
Which of these images will fit our public
universities in the years to come? Will
they emerge with a stronger sense of
autonomy and intellectual vibrancy by
drawing on the democratisation of their
space and the new energies of critical
thought this has brought in? Or will they
turn into extended schools which impart
skills and impose discipline? At stake in
current battles is the fate both of the
university and of our democracy.
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