India After Modi

by Ajay Gudavarthy

  ‘Nationalism without a Nation’

  On the day of the public meeting in JNU on 1 February 2016, to protest the police clampdown and demand the release of Kanhaiya Kumar, a handful of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) activists were waving black flags and raising slogans against the massive gathering. They were allowed the space to protest. In no small measure, this reflects the spirit that JNU has stood for all these years. A spirit that stands in complete opposition to the way the current political dispensation has handled students, not at JNU alone but at the University of Hyderabad, Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras), and FTII. A spirit that refuses to be subsumed under the simple-minded, mediocre nationalism of the current dispensation that wishes away every difference of opinion and perceives it as ‘Bharat Ma ka apman’.

  Nations flourish when they instil a sense of belongingness and meaning in their diversity. Universities play an important role in this by contributing towards extending the inclusive character and democratizing social hierarchies. Otherwise, we often end up with ‘nationalism without a nation’. The death of ideas is also the death of a nation. In fact, the persistent crisis of the present government is one of a lack of imagination and failure to create a new energy that often comes with fresh and innovative ideas in a democracy. Growth is stuck, and the government is not willing to innovate new welfare policies that can reinvigorate its social mobilization. Communal polarization had failed both in Delhi and Bihar. The only option was hyperbolic nationalism.

  The unwillingness to look for new political strategies is also reflected in the way the dispensation was handling problems in universities. Rohith Vemula’s case was striking in the way the HRD ministry got itself engulfed in a crisis that became cynical to the point of denying Rohith’s Dalit identity and the role of casteism on campuses. Part of the problem is the disregard for the autonomy of universities and disallowing administrators from tuning in to the mood and aspirations on campuses.

  The way ahead is to listen and understand the way Rohith Vemula and Kanhaiya Kumar have become symbols of a simmering multitude that cannot simply be pushed away or cowed down through the use of force. Even nationalism demands a dialogue. Love for the nation has to be nurtured, not shoved down throats. Diversity has to be acknowledged, not merely by recognizing various social identities, but the ideas that come with them.

  Finally, to eventually resolve the Kashmir issue (we will analyse this issue in some detail in the next section), we need to empathize with why Kashmiris feel so distanced from India, and wedge open a social narrative on the growing majoritarianism and radicalization of the Kashmiri youth, problems of Kashmiri Pandits and their resettlement, and unresolved issues of gender and religion, among other not-so-agreeable features of Kashmiri society. But in order to produce such a dialogue, we need to look into ourselves. Are we prepared for the social spaces that such a political dialogue requires or are we filled with the fear of diversity?

  BJP/RSS and Tacit Consent

  The developments after the crackdown on JNU have surprised and offended the democratic sensibilities of many who have been reflecting and demanding a right to free speech and arguing that dissent is not sedition and that difference of opinion is not necessarily anti-national. However, BJP, on its part, has not dithered from moving from one offensive step to the next. It began with an outrageous arrest of the JNU student union president without any evidence, followed by an assault on him and the assault on journalists and others at court apparently by lawyers, where the police, in an act of brazen impunity, simply looked the other way.42 Furthermore, the then Delhi police commissioner B.S. Bassi asked for evidence against the lawyers even when their video was all over the news. Along with this, Bassi came up with a statement saying that students needed to prove their innocence.43 This, in a sense, stands for a certain kind of brazenness with which support is mobilized for the government in general. As a sideshow, BJP Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) joined the chorus to make the event even more muscular. To begin with, O.P. Sharma beat up a Communist Party of India (CPI) activist, later alleging that it was in response to some anti-India slogans that the activist had raised.44 A Rajasthan MLA asked for Rahul Gandhi to be shot dead for participating in a public meeting in support of Kanhaiya Kumar, while another MLA asked D. Raja of the CPI to shoot his daughter for extending support to Umar Khalid.45 The official BJP spokesperson offered only a token disclaimer but never promised to act against either the lawyers or the MLAs. Much of this was countered as a violation of constitutional morality. Why does the BJP not dither even in the light of mounting criticism and disapproval of the media, academics, legal experts, and other political parties?

  It is perhaps because it is clear as to who it is catering to in staging a spectacle of this nature Even a casual conversation with an auto driver, a street vendor, a shopkeeper, and neighbours in a South Delhi colony would allow one to understand that there is a section among us that does not only approve of but wishes to push and even perhaps participate in public acts of what they feel is patriotism. As one among the lawyers from the Patiala House Court hooliganism row revealed on a video, even the police said they would have joined the assault had they not been in their uniforms.46 The approval is not merely among the subaltern classes, it is perhaps stronger among the upwardly mobile middle class, which has come to value security more than freedom. The ultra-nationalism of the BJP-RSS kind seems to be a tipping point for the sociological distinctions between the elite and the subaltern. It is understandable why various sections of the society have begun to lay premium on security rather than freedom when everyday life is constituted by violations of law—not as an exception but as a norm. The outrage we witnessed at court along with the violent declarations of BJP MLAs, speaks of a malaise more rampant than we would want to believe. Does it look like an aberration only when it gets into media and we watch it from the comfort of our drawing rooms? If one only looks closer, it is evident that public assault—be it of women found drunk in Guwahati, Africans in Delhi and Bangalore, or by khap panchayats in Haryana—is more routinized and less organized. Even the more organized protests of the kind we witnessed against the 16 December rape case, Nirbhaya, in Delhi used the language of public lynching and castration and demanded death penalty for the accused. Along with these public spectacles that draw silent justification and consent for vigilante justice, there is the omnipresent language of the security state that seems to justify collateral damage, extrajudicial killings, and exceptionalism. One needs to only watch one of these successful Bollywood cop movies where a super cop relishes an encounter or an act of delivering street ‘justice’.

  ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ and Vigilante Justice

  The roots of the brazenness that BJP pursues also exist in the way our public morality works. It is, therefore, not surprising that anti-national activities also should, as a rule, go with ‘naked dancing, alcoholism and use of condoms’ in JNU, as one of the BJP MLAs remarked.47 In public morality, perhaps this makes sense. Sexual freedom, freedom to choose one’s life partner, and freedom of speech and anti-national activities are not as far away as we perhaps imagine them to be. Nationalism, patriotism, and symbols that accompany this language are not manufactured only by the BJP. One has to only pause and look back at the famous movement led by Anna Hazare to realize that the symbolism was so common to what we are witnessing today—from slogans of ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ and ‘Vande Mataram’ to waving the national flag and celebrating celibacy and teetotalism as patriotic virtues. What we witnessed with regard to JNU is not an exclusive creation of the BJP and the RSS. Instead, BJP is only consolidating what is perhaps a more general sense of public morality in India. It is to this constituency that the BJP responds and therefore believes that it can afford to ignore and slight those in support of the agitating students in JNU. It is an interrogation of the morality, language, and symbolism that goes in the name of popular culture and populism that we would begin to make gains against spaces that are clo
sing in on us. The present political dispensation under Mr Modi has undoubtedly provided us with an opportunity, and we need to only look beyond the smokescreen.

  Autonomy of Universities and a Life of the Mind

  One of the features of the Modi regime was the apparent crackdown on various institutions of higher education, including TISS, FTII, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), University of Hyderabad, and of course, JNU.48 Autonomy of universities granted by the Parliament and the culture of speaking truth to power under Modi seemed to be systematically undermined through various methods—including posting those close to the RSS as the heads of administrative positions, removal of grievance mechanisms internal to these institutions, and removal of individual faculty opposed to the viewpoint of the ruling dispensation. BJP dispensation led by the RSS does not imagine universities as sites of autonomy where a life of the mind is fostered; instead they see them as citadels of discipline, efficiency, loyalty, and standardization.49

  Quality and work ethic have been a long-term problem in India’s higher education. The strange situation in India, in comparison with foreign universities in the US and Europe, has been that of having a few institutions of global quality and the rest remaining in the backwaters of the educational system. The best of our institutions and scholarship is comparable to global standards and our worst is as worst as that of any other lesser developed nations. The problem is posed by the middle-level institutions; while they maintain a bare threshold level in the US and Europe, our institutions fare rather poorly. The primary reason for having a poor average has been both poor infrastructure and even poorer work ethic. When analysts of social policy want a robust state intervention, they hardly reflect on how to bring about a better and more accountable work ethic.50

  Further, over the last few decades, there has been an erosion of the quality of state universities and institutions in comparison with the Central universities. In the 1970s, the best of scholars who returned with degrees from foreign universities returned to their home states and contributed to their growth. Universities such as Allahabad and BHU in the North, and Osmania and Madras universities in the South were recognized as top-rated universities. However, over the last few decades, these institutions have witnessed a terminal decline. They declined primarily because of poor funding from state governments, owing to which the best of the faculty migrated to central universities, essentially located in Delhi.51 Universities such as the IITs, JNU, and DU, while undoubtedly contributing a great deal in pursuing globally recognizable research, nevertheless have singularly undermined the state universities by poaching on the best available scholarship in these institutions. Better academic atmosphere, more autonomy, and differential payments made central universities more attractive, while the institutions of state government became dens of ‘ignorance and isolationism’. They collapsed into sites of inbreeding, networking, and kinship-based recruitment. Added to that or owing to that was poor work ethic and infrastructural facilities. In much of North India, higher education simply caved in with dysfunctional universities and an education of abysmal standards.52

  Global Ranking and Differential Education

  After India became a signatory to the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement on educational institutions, overnight, there was a realization of the need to stand up to global standards. And global ranking has made this even starker. The urge to figure in the top 200 universities of the world has prompted changes in the way higher education was being regulated by the University Grants Commission, and later by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). As part of the ongoing changes, the UGC has come up with its latest order—UGC (Categorization of Universities for Grant of Graded Autonomy) Regulations, 2017. Under this order, it is stated:

  The Commission may have different provisions for different categories of Institutions as defined in Clause 3.1 with the objective of giving higher levels of autonomy to Institutions under Category I compared to institutions under Categories II or III, and to institutions under Category II compared to institutions under Category III. 4.2 While framing any Regulation, the Commission may also sub-categorize any of the Categories in that Regulation to give a differentiated autonomy under that specific Regulation to institutions within that category.

  This is a far-reaching regulatory order that is probably recognizing that there is a massive gap between the quality of education provided by the various universities; essentially, the gap is between state and central universities. However, in recognizing the gap, the UGC is promulgating graded autonomy, which in effect will also mean providing graded funding to the differentially located universities that would only end up exacerbating those differences.53 The primary reason is that there is neither a concerted effort to understand the reasons behind differential performance and outcome, nor is there desire to protect, nurture, and improve the poorly performing universities. Instead, in line with the rest of the policy framework, only public institutions of standing will be retained for state funding and the rest would be eased out gradually, yielding space for private universities. Private universities, going by their track records, perhaps have had a far worst-off track record compared to even the poorly performing state universities. Quality has never been the mainstay of private universities; instead, what they brought in was job-oriented courses that offered some kind of opportunities. In essence, what the current government intends to do is to phase out public-funded universities the way state-owned industries, airways, railways, telecom, and postal services have gradually been shrinking.

  Research cannot be improved merely by regulating universities; instead, they need efforts to create an enabling atmosphere for which it is imperative to grant more autonomy, better funding, and new instruments to regulate work ethic. Work ethic has been a long-standing problem. In order to improve the work ethic and output, it is imperative to address the impending problems that include linguistic skills, bringing local knowledge systems into formal structures, and improving diversity through more representative schemes. If the developments in JNU are a case in point, where there has been a massive seat-cut in the name of teacher-student ratio and maintaining quality, it is only apparent that quality is only a trope to pursue marketization and commercialization of the education system in India. These policies will be disempowering a majority, pushing them into technical and vocational education and reserving higher education to a privileged few; whether the open democratic system India will succeed in resisting this is a question that one has to wait and answer.

  JNU: Mandatory Attendance

  Following the administrative orders that attempt to create a differential system between various state and central universities, individual university heads across the nation took various measures to undermine the basic ethics of higher education that provide an atmosphere of freedom to think, write, and reflect. One such measure that led to a series of protests was the imposition of mandatory attendance in JNU in 2018. Administration in JNU pushed for a mandatory 75% attendance as the minimum eligibility criterion for students to take exams and be eligible for the degrees they are pursuing.54

  JNU, perhaps, comes closest to Ivan Illich’s dream of ‘de-schooling’55 and creating decentralized webs of learning, since universal education is not possible through an institutionalized education system. The university is a rare combination of institutionalized learning and de-institutionalized living of a life of the mind. You learn by living a philosophy. This ‘authenticity’ is what is troubling the current Right-wing dispensation because for them, a ‘life of the mind’, goes against an established order of things. An additional problem that afflicts the current administration in JNU is the double-edged problem of seemingly improving academic standards but essentially undermining the basic ethos of a university.

  On the one hand, current vice-chancellor Prof. M. Jagadish Kumar received the award for best university for JNU from the President of India, and on the other, there are claims that the varsity is a space for ‘anti-natio
nal’ activities and that faculty appointments have been made in violation of procedures and are way below the available talent pool in the country. One ‘advantage’ that Right-wing politics seems to enjoy is that they are ‘liberated’ from both commitments and convictions.

  Sushma Swaraj, minister for external affairs, praised the IITs, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), and other premier institutions at the United Nations (UN) to belittle Pakistan, but in reality, the Right wingers appear to be undermining the same institutions.56 In fact, the current dispensation at JNU is using mediocrity as a weapon against the system. All those who were at the margins of the current liberal/English educational system are being talked into dislodging the best practices and introducing a ‘tradition’ of discipline and control. Making attendance compulsory for students is yet another step in furthering this not-so-hidden agenda. Refresher courses that are meant for lecturers are being organized in JNU and other universities with a circular asking not to invite or organize lectures that are ‘anti-national’. This attempt to completely control the system is born out of both a sense of academic inferiority and construing freedom to think and live a life of the mind as at best anarchic.