Graffiti splattered on JNU buildings: Ideological warfare and student unrest continue unabated Graffiti splattered on JNU buildings: Ideological warfare and student unrest continue unabated

Far from becoming the world university it had set out to be, JNU, as it is called for short, has steadily deteriorated into a dump for anarchic, self-serving academics, decadent ideologues shouting empty slogans and splintered but powerless offshoots of the Communist parties. In JNUs own jargon, "disruptionist forces" have come to embody the spirit of the university. Last month, as the university reopened after 46 days, India Today Correspondent Sunel Sethi went to investigate its troubles. His report:

From the main highway, the view is of a cluster of concrete blocks: deceptively small, deceptively peaceful and deceptively instructional. The view from the main quadrangle seems even more typical of a modern-day campus: every inch of wall space is splattered with election posters and graffiti, trendy jeans and khadi kurtas are ubiquitous in the corridors, and in the classes and coffee-house vaguely professorial-looking types abound.

Student James around whom the controversv rages: Allegations of corruption Student James around whom the controversv rages: Allegations of corruption

Yet this isn't an ordinary university. It costs nearly Rs 2 crore a year to maintain, has an allocation of 1,000 acres of prime land for development at its disposal, and probably the highest teacher-student ratio (one teacher for every 10 students) anywhere in the Third World. Most of all, it was blessed, nurtured, and patronised by the most powerful political leader in India - Indira Gandhi, who till recently was also its chancellor.

Today she has washed her hands off the whole business of JNU, so obviously messy, complicated and wasteful that the chancellorship lies unattended. So does the vice-chancellorship, ever since K.R. Narayanan left as the Indian ambassador to the United States in October. And the sprawling administration of the university catering to the needs of just over 3,000 students lies wrecked by inefficiency, mismanagement, factional disputes and faculty backstabbing.

It's the only university where demands for closure in time of crisis are funded by teachers, where norms for admission and promotion of students are openly flouted, and where a single student can paralyse its functioning for nearly a month-and-a-half on account of his suspension. "This was a university that was meant to be the Harvard of the Third World," moans a professor gratefully returning to work after the long closure, "but it seems that it will end up as the Black Hole."

Says another professor: "What JNU lacks is leadership. The man who sits at the top must have a national vision, must be able to rise above petty factionalism, and must command respect from all sections of the teaching and student community. Today, 12 years after its birth, the university is riddled with factionalism, intrigue, corruption, lack of vision, nepotism and unbroken unrest."

Acting Vice-Chancellor Mahale: 'We have been tolerant enough' Acting Vice-Chancellor Mahale: 'We have been tolerant enough'

The reason, as another academic puts it. is that "all lines of communication between professors and students, between junior and senior members of the faculty, between karmacharis and the administrators, and between the vice-chancellor Graffiti splattered on JNU buildings: ideological warfare and student unrest continue unabated and the general body of students and teachers have broken down".

G. Parthasarthy, who was the university's first vice-chancellor for six years, embodied some of the ideal values. Says Bhabani Sen Gupta: "He had the required stature and necessary vision. He knew the art of reconciling diverse interests and groups, of negotiating his way out of deadlocks." Parthasarthy left at the onset of the Emergency. Former member of the Planning Commission and scientific adviser to the Defence Ministry, Dr Nag Choudhuri, who followed him, couldn't handle the situation, especially under the enforced discipline of the Emergency. He was followed by Narayanan, a career diplomat who was appointed almost between postings.

Senior and serious members of JNU's faculty - divided into six autonomous postgraduate schools with specialised branches called "centres" - have lately become so concerned about the prevailing disintegration of the academic citadel, and its descent into political anarchy, that many suggest that the university should be dismembered before it expands further. "Perhaps it's been a mistake to locate JNU in Delhi - at the very centre of political patronage.

Students in a JNU hostel mess: Protws from the pampered? Students in a JNU hostel mess: Protws from the pampered?

Perhaps it would be best to disperse the various schools to different parts of the country - the life sciences to the south, computer sciences to Bombay or Baroda, social sciences to Allahabad or Chandigarh, keeping only the school for international studies in the capital for obvious reasons," says one professor. Says Prof K.P. Mishra, dean of the School of International Studies, in an assessment of the malaise that consumes JNU: "The state of drift in JNU is symptomatic of the national drift. The present situation has arisen because of administrative collapse - we've never had a full time vice-chancellor, always a man with one leg in the university and one outside. We've introduced a system of reserving 20 per cent admissions for "socially deprived" students which has played havoc with the quality of entrants. And we've promoted over-politicised members of the faculty from the very outset. Blatant misuse of these innovative provisions has resulted in the state we're in."

Many Groups: Former MP, M.L. Sondhi, now associate professor in the Centre for International Politics compares JNU to "an automobile assembled with incoherent, if not incompatible, components and spares." Adds Jayashekhar, assistant professor in the Department of Soviet and East European Studies, and also a former secretary of the JNU Teachers' Association: "The emerging tendency here is of continuous appeasement of various sections of the university. Decisions here are based on individuals and their factional support, not their ideological backing."

Fire-eating radicals, for long a JNU trademark, continue to proliferate, but over the years Left-wingers of as many shades as the rainbow have aligned and realigned to complicate politics further. The JNU Students' Union, however, remains in control of the Students Federation of India (SFI), the student wing of the CPI-M.

The All India Students Federaion (AISF), a compartment of the CPI, the National Students Union of India (NSUI) which is a segment of the Congress(I), the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarti Parishad (ABVP) of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are all represented; so is something called the Democratic Students Front (DSF), an amalgam of the Free Thinkers, who shun dogmatic ideology, and Democratic Socialists of the Lohia variety, who have emerged as the third most powerful group after the SFI and AISF.

Brolien - down chairs outside the hostels: Sad state of maintenance Brolien - down chairs outside the hostels: Sad state of maintenance

To these are added a variety of independent Marxists and ideologues engaged in endless harangues on political ideology. As R.G. James, the Malayali student behind the recent trouble puts it: "Everybody here talks about Marxism but no one really knows what class struggle or exploitation is."

The way James tells in, he's been fighting both most of his life. A 32-year-old Ph.D, student working on the origins of the trade union movement in Kerala for his doctorate, James is a colourful blabbermouth, not without a sense of the absurd. His rebelliousness, he says, probably originates for the fact that he comes from a devout Catholic family of nuns and priests in northern Travancore.

A former catering graduate from Coimbatore who came to Delhi in search of a better job, he was a trainee captain at the Oberoi Intercontinental in Delhi but couldn't stand their "monopoly capitalism", then became chef de rang at the Akbar Hotel where he led the CPI's union for which he was twice suspended and once dismissed - before enrolling for an M.A. in JNU which he finished with a first class in 1974.

In 1978 he finished his M.Phil. Since then he has lost elections to the JNU Students' Union five times, the last time as a candidate of the DSF by 26 votes in October 1980. James says his trouble with K.J. Mahale, the genial-looking professor of French who is acting vice-chancellor, but has formerly been provost, rector and dean for Students Welfare of JNU, is not a new one: "I sincerely believe that every cell in his body reeks of corruption."

Specifically, James's allegations against Mahale are: that various financial matters relating to the university are unattended including proper stock registers for the mess, the disappearance of 86 tonnes of steel worth Rs 2 lakh to be used for the new library, and inflated overtime bills worth Rs 7 lakh passed in 1979. These and a host of other allegations, such as an irregular recruitment policy for the faculty and permission for professors to accept teaching assignments abroad without fulfilling their obligations at JNU, form the base of James' attack.

Heated Exchange: The actual incident that triggered off the closure of the University stems also from a heated exchange between James and Mahale. On November 4 last year, James with a delegation of about 20 students, went to Mahale's office to protest against the eviction of an M.Phil Student from the hostel for not having registered or paid his dues. Mahale was receiving a delegation of foreigners in his office.

According to him, James and others began shouting in the corridor outside his office to demand a revocation of the student's expulsion order. "He began to use unparliamentary language of the kind that I don't think is fit repeating," says Mahale. James says Mahale loudly shouted "shut up" to which one of the boys asked Mahale to shut up himself. Apparently, James also barred Mahale from entering his room, then "forcibly entered the room and started shouting obscenities in the presence of the foreign visitors".

Next day James was suspended. Dharnas began outside Mahale's house. A window-pane and two flower pots, according to James, were broken. According to Mahale there was danger of violence. Boycott of classes started. The disorder became so acute that the university had to be closed sine die on November 16. Five days later, Mahale, determined to sort out the matter constitutionally, appointed a one-man inquiry of Prof B.S. Samundri, former vice-chancellor of Guru Nanak University, to go into the incident.

Samundri went into the matter and came out with a two-year expulsion for James. James and six others, including two girls, went on a fast unto death. The health of the fasting girls became critical. Security men were called to evict James from his room. The police followed and broke open his room. All this continued for over six weeks before a face-saving device could be engineered to reopen the university, for the term exams at the end of January, after which, says James, he would reopen the agitation for his reinstatement.

"I have been expelled for two years for saying shut up and for breaking two flower pots and a glass-pane," shouts a belligerent James. Mahale counters by quietly saying that James stands evicted - "we have been tolerant enough". More conservative teachers say that James deserved worse for being so foul-mouthed. "Can you imagine," asks one, "he had the temerity to walk into a teacher's house and say: 'I haven't come to rape your daughter'?"

Farcical though the chain of events leading to the university's closure for over six weeks may appear, they are indicative of the free-for-all politicking that defies all logical argument. "Ideology?" mocks an objective observer of the scene, "There isn't any ideology here. If you follow the events leading to the closure closely, you'll find there isn't even an issue."

For all that, the disruption continues. Although this is the second time in the history of JNU that it has been closed for so long a period - the first was in 1974 when it closed because of a dispute over admissions in the history course - one centre or the other is in trouble almost everyday. "It's become part of us," says Prof Jayashekar.

Admission System: Last year the Centre for Russian Studies - part of the School of Languages - was closed for over a month when teachers decided to strike 35 inactive students off the rolls. Each year, when the university makes new admissions for about 400 entrants, there is further trouble and blatant cheating.

The reason for this is the failure of the seemingly secular admission system, wherein 20 per cent weightage is given to the "socially deprived" - those who either come from a backward region, or are of scheduled caste, or simply belong to a lower-income group. Examination results. based on the system of internal assessment, whereby the student is examined by his teacher alone, tend to be distorted. Both innovations have failed and continue to be misused blatantly.

Such is the extent of misuse of the "socially deprived" clause that it is estimated that 2,000 of JNU's 3,400 students have been admitted under the label; of the nearly 2,000 students in residence in the university's seven hostels, approximately half claim to belong to scheduled tribes or castes. Teachers admit to this system of "open cheating" - but the students still don't stop complaining.

Being among the most pampered of students in a prestige institution of higher learning, they not only get in free, but live on public largesse at minimum expense. All students pay a flat tution fee of Rs 20 a month; another Rs 20 a month for room rent; and about Rs 150 a month for three meals a day. Yet they grumble about the quality of food, and the fact that they are served meat only twice a week.

Of the 1,800 students attending postgraduate courses and another 1,500 working on M. Phil or Ph. D. dissertations, two-thirds manage to get stipends and scholarships varying from Rs 110 to Rs 125 a month. Research scholars do even better: they are entitled to scholarships of Rs 600 a month on merit, liable to be raised to Rs 800 after two years of often spurious research work. According to the JNU's budget estimates for 1980-81, the university will spend about Rs 12,600 per student per year. An additional Rs 5,000 will be spent per student as Sixth Plan expenditure.

Dubious Quality: It may be the most expensive education in India, but is it education at all? Critics of JNU further allege that much of the research undertaken by scholars is of dubious quality, often derivative and unoriginal. Although the university produces about 25 doctorates a year, certain departments - like English and linguistics - have failed altogether in producing anything. Part of the truth about the collapse of academic norms in JNU is that members of the faculty are equally responsible.

There are 61 professors. 166 assistant professors and 11 part-time lecturers on the rolls, many of them living, for 10 per cent of their basic salary, in the beautiful, five and four-roomed double-storeyed houses with gardens, garages and servants quarters built especially for them among the hostels. In addition, there are four wardens in every hostel, one provost for every three, and a dean of Students Welfare.

Yet this experiment in physical proximity and sharing between students and teachers has failed miserably: not only are both groups breathing fire down each other's necks, maintenance in the students' hostels is abysmal. As James himself says of the teaching community: "It would be wrong to single out Mahale or another teacher. It's the whole system that is corrupt. If tomorrow I become corrupt, then it is because the whole of JNU stinks."

In terms of academic intrigue, abdication of responsibility, and abettment of disorder, teachers at JNU are often streets ahead of their students. Start listening anywhere: there are stories of nepotism, harassment, frustration and humiliation. Professor Imtiaz Ahmad, a sociologist in the Centre for Political Studies says that, although he has tutored till 1976 two-thirds of M. Phil dissertations, feelings against him by his department run so high that he has been "debarred from teaching, abused at staff meetings" and is so bitter that he would rather teach anywhere else.

There is more trouble at the Centre for Studies in Science Policy where work has come to a halt since March last because of alleged malfunctioning according to the report of a review committee. And the entire faculty of the Centre for Studies in International Law has vanished abroad - a plain flouting of the JNU charter which says that 20 per cent of the faculty must keep the show going.

Worst of all is the current intrigue for the jobs of chancellor and of vice-chancellor. Since the vice-chancellorship of JNU is a cabinet appointment, a number of academics with Congress (I) sympathies are in the running, a fact which no doubt is disturbing for the hardcore Marxists in control of JNU. Among the names mentioned for the jobs are that of Dr D.S. Kothari, former chairman of the UGC, Dr PL. Malhotra, younger brother of Delhi's Lieutenant Governor Jagmohan and Prof Satish Chandra, another erstwhile chairman of the UGC.

Political patronage for the top jobs is likely to destabilise the university further still. Professors and students along the line will follow suit. There will be more freeloaders, more gheraos, dharnas, hunger-strikes and closures, greater charges of corruption and nepotism, till radical changes are recommended in the functioning of India's greatest academic white elephant.

Although the Education Ministry wishes to appoint a retired Supreme Court judge, A.C. Vaidyalingam, to inquire into the working of the university, chances are that for the two-third of all JNU students on scholarship, the grants and subsidies will continue.

As one student who has been there four years casually puts it: "If you want to talk about class exploitation you come to JNU. And if you want to see "exploitation of public money you also come here. It's the only university in the world where they provide you a free bus service to go and protest at the airport when a foreign dignitary arrives."