Browbeating A University For Its Secular VC

Nalini Taneja

THE imminent action by the UGC against Sree Sankaracharya Sanskrit University, headed by K N Panikkar as Vice Chancellor, is a warning to the states that they think twice about appointing a VC with secular and leftist credentials. Because if they do so and allow him to function in an autonomous fashion, they may find the University’s funding cut off. The recent public campaign in the media by the Sangh Parivar and the RSS linked members of a UGC team that visited the University is also a sign of what is in store for Universities where academics and administrative heads do not fall in line. What has added to their ire in this case is that a University with ‘Shankaracharya’ in its name and Sanskrit studies as part of its agenda should have at its helm of affairs an outspoken critic of Hindutva.

A COMMUNAL AGENDA

We are familiar with cuts in posts, increase in workloads to push through the UGC’s line of privatisation and its moves towards withdrawal of the State from funding higher education. We have also become familiar with the coercive and manipulative methods employed by the Hindutva inspired education ministry in taking over academic and research bodies and giving a communal direction to research and archaeology, and in changing the content of school texbooks. What we have here is a straightforward declaration, according to a news report in The Hindu (July 4, 2003), that a University is considered ineligible for funding because of the “relative insignificance” of Sanskrit in its curriculum.

A three member panel had visited the university on May 2, but in the characteristic style of the Sangh Parivar while the UGC is yet to send in a formal report or query, some RSS members linked with it have gone to the local media from where the RSS and BJP ideologues in the state have taken cue to attack the well known historian and also to justify UGC’s denial of aid to the University. In an article on the editorial page of a prominent Malayalam daily P Parmeswaran (Kerala based RSS ideologue) has questioned the “wisdom” of appointing Professor Panikkar as VC and also predicted “certain doom” for the University if he is allowed to continue. Among their complaints against him is that he travels all over the world and talks against Hindutva, and has been talking in Chennai against the anti-conversions Bill. He is ineligible to be VC also because he does not belong to the Sanskrit discipline.

QUESTIONABLE OBJECTIONS

And what are their objections with regard to the manner in which he runs the University? That he has not given significance to Sanskrit, that there are so many other departments devoted to teaching Urdu, History, Political Science and other such subjects in a sanskrit University, that appointments for 9 Deans have not been made, that there is no department of Indology etc.

This may fool those not connected with issues of higher education for it can be made to sound logical in newspapers that a Sanskrit University must give prominence to Sanskrit, and why should there be only one department for it as the sangh parivar alleges?

In actual fact there is not just one, but five departments linked with Sanskrit studies. Four of these are departments of Sahitya, Vedanta, Nyaya and Vyakarana, the fifth one dealing with other studies such as Ayurveda and Vastuvidya. Besides the University also has a School of Vedic Studies. In the last two years courses on Comparative Literature, Theatre and Music at the Post Graduate level and Translation Studies and Manuscriptology at the M Phil level have also been introduced. According to The Hindu report the University had earlier taken up recording of Sama Veda, which has now been completed. It is also part of a UNESCO project on Koodiyattam, the purest form of Sanskrit dance dramas, and other similar projects are being run.

The problem is that objections are being raised on the question of having departments of Urdu and Malyalam, and why there should be as many as 12 departments linked with the social sciences. Such objections and demands that only sanskrit studies be incorporated in the University programmes is against the guidelines for Universities of the government of India, and the UGC rules which clearly state that all Universities must be multi-disciplinary. Thus they are questioning the very character of its institutional structure, and attempting to browbeat the University for not falling in line with converting this modern university into a Sanskrit Vidyapeeth, following the Pathshala pattern.

UNDERMINING ACADEMIC AUTONOMY

So-called “reports” (in this case yet to be communicated officially to the University), do not contibute to strengthening the university structures. By rules, the UGC can give suggestions; it cannot deny funds on the basis of what the university decides to teach, which are the domain of Academic Councils and other statutory bodies of the Universities. Such attempts by the UGC are, therefore, a clear attack on the autonomy of the universities. Besides the character of a university is decided by the state assembly, by its legislature. Attempts by UGC or the MHRD to change its character by forcing closure of some courses by denying funds and promoting those that suit their political agenda is tantamount to undermining the Federal principle of our polity.

For record, the Sree Sankaracharya Sanskrit University has been doing very well since Professor  Panikkar took over as Vice Chancellor. As The Hindu report shows, apart from the fact that examinations take place on time and that the admission process has been revamped and made transparent, and a credit and grading system introduced, the University has one of the best libraries in the state, which is fully computerised and subscribes to about 200 journals on language, literature, fine arts and social sciences.

The attack on Professor KN Panikkar by the Hindutva forces and attempts by the UGC to browbeat the University by denying funds is clearly part of their communal agenda. It is of a series in transforming the character of all our secular educational institutions and carrying on a vilification campaign against our most respected academics in order to discredit them in the public eye. Unfortunately for them, in this case as in many others, the person they are seeking to vilify is a historian too well known not just in Kerala but also in the entire country for his commitment to secularism and for his honesty in academic pursuits. Yet it is important that we be alert on such attacks on our universities and our secular intellectuals because they are increasingly becoming the norm rather than an exception, and the undermining of the academic autonomy of educational institutions can only benefit the right wing political agenda.