The vice-chancellor (VC) of Delhi University, Yogesh Singh, last week exhorted the audience at a program in the conference hall of the university to think about giving up neutrality and choosing the side of ‘rashtra hit’ (national interest). The program was for the launch of a book titled Modi VS Khan Market Gang. Apart from the VC and some top officials of the university, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) functionaries were also present as dignitaries. A large number of college principals, teachers, and students were in the audience. The hall was jam-packed.
What could be more gratifying for any university than to have such a large number of teachers and students turn up for the launch of a book? Anyone who knows the reality of the university, and is aware of the reluctance of its students and teachers to read a whole book, might be pleasantly surprised to see such a public demonstration of interest in one. That students turn up in such large numbers for any such intellectual discussion can only be a good sign.
We know, however, that reality is different. As the title of the book makes clear, this is not a book that has anything to do with knowledge or scholarship, which is the business of a university. Instead, it is a propaganda pamphlet.
The name of the book clearly suggests that it is part of a glorification drive for Modi. We need to ask whether it is appropriate to use university resources for this campaign. What’s worse is that it was not just a platform to idolise Modi. It was actually part of the campaign to defame and demonise the critics of his regime – many of whom teach in the university. It was disappointing to see the VC lend his voice to this anti-intellectual propaganda.
It has been argued that it was not the university‘s own program. The VC and other officers and teachers were there as invitees. But the university has put the complete recording of this program on its website. The VC’s speech has been uploaded separately. Should we now accept that the university‘s resources can be used to promote a ‘book’ which is neither published by the university nor authored by any member of its faculty?
Why is the university website therefore publicising a private program and pro-actively spreading its contents? No one would believe that the principals, teachers and students came in such large numbers because they were curious about the book. Without being unfair to the writer, one can safely say that he is not known for his journalism, which could be a reason for his name drawing people.
Although this is not the first time such an event has happened in the university – and it has often been used as a platform for Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and BJP propaganda over the last ten years – yet, after every such event, one feels humiliated as a member of the DU community. It is sad and frightening to see our academic leaders mocking intellectuals and researchers and labelling them enemies of the nation.
From ‘intellectual terrorists’ to ‘Khan Market Gang’
The term ‘Khan Market Gang’ was coined by Modi as a term of abuse for intellectuals and human rights activists who kept a critical eye on him and his regime. Earlier, in 2014, he had invented a similar term: ‘Five Star Activist’. He had warned judges not to be persuaded by these five-star activists. In the ten years since this advice, human rights organisations have been delicensed and made dysfunctional while activists have been attacked, prosecuted and jailed.
What is this so-called Khan Market Gang? According to the speakers at the meeting, including DU’s VC, it is a network of people spread from Delhi to America who are conspiring against India: defaming it and spreading misinformation about it. This gang has foreign collaborators too. The VC wants us to accept that India has now become synonymous with Modi. Any criticism or probe of his regime is automatically an attack on India.
People like Nobel laureate and renowned scientist Venky Venkatraman, economists Amartya Sen and Raghuram Rajan, writers Salman Rushdie and Ashok Vajpayee, historians Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, Uma Chakravarti and Nayantara Sahgal are part of the Khan Market Gang. When I hear this, I recall that it was Murali Manohar Joshi, education minister in the first NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who had coined termed them “intellectual terrorists.” Those intellectual terrorists of the NDA 1 have now become the Khan Market gang.
The VC said that it is being mischievously claimed by this gang that India is slipping down on the democracy index and other indices. “What can be a bigger lie than this? How correct is it to say that the country is falling below many sub-Saharan countries on the hunger index when Modi is feeding 800 million people free of charge?’
The VC was particularly upset that an organisation, V-Dem, from a “tiny country” like Sweden, had the temerity to rate the health of democracy in India. As if being small in size and population is a disqualifier in itself and being huge in size is proof of greatness. “How can an organization from ‘such a tiny country’ dare talk about a huge country like India!”
The VC did not feel a need to consider why political scientists who study democracy trust V-Dem. Similarly, experts around the world have not cast doubt on the Hunger Index, Press Freedom Index or Human Rights Index. It is governments, including the Modi government, that keeps rejecting them because they show a mirror reflecting their ugliness.
Wouldn’t it be good for him to organise a conference of political scientists of different hues to sit across the table and discuss how credible these international indicators are?
Attack on academia as ‘national interest’
The university is a gathering of experts who study societies, democracy, public health, hunger, etc. Often their work leads them to question the claims of their regimes. It should be concerning that their expertise is dismissed as intrigue or conspiracy. If experts and researchers are attacked in the university itself, and if the VC joins that attack, then what will happen to the enterprise of knowledge?
The VC wanted people to serve the national interest. How do universities serve national interest? By doing their job.
The work of a university is the creation and expansion of knowledge. It has been accepted worldwide that knowledge always advances by asking questions. What is established and accepted by authorities must be subjected to scrutiny. By disseminating Stalin’s words as knowledge, the universities of the Soviet Union did not serve the national interest but worked against it. Similarly, when Chinese universities expelled teachers and researchers by obeying Mao’s orders during the Cultural Revolution, they were not working in the national interest. When American and European universities barred discussion on Palestine, they went against the duty of knowledge bodies and consequently their nation. I am not working for national interest if I do not critically examine official knowledge. If I do not do that, I fail the dharma of my trade and also fail my nation. Leading the nation into deception may favour the ruling party and leader but is certainly a disservice to the people and the nation.
Just by looking at the banner of this program, one could see that it was a campaign program of the BJP. The university has made itself an active propagandist of BJP and RSS interests. But BJP’s propaganda and national interest are not one and the same.
The VC wanted to choose a side and leave neutrality. We also beseech him not to be an onlooker in the battle between knowledge and regime. He should choose the side of knowledge.
We would like to tell our academic leaders that their job is to protect knowledge from the onslaught of power, to give it a safe environment to flourish. It is certainly not their job to open the gates of universities to those in power and join them in trampling the garden of knowledge.
Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at Delhi University.
