This article is about the ‘postponement’ of a seminar titled “Bharat Ki Parikalpna: Ateet, Vartman aur Bhavishya” (The Imagination of India: past, present and future) which was to be held in the first week of April in a college of the University of Delhi. I am not naming the college for obvious reasons. I know about the event because I was supposed to participate in it as one of the speakers. But barely 10 days before the scheduled date, this is the email that I got from the college:
Dear Sir,
In continuation of our earlier email, we regret to inform you that due to administrative reasons, the two-day international seminar on the subject “VISION OF INDIA: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE” scheduled to be held on 8th and 9th April, 2025 has been postponed.
We appreciate your understanding and cooperation in this matter.
With regards,
The mail was from the principal of the college. The language is very courteous. It pleads for understanding and cooperation in the matter. I am left wondering what kind of understanding and cooperation is being expected from me by the authorities. The matter is no longer the seminar. It is now the ‘postponement’ of it. So, I write back:
Thank you for the information.
Hope the ground for postponement is reasonable and it is only a postponement and not cancellation.
Thank you for inviting me and for thinking about doing such a discussion.
Sincerely, Apoorvanand
But while writing this reply, I kept thinking about the convener of the seminar who had been talking to me about it for the past month. Looking for more names, asking about their contact details. I could see that he was deeply involved in it and sincerely wanted to ensure diverse voices, viewpoints to be there in the seminar. He told me that he did not have money to bring people from outside Delhi but did want scholars and intellectuals from the North-eastern and the southern parts to be represented, even if online.
He wanted women, tribal, Dalit voices too. As often happens in such seminars, some of the people he wanted were not available and he had to find adequate replacements. If he was exchanging messages with me regarding it, he must be talking to many others. Evidently, he was working hard to organise the event. So why did he not call me? Why this impersonal administrative email instead of a personal note? There was definitely something amiss.
I decided to call him to find out about the real administrative reason behind the decision. It turns out that he was upset with the turn of events. He said that it was wrong on part of the principal to have sent the email of postponement without having discussed it with him. After all, he was the convenor and organiser who had mobilised all the speakers. He was answerable to them.
It is not easy to make scholars agree to participate in a seminar. They have their own academic preoccupations. It is difficult to persuade them to speak at a seminar on a topic they are not currently working on. They have to take time off their work and prepare for it. They also probably keep the dates for you while declining invitations from other places. When you suddenly cancel a seminar, it is this investment of time, energy and intellectual labor that goes to waste. The organiser also loses his credibility. His guests would ideally expect a call from him before this cold mail.
‘It was all because of one name’. He confided. The principal wanted him to be dropped. Was the list not discussed with the principal, I asked? It was, he said. But doubts in the principal’s mind persisted. He had heard that this person was very critical of the regime and of the present university administration. The principal was worried that he could use this platform to make anti-government statements.
The convenor was furious. He said that the person the principal was talking about was a scholar and a senior teacher. He is a responsible intellectual. His profession was teaching and research in his area of knowledge. Critiquing the regime was not his profession. But the principal was insistent. He wanted an undertaking from the organiser that the said speaker would not create problems for the college. The convenor, to end this conversation, gave a commitment to the principal that he would ensure that the speaker behaved. “It was ridiculous but I had to somehow get out of it and reassure the principal,” he said.
Even after this assurance, the principal decided to cancel the seminar. He called him and asked why he was doing it. The principal said that he could not take this risk. The principal asked if the person could be politely asked not to attend. The convenor refused and asked him to wait till they meet after the Eid holiday. But the principal decided to send the mail of postponement bypassing him.
It was a breach of trust and a personal humiliation, my colleague fumed. Of course the problematic speaker would not know the story but he knew what was the real reason. He said that principals today only want one type of speaker to be invited. The non-problematic ones.
Was it only about an individual? No. My friend felt that it went beyond that. There is an attempt to disallow discussion on topics which can make students think. Any seminars which would expose the students to different ways of looking at a problem and making their own decision are not permitted.
For the last 10 years we see only one kind of meets being held in the colleges. They cannot be called academic and intellectual fora. They are platforms created for propaganda for the regime and one kind of ‘Indianness’ or ‘nationalism.’ If you do a survey of the topics across colleges, you would find a monotonous similarity. It is a campaign to indoctrinate young people. For it to succeed, the authorities keep other voices and ideas out of the reach of the students.
We also need to understand that such seminars give teachers an opportunity to engage with their peers who can approach the same issue differently. It helps them in enriching their own scholarship. Such platforms are occasions where academics from different disciplines sit together. This is how you evolve an interdisciplinary culture on the campus.
My colleague said that he would not let the matter rest. It was not about only one individual. But it was also about him. How can you think that one would agree to save the seminar by sacrificing one speaker? It is to compromise the very integrity of academic or scholarly exchange. If you exclude what is thought to be the most problematic viewpoint for the authorities, then what is the point of the whole exercise? Academics do not fear confronting the most disagreeable topics.
I know the said ‘problematic’ colleague. While teasing him about this, I said, “We lost this seminar because of you!” He tried to laugh but this was not the first time this had happened to him. He rarely invited by universities for such talks. So when he gets an invitation, he first tries to dissuade the organiser, knowing that this would happen sooner or later. Recently, he was invited by a university in Delhi to give a public talk. The organiser was sure that she wanted to do it. But a day before the event, he got a letter from her informing him that the talk was being ‘postponed’ because of unforeseen reasons. He later learnt that the organiser was served a show cause notice for inviting him.
Reasons are foreseen though. It is not only him. He can name at least half a dozen names that have been declared persona non grata in academic premises. If a courageous teacher manages to call them, they are bound to get disinvited the previous evening. There are times when students call them but they too are discouraged by the authorities. This list is growing.
This is not the story of Delhi University alone. While this story was unfolding, I was sitting in another state with teachers from different universities. When I told them about this, they opened up. Some of them were from ‘elite’ universities like Ashoka or Krea and Azim Premji University. There too the authorities have become very cautious. Names of the speakers have to be cleared by the authorities. There is an order in one university to share the slides the speakers would use three days before the event. The teachers are also cautioned against going to places that could upset the regime or accepting invitations from people who are considered to be its critics.
I recalled my conversation with one of the top political scientists of India. He was encouraged to leave his job at one of these elite private universities. So his description has changed from political scientist to critic of the regime. He was invited by the faculty of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) to deliver their prestigious Krishna Bharadwaj lecture. He started getting calls from the university office requesting him not to come. These were polite requests asking him to decline the invitation to save himself from any unpleasant situation that might arise if he came to JNU. He told them that this request has to come from the organisers. He cannot dishonour their invitation. Eventually, he went but the hall was locked. So he gave the lecture in the open and it resulted in a larger turnout than what the hall could have accommodated.
Be it public universities or private ones, censorship has become the norm. Certain topics are evaded, certain scholars are avoided. But we think that scholarship is still alive and thriving in Indian universities. The academic show must go on.
