HVK Archives: New dawn at JNU?
New dawn at JNU? - Business Standard
TCA Srinivasa-Raghavan
()
21 October 1996
Title : New dawn at JNU?
Author : TCA Srinivasa-Raghavan
Publication : Business Standard
Date : October 21, 1996
Few things in recent times have given me more perverse
satisfaction than the outcome of the latest students'
union election at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)
in Delhi. Having been a stronghold of the Left for almost
a quarter of a century, the union has now been captured,
most devastatingly, by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi
Parishad (ABVP) which is the students wing of the BJP As
the poet said in another context, 0 tempora, 0 mores.
How will the Left, which regards JNU with a proprietorial
eye, fight back? Will the Leftist academics suddenly
discover the virtues of Hindutva? Not immediately per-
haps but, going by the way some of them have changed
direction in the past, I won't be surprised if it happens
fairly soon. So I, for one, am going to follow the
twists and turns of JNU politics very closely from now
on.
My first encounter with JNU came about 20 years ago. I
was working for Macmillan's then as their economics
editor and was sent by the managing editor to JNU to
scout for some publishable manuscripts. So I went along
to one of the most distinguished names in the economics
industry in India and asked him if he had something we
could publish.
He said, rather more brusquely than was necessary, that
he only published with Oxford University Press (OUP). I
asked him why and he said something about academic stan-
dards. So I reminded him that Keynes had been published
by Macmillan, not to mention Joan Robinson and a host of
other top-flight economists. His reply was typical of
what I later came to recognise as pure JNU. "Yes, but
you represent the Indian Macmillan." I was so shaken that
I forgot to remind him that OUP in India was - and is -
also purely Indian.
Throughout the 1980s I had several minor brushes with
JNU. I recall one memorable seminar in Cambridge where,
most incredibly, I had fetched up one grey November day.
A then young PhD student from JNU, who is now a leading
light amongst the academics there, was presenting a paper
on land reform in India. Having a couple of hours to
kill, I went along for the talk.
As it happened,just a few months previously, Swami Nathan
Aiyar who had been my editor then, had written an article
showing that if all the land declared surplus were re-
distributed amongst the landless, each recipient would
get around 0.4 acres. So, when question time came, I
asked the student about this and how it would help anyone
to have 0.4 acres of probably and land. The reply was
breathtakingly JNU in attitude. "We are talking about the
principle," I was told with disdain.
But, these were harmless incidents, which can't be said
about what happened a few years later in 1989. By then I
was working for The Economic Times and, on the day after
the shilanyas ceremony at Ayodhya, I wrote an editorial
about it. The main points it made was that the Muslim
leadership had been put on notice and that the community
should look for newer and better leaders because the old
lot had let them down very badly. And remember, this was
just after the Shah Bano affair.
One of my colleagues was fresh from JNU and later on we
became very good friends. But perhaps acting on the
impetuosity of youth, or because of pressure from his JNU
mates, he wrote off a complaint to the editor saying that
the editorial was communal and indirectly suggested that
I was, too. I was furious when I found out but in retro-
spect, this was consistent with the so-called liberal
view which holds, one, that Muslim politics should be
discussed only by Muslims and, two, others who do so must
be communal.
I must mention, in this context, another example of the
JNU type of consistency. When a few weeks ago, Parliament
was debating reservation for women in the Lok Sabha, G M
Banatwala of the Muslim League, went off at a typical
tangent. Forget women, he said, reserve seats for mus-
lims.
A few days later I was at a dinner party where there was
a group of past and present JNU women. I asked them about
Mr Banatwala's speech and the reply was again typical,
namely, that he had a point, never mind women's rights
for the moment. My protestations that there were more
women in India than Muslims cut no ice.
But possibly the greatest harm, in my view, that JNU has
done is in the way it used to teach economics in the
1970s and early 1980s. It spawned a whole lot of ill
trained and misinformed students many of whom have since
gone on to positions of some importance. Their founda-
tion was as weak as their ideology was strong and they
have done a great deal of damage with their muddled
approach to economics. But happily, for the last decade
or so, barring one or two exceptions, JNU has boasted of
one of the best economics faculties in terms of intellec-
tual ability and I have the greatest respect for them -
although from time to time some of them even now tend to
spout some pretty poor economics.
It could be argued, I suppose, that I am making too much
of all this. But the truth is that in spite of its small
size, thanks to the official patronage that JNU has
received, it has captured, as it were, a disproportionate
amount of intellectual space in the country. It has also
arrogated to itself the right to put the seal of approval
again thanks to official patronage. Official patronage
has also lent it an air of moral superiority which anyway
comes so easily to the Left.
The overall result has been an attitude which assumes
that a view is virtuous merely because JNU holds it.
True, this is the hallmark of all strongly ideological
academics. But what is good for ideology and those who
hold it hardly advances the cause of academics.
Second, there has also been a strong version of the party
line, so to speak. To get anywhere in JNU professional-
ly, it is necessary to subscribe to that line. This is
especially true of the history department, which is even
more prone to the pressures of ideological purity.
But with the ABVP making such a major dent in Left domi-
nation - never mind the soothing explanation that it was
because there were too many Left candidates - a whole new
politics may be beginning in JNU. In other universities
this would not have mattered. But in JNU it will, be-
cause those who have all along put ideology before aca-
demics will now have to deal with a different sort of
politics, one which is as assertive as their own has
been.
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