Author: Kumar Chellappan
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: June 3, 2015
URL:   http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/oped/leftists-stir-the-pot-at-iit-madras.html

The Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle, which led an anti-Modi campaign in IIT Madras campus, came after a humanities department was established at the institute. Card-holding members of the CPI(M) signed in without much delay

 Thanks to the content-starved 24x7 television news channels, the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, has gone global. This has baffled even the management of the parent institution. No questions were asked by the mike-wielding television journalists about the paradox behind the name of the organisation, the APSC. While Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was the country’s intellectual face, Erode Venkata Ramasamy, called Periyar by his followers, was a businessman and had nothing other than money and anarchy as his ideologies.

 The APSC was launched in 2014, and is a fall-out of the establishment of a humanities department at IIT Madras in 2006. The new department was a gift by the former Human Resource Development Minister to his communist friends for the support they extended to the first UPA Government. Why an institute of technology needs a humanities department, is anybody’s guess.

 The new department threw open the gates of IIT Madras to card-holding members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Students Federation of India, who opened a branch of the party in the IIT campus.

 Since the recruitment was held during the UPA Government, the department was filled with Marxists and Maoists. It is not fair to name them all here, but the IIT Madras campus was not the same again once the humanities department started functioning. Girls in science and engineering branches, who used to dress elegantly in their jeans, t-shirts, and other informal, switched over to to other forms of dress. “This is the price we pay for opening up the campus to arts and literature”, a venerated physicist at IIT Madras gloomily said.

 The APSC was a façade to build up an anti-Modi campaign on the campus. A cursory glance at the list of faculty members will prove that they have a hidden agenda to convert the IIT Madras campus into an anti-Modi fortress, like the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. Interestingly, the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy, agitating against the Koodankulam nuclear power plant, had got great support from the APSC.

 Let’s ignore the fiery May 18 speech delivered by Mr Vivekananda Gopal, an academic from Andhra Pradesh. He has every right to speak about the ban on cow slaughter or the land acquisition Bill of the NDA Government. But the run-up to the speech was marked by campaigns and propaganda against Hindus. Posters were put up all over the IIT campus calling the people to ‘destroy Hinduism’. There were many such derogatory posters inciting people on communal lines.

 In the past, the IIT Madras campus has seen people from all sections of society addressing the student community. The list of speakers include Mr Arun Shourie, Ms Teesta Setalwad, Mr Tirunellai Narayana Seshan and others. Though some of the speeches were highly critical of certain political leaders, all were listened to with rapt attention and no controversy was generated. These addresses were all food for thought to the student community.

 But the leaders of the APSC have changed the tone of agitation over the last three days. Since IIT Madras is on its mid-summer vacation, most students are not on campus and will return only after another fortnight. The Ambedkarites and the Periyarites have come out with a new excuse for their outbursts. Their grievances is that IIT Madras is highly brahminical and does not follow the constitutionally mandated reservation system.

 According to Mr Akhil Bharathan, an SFI activist and a seventh year research scholar in humanities, there are only 13 Scheduled Caste/ Scheduled Tribe teachers among the 536 faculty members in IIT Madras. This is no cause for agitation, as professors and researchers in scientific and technological branches should never be categorised as ST, SC or OBC.

 One should have a flair for doing research in the fields of science and engineering. It is because of the mandatory reservation quota that Indian scientific establishments are facing a severe crunch in human resources. It is time for the Government of India to scientifically modify the system of reservation and quota raj without affecting the quality of work.