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INCREASINGLY the past seems to resemble another country.

As one struggles to make sense of the attempt, now successful, to force Yogendra Yadav out from the position of Member, UGC, in violation of all rules and norms, ostensibly because his membership of the Aam Aadmi Party renders him unfit to occupy an ‘exalted’ academic institutional position, one cannot but recollect, with sorrow, how far we have travelled down the route to becoming a culture that most values loyalty to those in power.

During the Emergency years, the Ministry of Education instructed the Indian Council of Social Science Research to stop grants to the Gandhian Institute of Studies, Varanasi. The Gandhian Institute had been started by Jayaprakash Narayan, who was also its Chairman and, moreover many of the faculty had opposed the imposition of the Emergency. The order had to be complied with. But, interestingly, the ICSSR, then headed by the late J.P. Naik, quietly awarded fellowships to all the faculty members, partly mitigating the adverse circumstances. Naik Sa’ab, true to form, never talked about it; I only learnt of it from the faculty, once the environment became a little less constrained.

Take another story. A senior researcher, then at Jawaharlal Nehru University, had with the support of an ICSSR grant, collected detailed information on satyagrahis who were participating in the JP movement. During the Emergency, the Ministry of Home Affairs asked for the original schedules. Troubled, the researcher, on advice from Moonis Raza, then the JNU Proctor, handed over the schedules to Naik Sa’ab, and informed the authorities accordingly. When asked to hand over the ‘incriminating’ material, the ministry was told that the data had been misplaced. Months later, once the Emergency had been revoked, Naik Sa’ab invited the researcher for a meal and handed over a sealed package containing the schedules, asking the researcher to check the seals and ensure that nothing was missing.

The Emergency was a strange period. But the proclivity to demand and expect conformity remains deeply ingrained. Let me share another story. Every five years or so, the ICSSR sets up a review committee to examine the performance of each of the institutes it supports. Professor V.M. Dandekar was appointed Chair of the Review Committee of the Centre for the Study of Social Sciences, Calcutta. Many of the faculty at CSSS, Calcutta were of Marxist persuasion; some had reportedly supported the Emergency. The Janata Party, then in power, was keen to teach them a lesson and the ministry desired a negative report so that the grant could be slashed. Dandekar Saab, despite considerable ideological hostility to the Marxists, was uneasy. He informed Naik Sa’ab: ‘I do not like these people. But, I know how difficult it is to build an institution, and how easy it is to destroy it. I will not be party to any such move.’

One can add to such stories, and not only from the ICSSR about whose history during that period I can claim some familiarity with. During my brief exposure to research administration in a variety of institutional settings, it was instructive, and sobering, to learn about how gifted and creative individuals struggled to create an environment conducive to independent thinking and research. Equally, how individuals, institutions and ideas need to be nurtured by firewalling them from the contingent demands of transient rulers – the politicians, bureaucrats and academics – who happen to wield power and, convinced of their own self-worth, are ever willing to discipline and denigrate those who in their perception do not pass the loyalty test.

It is not the case that we once had individuals of a different mettle, or that the times were more propitious. Nor that the proclivity to discipline dissenters is a hallmark of specific regimes. None of our political parties, across the spectrum, can with any degree of honesty claim a more liberal record in these matters. Equally, to read the story of the erosion of institutional autonomy and integrity as emanating primarily from the petty agendas of those in power would be to miss out on the complicity of the academia, forgetting that our ‘leaders’ pander to and abase themselves in front of the officialdom in search of positions, resources, and awards. When institutions and institutional processes are insufficiently robust, it is personalities and access to the influential which begins to matter more.

None of this can excuse the unacceptable behaviour of our educational mandarins and their attempt to discipline those critical of the functioning of the present regime. Tragically, even the young ministers currently running the HRD ministry, and those incharge of seemingly autonomous institutions such as the UGC or ICSSR, have little regard for their own institutional histories, far less what a liberal society needs.

Harsh Sethi