Notes from the battlefield: Baroda

Fingers, body, mouth, skin, semen, mothers, others, a naked prophet- young art historian and researcher Parvez Kabir analyses the depth and force of the historical struggle of FFA, Baroda students against totalitarianism through these notions and notes down the experiential realities of it. He says histories are not written on desktops, but in the battle zones of streets. 

Call it a strategic protest, guerilla warfare or a postmodern battle, the student’s struggle in Baroda has taken a shape that nobody has seen here before. The authorities have never seen something like this, the media has not seen it, the academicians and the public have not seen it before. It has its precedence in Mohammed Ali, the great fighter who immortalized the rope-a-dope technique in boxing. Like the boxer himself, the students have introduced a multifaceted form of fight: from silent and peaceful protests over the street to violently burning the effigy of their enemies, from proper forms of gandhigiri to gentler means of dadagiri, from extraordinary cultural programs to brilliantly written memorandums, its all together. In other words, it is probably for the first time in Baroda that a struggle against the right wing forces has taken such a total shape, layered with strategies and their executions. No wonder that when the students protested outside the university office on the 26th, the V.C and the Registrar stood there, helpless with a smile on their faces. It is a political battle that is being fought not only in the political sphere, but equally in the social and cultural sphere. The students know…if it is lost, it is lost forever. If it is won…they will set an example for generations to come.

I am being passionate about it because I am an active part of the struggle and just a little too attached to give a balanced analysis of the whole happenings. As per events are concerned the students have marched to the Vice Chancellor’s office twice and did not get any satisfactory answers from the authorities regarding their role and involvement in the matters between 9thand14th may. The staffs stood by them, a couple of them let them down even their meeting with their own dean was sad at best. And yet they have made a gigantic impact on the academic circle of Baroda and the local press and public. They have conducted protest theaters, protest musical performances even a protest Garba. There have been more than 200 posters painted, graffiti launched and uncountable leaflets circulated in the last seven days.  Flowers have been sent to the authorities with ‘get well soon’ messages; faculty buildings have been covered and packed with black polythene sheets, mock performances executed in front of the authorities and so on so forth. Violent forms of protests have been followed by extremely playful ones. In short, the students are living the struggle.

Of course, the authorities are living it too. Just a couple of days before, the vice chancellor announced that the police who barged into the faculty with Niraj Jain on 9th May and arrested Chandramohan were actually called by Shivji Panikkar and not by Niraj Jain!! He also said that the police commissioner himself had said so in his report. Those who have seen Niraj Jain on television on that day will remember that he himself said that he brought the police with him. And even if the police is called by Panikkar why the hell they arrested Chandramohan and not Niraj Jain!! But these things do happen. A totalitarian state with its ever growing military mechanism does change facts, fabricate them and use them with all their might. This is just one example. Panikkar may tell the rest of the hundreds.

The students’ struggle is of course not limited to the question of the artistic freedom of expression. To tell the truth…it has never been so. What is being fought here is a total system of oppression, in form of a fundamentalist power. Panikkar’s suspension is one of the demands they are fighting for. The more immediate ones are: 1. appropriate action against the intruders. 2. Legal help for Chandramohan from the university. 3. Immediate quashing of the biased committee and 4. Action against the authorities who failed to do their duty and abused their power to justify the actions of Niraj Jain.

This essay however is not a report of the happenings in the faculty of fine arts in M.S.University [and those who still have doubts I must clarify that it is still known as maharaja Sayajirao University and not Manoj Soni University]. It is rather a collection of fragmented thoughts and experiences that I came across here in the recent past. By nature it is not analytical but experiential and it tries to touch the margins of the events than its center.

Section 1 [people]

People:
There is no such thing as people. We never saw it and are quite doubtful whether it is anything more than an abstract concept. The vice chancellor in his position paper said that the ‘people’ found Chandramohan’s work objectionable. That the people protested against it and that the people are deeply hurt with Shivji Panikkar’s behavior. It is so sad that not a single name has come out, a single face seen and a single signature displayed that might stand for the people. Where are they? The only conclusion can probably be made from here is the word ‘people’ actually stands for a devastating war machine, with no face and no name which is employed by a totalitarian state in a routine manner. It is this machine which took out the 2002 carnage, boycotted the film Parzania and is fuming against us, the artists and academicians. It’s high time to revive the old and traditional meaning of people, with hands and heads and change the dictionary of fascism.

Mothers and others:
It is thinking and sensibility that Niraj Jain and his hooligan associates lack, not passion. They keep asking all the time whether we artists [men who draw naked women] have the courage to draw our mothers and daughters naked as well. One of the staff members jokingly wondered why it is always the mother and the daughter to be drawn in nude. Why do they never ask to draw the father or the brother??
The question is too innocent to be ignored. You see, no one can overlook the masculinist assumptions of the extreme right for whom the female body is hardly more than a mere symbol to rest their claims. The road from mother to motherland is probably the same road which leads from the realm of the symbolic to the realm of violence. Niraj Jain knows it better, who allegedly ‘brought back’ more than 100 Hindu girls who have been married to their Muslim husbands. The religious/caste female body has always been the symbol to preserve, win over and claim for the fundamentalists. The importance of art being practiced in a totalitarian state precisely lies here: it mediates over the symbolic and the real. It is here Chandramohans are needed, no matter how pathetic their works are…they close the gap.

The fate of the Prophet:
On 11th may one of the syndicate members, Deepak Shah had announced that he will award one lakh rupees to the person who draws a naked picture of Prophet Mohammad. He was probably not aware of the fact that representations of Prophet Mohammad do exist, and not all Muslims are eager to vandalize the museums in order of to destroy them. The fact is, the thrust of the argument is not towards Mohammad but the nakedness of him, the helpless, sexualized, scandalizing and repelling image of a prophet who cannot protect his followers. Why do you need such an image? Not in order to show that it is also a possibility, another interpretation, a personal realization of an icon to be identified with or not. That could have been the case. One could have exercised one’s right to ‘interpret’. But what followed his anticipation, his desire was different. A badly drawn image of something came up, helpless and naked, with the title: Mohammad. There were deep consequences, tensions in the city area which thankfully did not culminate in a riot. But the provocation was there: and the form of provocation was different from the examination works of Chandramohan. It was the same day when our faculty members went to see Chandramohan in jail; they met Deepak Shah in the university office. No doubt students feel that the jail is a better place than the office.

Section 2 [administration]

Versions:
Whosoever has gone through the vice chancellor’s position paper, which is entitled: “truth” would learn how not to lose nerve while fabricating facts. The position paper itself is an example of Borges’s book of the infinite: it gets updated everyday, newer and newer fabrications, alterations and additions come up. As a result not a single version of the position paper claim its authenticity and like the truest nature of ‘truth’ in our times, it’s only the versions [even contradictory] that lay their claim on the ‘truth’ of the events. When the faculty staff went to give the vice chancellor an account of the events of 9th may, he refused to listen to them, saying it is simply their version of the event. Quite in the same line when the students met their faculty dean to enquire about the vice chancellor’s meeting with him and tried to tell their experiences, the dean wisely said that he is not interested to hear or see, and the videos that the students have about the events are simply ‘their versions’. One student, frustrated, walked out saying that this cannot be our dean; this is simply ‘their version’ of a dean!!

Results:
Why does it always happen like this! A pioneer art historian of the country is suspended without any reasonable offence, and when the whole faculty students are united together, saying that they want justice first and everything else second, a small section of faculty staffs and 10/15 students are dying to bring back normalcy, taking the moral responsibility to give the students their results. There are continuous demands from more than 200 students that first they want Panikkar back and not the results and yet the small section of angels is desperate to take the results out. What is hilarious in the whole drama is the small sections of staffs are precisely those people who took the least number of classes in the entire year. Why are they so desperate? Is it because since they did not take half of their classes they are dying to lecture? Or is it because they suddenly got a vision that the students are suffering in agony and dying to listen to their voices? First one, I don’t know….second one, I can humbly assure…the students don’t give a damn.

Admission:
No, not in the big sense…I mean it in a less heroic, academic sense. I am thinking about those 15 students and the rest who are waiting at their homes, for the right news, once Panikkar’s suspension is revoked and classes start, they will catch the first train or flight, or even bus or a rickshaw and arrive at the faculty with a big grin over their faces, carefully distributed over their 32 teeth and million muscles. There will be a few of the bachelor’s final year batch who are presently sitting at home and making 20 drawings a day to compete for the admission test for the masters with their classmates who are fighting on street and getting arrested by the police almost in a routine manner. How it ever possible to judge their works side by side quantitatively? If virtues like skill and compositional sense are necessary for an admission in an institution, why should not a terrific commitment and responsibility towards one’s workplace is viewed seriously as well? Of course it is a complex argument and I don’t dream that all the student protestors will be given a ready seat to continue studying here. But even those who will fall short in the competition will definitely have a much more meaningful contribution to the field on the long run. In any case, who cares studying history all the time? There is nothing better than to make one.

Article:
On a lighter note, the students took a hilarious protest on 28th June. It was pointed out on the day before by the president of BUTA [Baroda University Teachers Association], that although Panikkar refused to obey the unjustified orders of the authorities as the in charge dean on the 11th of May, he is not suspended as a dean but as a teacher. This is something that left a big imprint over the students. What happened next was absolutely hilarious and unpredicted. The students first collected a bio-data of Panikkar which shows that he has written/edited more than 10 books, published 59 seminar papers, 28 catalog essays and nearly 50 other literary works. Next they collected the bio data of the pro vice chancellor S.M.Joshi [the person who reported and asked the V.C to suspend Panikkar] which shows he has published only one paper in his entire career. This is something they felt is worthy to celebrate and on the next day they went to the university office with a big cake and flowers to celebrate the completion of 40 years since the article had come. The article’s birthday was celebrated, somebody personified the article and another personified its author, giving the birthday speech. Throughout the celebration the article [in its anthropological form] kept crying: ‘I want a brother, I want a brother’, but it seems to be a long, long way.

Section 3 [body]

Body:
In the times of crisis, the first thing that gets affected by situations, feelings and power is one’s own body. It gets newer dimensions, shaped by legalities and other apparatuses. A student’s body transforms into a site of resistance, at times even a site of spectacle, map marked by the imaginary lines which sets the dos and don’ts for the state machinery. A girl student’s body transforms into a shield for the rest of the group when the police tries to display muscle power. Little gestures indicate those transformations and the self discovery of one’s own body. In the times of crisis, the body becomes the mirror of a struggle.

Fingers
A finger is the speech of a body, its extension in space. The vice chancellor, when he came out to tell the students [that he is not interested to come out …and speak] displayed a variety of imaginary piano lessons with his fingers. He crossed them, closed them, rubbed them with each other, counted imaginary numbers, and adjusted his hairstyle. Why does it happen almost universally? It is always a simple chair or a particular table that changes one’s experience of one’s own fingers? One could almost see the invisible wooden fibers running down the vice chancellors finger towards the rest of his body making it one with the wooden table where he exercises his subconscious piano lessons. In contrast, Niraj Jain’s fingers do not look like human fingers; they are all solid and stout, like five solid thumbs thinking of coming down anytime like a deadly club. His fingers do not take piano lessons but advocate the symphony of muscle rhetoric. When he threatened the faculty students saying that if any one of them dares to paint a nude he will cut off his/her fingers, a number of students realized the importance of having fingers. Unlike the thumb, fingers are essential to point towards a mightier evil and say “you are wrong”. This is precisely what they are doing now.

Semen
If I am allowed to quote a small paragraph from the vice chancellor’s position paper, which is a description of one of Chandramohan’s most objectionable works: it throws open a curious problem. What are the dangers in giving a narrative interpretation to a symbolic work? It is unfair to expect the vice chancellor to know the particular modes of interpretation when it comes to art writing. So when he describes a work with exactly these words….what does he do?
“One of the so-called work of Art was a huge Christian Cross where Lord Jesus Christ was shown with his penis out on the Cross, his palms and feet hanging from the two sides and the bottom of the Cross, respectively.  Semen was shown as dropping out of his penis into a real toilet commode placed beneath the Cross.  The toilet contained fishes.
 Or rather…what do the words do to the picture?
The words describe its appearance, but in a very interesting way, they also precede it. When I read this description, what amazed me most is the surety of the word ‘semen’. How does the author know it is semen? It was plain water that was dropping. It seems the author anticipated, formed a vision and projected his expectation in his writing. In other words, he preceded the artist in constructing the visual for the rest of the world. I am sure Chandramohan has every right to file a case against this very objectionable work-of-art.

Mouth and skin
A mouth, especially when it is one of power is quite opposite of skin. A mouth is always ready on the front. No matter how much lies or false words come out of it, it is always ready to get onto you. Even in sadder times, when it is shut up and does not have a satisfactory answer to give, to prove or to dispute…it is always on action. In other words, it is something that visually never gets into the defensive mode. Curiously, the skin is just the opposite of mouth: always there to embrace newer textures of life restituted with layers of looks, readings or interpretations.
While the debates of skin showing [nudity may be is a better word] was on, a very contrasting drama was being played in two places. While the mouths of Niraj Jain, his VHP hooligans, university authorities and some close ones were emptying themselves…emptying all that is within, poisons of religious violence hatred and intolerance the skin of the religious icons were constantly getting wrapped, covered and layered with interpretations, fundamentals and ideals. May be these are the two poles of fundamentalism which metaphorically stand for fundamentalism in general. One...the emptying out, bloodthirsty hooliganism of one kind of confrontational fundamentalism, another, the extremely disciplined, covered, wrapped up and closed kind of restrained fundamentalism. Secularism in Gujarat is probably lost somewhere in between.

This is just a compilation of some random thoughts and experiences which I had during these 12 days of students’ struggle. It is not over yet, and will never be unless it is won over. These fragmented thoughts do not carry an account of the struggle but hopes to capture some of its experiential realities. It is not also a history of this struggle, for history is not written over desktops, it is made over the streets.