Baroda Struggle

The Jewel Thieves

Normalcy has not yet been restored in the Fine Arts Faculty, Baroda. The students are worried and anxious as they start facing social ostracism. Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi, a student at the Art History Department, FAF, Baroda expresses the students’ anxieties regarding the ongoing stalemate situation.

The jewel is stolen. The sheen and flare of it is gone. The Fine Arts Faculty of Baroda has been a jewel in the crown of the state of Gujarat. Now there are thieves who want to posses it and they are, up to an extent successful in snatching it from us. By stealing this jewel the thieves want to destabilize this small but significant space that has played a very crucial role in creating the avant garde art in India. Now who are these thieves? They are none other than the university authorities who play a hand in glove game with the ‘politicians’.

As a student of the Department of Art History, Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, my attempt is to voice the anxieties of the students that they are undergoing for the last three months. As you know the normalcy in the Faculty was collapsed when one of the students, Chandramohan was attacked by the Right Wing Fundamentalists and later was arrested by the police. For siding with the students, Prof. Shivji Panikkar, then acting Dean of the Faculty was suspended. Now the university authorities threaten the teachers and students who participated in the struggle with dire consequences. This has affected the harmony of the faculty of fine arts.

We are anxious to revive normalcy.

We want to revive the normalcy within the faculty, the space where we find our creative freedom. The catastrophe of the recent times has destroyed that space. Normalcy has become the most covetable dream for us now. We are unsure about our futures, which at present seems to be quite barren, none to guide and show us the light. This is an intellectual barrenness. There is a deafening silence amongst us even when we are shouting slogans and raising our voices against the injustice meted out to us. Our existence is nullified by fear.

For certain political forces in our country, knowledge is something that destroys their core of ignorance. They want to live in ignorance so they try to threaten those people who would like to walk the road of knowledge. They want us, students to be as primitive as they are. Now we have one single aim. We want to bring back normalcy to faculty so that our fallen spirits could once again wake up. We have been running from pillar to post, we have been using ‘Gandhigiri’ as a medicine to cure the diseased authorities but our pleas have so far fallen on deaf ears. But one thing we still demand. We want normal functioning of the faculty, with our grievances addressed and redressed.

The Feeling of Frustration

Why are we frustrated? Aren’t we giving our best voice and strength to solve the problem? Yes, but we are frustrated because, at every stage we are failed by the authorities. The authorities now indirectly teach us how to be good strategists and politicians and how to operate within an institutional space, without stepping on other’s toes. I would like to quote one of my friends:

“Let’s change the name of the faculty as ‘faculty of politics’ ”

It must be sounding funny as it clearly shows our pessimism and frustration. But we are not pessimists as we sound to be. Our pessimism is the product of our times and the situations we are forced to be in. But everyone has to realize this that we are in this faculty for learning art, not for learning politics. Yes, we do learn politics. But that is a sublimated politics, a politics that makes us to face the world with civilized attitudes.

‘Critical space’ is no more ‘critical’.

These days I become quite nostalgic. How good we were in our critical debates! Till the month of May, the faculty was a place where we could debate things critically without fearing anybody’s wrath. We debated gender issues, the issues of the subaltern and the minority problems vis-a-vis art and aesthetics. We have been critical and the space made us critical enough. It has always been a mutual give and take. The faculty gave us an environment where we could feel at home with the art objects around and theories hovering around in the atmosphere. We could take major steps as the students of the art history department.

Now everything looks stale and destabilized. Why is it so? I would say that it is because of the absence of a person or certain people who gave meaning to this space. Now they are not allowed to enter the faculty premises. They made this space critically significant and now the authorities have rendered them pariahs. Now we have a critical space filled with silence and absence. What could be the remedy to reactivate this space? I would again say, bring back those who are absent.

Fact Finding or Implicating?

So we have now a fact finding committee instituted by the University authorities. What is it all about? Is this committee for finding facts or implicating people with vile charges? How can a fact finding committee charge people with false allegations? The university authorities do not seem to know what a fact finding committee mean. For students, this committee is just a formality, a machinery to delay justice to the affected. The enquiry committee, as per the legal authorities say, should have been a departmental enquiry committee. Now by appointing a fact finding committee, the authorities want nothing but to paint the illegal with the legal colors. The thieves, unfortunately still move around with the jewel in their hands.

Fine artie’s under threat

The city of Baroda brushes with a category of people called ‘Fine Arties’ for the last 56 years. This special category of people, as a population forms a minority within the majority population of the locals. However, it is an egalitarian crowd. With the unfortunate events in the faculty, this minority population has come under public suspicion and threat. For no reason, the fine arties get attacked at night.

The highly applauded culture centre, Baroda in general has become hostile towards the fine arties. The landlords look at the student tenants with a fair amount of suspicion and scorn. What have we done to receive the ire of a public that was too friendly to us a few months back? I don’t want to blame them either as things have been framed by the media in such way that the hooligans who disrupted the faculty functioning look angelic today and the students, the most despicable villains.

However, we are not devoid of hopes. We appreciate the honorable Governor’s concern for the issue. The committee appointed by him with the eminent personalities as members would perhaps bring out the facts. We wish our suspended teachers to be back in the faculty. We are concerned about the future of this institution.