Buffalo Soldiers of Baroda

The students of the Department of Art History and Aesthetics are in war path. They want their temporary teachers back in classrooms. They look brainwashed and blindfolded to act like cannon fodders. JohnyML looks at the absurdity of this students’ struggle for a few temporary teachers.

I don’t think any establishment would lose its character and strength if a few people who have been running that establishment are forced out of it. Nor does an establishment lose its verve if the people who were at its helms decide to opt out of it. What changes in such a scenario is the quality of the establishment. However, if a new set of people with equal strength and verve are brought into its affairs, the establishment would regain its lost character with a qualitative difference. Then, what an establishment can do is to find a new set of people who can replace the old guard.

It has been said that the Department of Art History and Aesthetics (referred as DAHA now onwards), MS University, Baroda lost its character and strength thanks to the suspension of Dr.Shivji Panikkar and a few ad hoc teaching staff, after the now infamous Chandramohan fiasco (or is it Niraj Jain fiasco?). A reality check in DAHA shows that now things are in a very bad shape. The post graduate students are no longer seen in the faculty. I am told that as there are no (efficient) teachers to conduct their classes or guide them to do their dissertations, the students have stopped coming to the faculty. Perhaps, they are doing combined studies in hostel rooms. Only the BFA students attend the classes. There are two teachers, Jayaram Poduval and Shailendra Khushwaha who take classes for them.

Professor Deepak Kannal, who is the Dean of the Fine Arts Faculty, now also holds the charge of the Department of Sculpture as it does not have a professor to head the affairs. Shailendra Khushwaha who has been made the head of DAHA after a series of events that involve court cases, students’ agitations and email campaigns etc, no longer acts as the ‘head’ for his ‘unpopularity’ amongst the students. Besides, the students themselves rejected a new temporary teacher as they found her ‘inefficient’. She too no longer takes classes in DAHA. The present scenario is like this: DAHA is going nowhere. Students are clueless about their future. Also they are clueless about their present.

The students are clueless about their present because they are forced to believe that only Shivji Panikkar, one Santhosh, Abha Seth and Rita Sodha (these three are ad hoc teachers for a long time) can only teach them. If these teachers are not brought back to their previous positions, they would not be able to ‘learn’ anything, so believe the students. The students have become so fanatic in their belief that they are not ready to accept any other teacher. They are actually in a warpath and they fight it for their suspended teachers. Perhaps, this kind of loyalty from the students is something phenomenal. The flipside of this loyalty is this: the students are not asking for better teachers, they are asking for their suspended teachers to be reinstated.

Considering the frozen state of affairs at DAHA, a pertinent question should be asked: Are there no other good art history teachers in this country to replace four people who the students believe are THE only teachers? Why do the authorities (both the university and Fine Arts Faculty authorities) show a total apathy in finding them? If the university authorities think that these four teachers should not be allowed to come back to DAHA, what are they going to do with the students? Why are they not getting into action and find suitable replacements?

It has been said that the political leadership in the state of Gujarat is no longer interested in the Fine Arts Faculty. But the local Right Wing groups have a strong hold in the university syndicate and they don’t want to yield to the pressures of the intellectuals and students. If Niraj Jain who had instigated this issue wanted a ticket for the assembly elections, he was left high and dry. Not only he was denied a ticket in the election but also this issue was downplayed by the BJP leadership as well as the opposing Congress Party and the left parties. Hence, the DAHA issue has simply become an internal matter of the Faculty of Fine Arts.

Now, the teachers want their jobs back. The students want their teachers back. Interestingly, the students are fighting a case for their teachers. They are not fighting for their present or future. Several malignant emails have been circulated around, apparently signed by the students. But the tone of these mails shows that they are produced by a few people who want their jobs back desperately. Shivji Panikkar is supposed to get his job back as he is a permanent professor in DAHA and he is fighting a case in the court. Most probably he would be back if the court rule is favorable. But what about these temporary teachers who instigate students and make them stray?

If the university does not want a few temporary teachers, it can remove them at its will. In fact, the students are now fighting for these temporary teachers. Who are the actual sufferers in this scenario? The suspended temporary teachers have already started working for other institutions. They eke out their lives by doing one or the other thing in other establishments. Shivji will fight his rightful case with the university through court and other democratic means. But these temporary teachers, in the name of a historical students’ struggle, want to be back in DAHA. Who are these temporary people?

Rita Sodha had been once Prof.Ratan Parmoo’s favorite and it was he who put her into the teaching assignments as she had registered as PhD student in DAHA. (Rumors say that Rita will soon join the department to continue with her teaching assignments) Abha was a Shivji loyalist all the time. This guy Santhosh (who is said to be intelligent but still believes that the revolution is round the corner and what he needs to do is to trap the hapless children into his carefully devised strategies for hanging out in DAHA as a temporary teacher, and could one day become permanent. He does not have any qualms in wining and dining with rich gallerists and in the company of established artists, while his ‘students’ fight for ‘rights’ eating messy food from hostel mess) is said to have registered as a PhD student in DAHA and that is his only claim to be a part of the Fine Arts Faculty in Baroda.

The other person is Deepta Achar, a teacher in the Department of English, who takes a lot of interest in this struggle. She is a close associate of Shivji Panikkar and together they have edited a few books. Though she masterminds several mails and campaigns, she has not been able to bring in a few students from English Department to join the struggle. The fight is still the fight of a few art history students, that too for getting their suspended teachers back, not even for better teachers! Yet another person who does the mailing campaign is Chitra, wife of one painter K.P.Reji, based in Baroda. The mails show that there is some support from legal experts in formulating them. She lives a comfortable life and does not even know the whereabouts of Chandramohan, yet wants to be a backstage activist. (I had requested this lady to send me the contact details of Chandramohan when they were fighting his cause, but she was clueless)

The DAHA students have failed to understand one simple thing: they are Buffalo soldiers. They are fighting a war for somebody’s cause. Parvez Kabir, a registered research student in DAHA, who currently is a part time lecturer in Art History, Santiniketan, had once told me about the phenomenal character of Baroda students’ struggle. True it is phenomenal because these students are struggling for a cause which is not theirs. They are fighting a war for some temporary teachers. They are not even allowed to put in their names under the mails which actually are written by these temporary teachers.

The history of students’ struggle in India show that the students have always fought for the better facilities in education, parity, reservation and major political and ideological causes. Here for the first time, the students are fighting for their temporary teachers. Sorry to say that these students are stripped off of their individualities and personalities. They have become a nebulous group called ‘Students’. It is high time that they recognize their folly and go to the university to fight their own cause: getting better teachers and removal of ad hoc-ism.

It is a pity that DAHA could not prepare a second row of efficient teachers in all these years. If students think that only these suspended teachers can do the best for them it is the biggest illusion they are cherishing. If the university thinks that it can continue with ad-hoc-ism through the induction of inefficient teachers, it is the biggest folly that they are inculcating. There are so many efficient art history and criticism graduates in this country. Advertise the posts, conduct the interviews with a democratic panel and appoint them as teachers. An institution like DAHA cannot and should not die if three or four temporary teachers and some registered PhD students hold the students under siege, blind fold them, indoctrinate them with illusions and brainwash them with false ideologies.

Now, the DAHA premises look like a haunted building. The instigators hang around and still have their daily dose of strategizing. The students are not seen anywhere and those are present in the BFA program look drained and unhappy. They look like captives in a war. Some of them have already left the course for a better future. The gangrene has not yet set in but if things are let to go like this, it would attack the cells. But the institution would survive with a different quality. Its character and strength could be regained only through finding better art historians and aestheticians that DAHA itself had produced in the yester years. Let us support the students in their struggles, only if they are asking for better teachers and better facilities. If not let them fight the war of their temporary teachers.

(I want to clarify that even if I am an alumnus of DAHA, I don’t have any intention to become a teacher there. My wife Mrinal Kulkarni, also an alumnus of DAHA even in her remote dreams would not like to go back to Baroda and become a teacher there. She had not even tried to apply in Baroda during our bad times, instead she worked as a sales girl in a bookshop in East Delhi. Currently, she is a lecturer in Art History in Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. So, my demand for finding better teachers in Baroda is not motivated by any personal interest.)