Considered to be a bulwark against tyranny, education has always been a sore point for authoritarian regimes. Higher education in India has come under tremendous right-wing pressures since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government came to power at the Centre in 2014. In what is being seen as yet another instance of pressure, the 79th session of the Indian History Congress (IHC) was postponed “until further notice” by the Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) on December 12, a little over two weeks before it was scheduled to be held on December 28-30.
Professor K.M. Shrimali, former Professor, Delhi University, and president of the IHC, told Frontline : “I can say without any hesitation that what the authorities of the SPPU have done, after formally inviting the IHC for its 79th Session (2018), is quite unprecedented.”
Prof. Shrimali’s association with the IHC dates back to 1970 when he attended its 32nd Session held at the Jabalpur University as a young researcher. He went on to serve the IHC from the late 1970s—in different administrative and academic positions—as treasurer, joint secretary, member of the executive committee, secretary, president of the section on Ancient India and, currently, the general president.
“In these nearly 50 years, I had the privilege of knowing this largest representative body of historians in India—both professional and the amateurs—from inside as well as outside,” he said. The annual sessions of the IHC have been taking place like clockwork since its inception in 1935. This is the first time ever that a session was cancelled in such a frivolous and random manner by a host university. “To the best of my memory, thoroughly unconvincing and fabricated reasons have never accounted for any postponement/cancellation of annual sessions, and that too unilaterally. Extraordinary political circumstances have indeed been factors in such decisions occasionally. Thus, the 1971 session had to be cancelled because of the Liberation War in Bangladesh, and the 1992 session had to be postponed because of the political upheaval caused by the dastardly demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6 that year. I was then the Secretary of the IHC. The IHC session took place on February 13-15, 1993, at the originally scheduled venue, Kakatiya University, Warangal,” Prof. Shrimali said.
In an emergency meeting on December 14, the executive committee of the IHC decided to hold the 79th session at a different venue by the end of March 2019.
Bizarre decision
In a statement signed by Prof. Mahalakshmi Ramakrishnan of the Centre for Historical Studies and secretary, IHC, the IHC said that Vice Chancellor N.R. Karmalkar had invited the IHC to hold its 79th session at SPPU and appointed Prof. Radhika Seshan as local secretary. She called on IHC members to enrol as delegates on payment of Rs.2,000 each, “which is the highest rate until now required by a host University”, Prof. Mahalakshmi said.
According to the IHC, the SPPU received more than Rs.20 lakh in payment of delegate fees. Terming the claim by the SPPU Registrar that only Rs.14 lakh was collected by the university from all sources as incomprehensible, Prof. Mahalakshmi pointed out that Prof. Seshan herself had said that Rs.75 lakh had been collected. “The maximum number of delegates at any previous session, including local persons, has been no more than 1,500. It is incomprehensible why the Registrar said that 3,000 people were expected to come. It is also not clear why the university did not book any accommodation at all, which should have been done months ago,” she said.
The IHC executive committee called upon the SPPU to expedite the refund of delegate fees. It expressed concern about the losses suffered by members who had to get their rail/air tickets cancelled, and in some cases, private booking of accommodation. It noted that the SPPU did not express sympathy for members suffering such losses. Despite repeated attempts, university officials could not be reached for comment.
Unconvincing reasons
According to Prof. Shrimali, the university gave unconvincing reasons for the cancellation. “Just as the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India kept on changing goal posts to justify his bizarre decision of ‘demonetisation’, similarly the SPPU authorities kept on changing reasons for their no less bizarre decision. It all started with the painting of a threatening political scenario of the Elgaar Parishad activities, and when its myth was busted by the IHC secretary, conflicting versions came tumbling out from the Registrar and the local secretary—financial difficulties, lack of accommodation, and so on,” he said.
He added that it was regrettable that there was no written communication so far from either the Vice-Chancellor or the local secretary. “Normal courtesy demands that the VC, who had invited the congress through a written invitation, should be gracious enough to take the IHC into his confidence in taking the decision and convey the decision in writing,” he said, adding that it might have been “postponement until further notice” (as announced on the SPPU website) for the SPPU authorities, but for the IHC it was de facto cancellation.
Prof. Mahalakshmi said that this announcement was made without the consent of the IHC. “It in effect means cancellation of the session at Pune, since IHC session cannot be postponed by the hosts and this too to unknown dates,” she said.
Some media reports quoted the Vice Chancellor as indicating that the decision to postpone the session was taken three months ago in September. “If that’s true, why did he allow the local secretary to issue the circular and collect delegate fee of Rs.2,000 from each delegate?” Prof. Shrimali countered. In the absence of any credible explanation, he said, the delegates were left to surmise that some petty political considerations might have prompted the decision.
“The VC’s alleged confession [that the decision to postpone the session was taken three months ago] would also provide sustenance to such an inference,” he said and wondered if it had been a planned sabotage. The IHC is not unfamiliar with acts/decisions purporting to create hurdles for it by adversarial political establishments. “The IHC brand of history writing is certainly an anathema to the present day political establishments—in the Centre, in Maharashtra and in many other States ruled by the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party]. For them, history writing encouraged by the IHC is, what is said in Hindi— phooti aankhon nahi suhati unhe [disdainful].”
The IHC has often been the victim of tyrannical labelling, said Prof. Shrimali. “The inference that it is a stronghold of the ‘Indian Left/Marxists’ needs dispassionate assessment of the nature of its membership, personnel manning administrative structure, scrutiny of hundreds of its sectional presidents and general presidents, and above all, analysis of research papers published in its annual proceedings (as many as 140 papers have been published in the latest volume based on the presentations at the 2017 session held at Jadavpur).
“On the basis of my association with the IHC since 1970, I can unhesitatingly say that it has always striven consciously to encourage all streams and trends of history writing. To the best of my knowledge, there has not been any other academic discipline which has been consistently publishing its deliberations for public scrutiny with such regularity. Believe it or not, the IHC has been doing it for eight decades! It derives its strength and elan from countless ordinary members who come from varied social backgrounds and even from the so-called mofussil areas across the length and breadth of the country. Truly speaking, it is the representative body of Indian historians,” he said.
The IHC has earned a reputation for setting standards in secular history writing and emerged as a platform for peer reviews, presentation of papers and networking for scholars. The decision to hold the congress in Pune was taken at the previous congress, held last year at Jadavpur University in Kolkata. Akash Bhattacharya, a Research Associate with Max Weber Stiftung, had presented a paper from his PhD thesis that he was writing under the aegis of the Jawaharlal Nehru University last year. In 2012, he had presented a paper from his MPhil work at Mumbai University.
Rueing the impact that the cancellation would have on students, Akash Bhattacharya said that despite the slight disengagement by top institutions with the IHC in recent years, it remained a very important space. He pointed out that a huge gathering of secular historians under one roof was a politically significant event in the present time. The IHC was important also because it had broken the homogeneity of conference spaces and emerged as a meeting ground for different kinds of scholarships.
“It is the only academic gathering of its kind that does not stream papers. Anybody who submits a paper, gets to present,” he said, adding that conference circuits tended to be exclusive and biased towards certain institutions with the result that a large number of people in regional institutions do not get any opportunity to interact with scholars based elsewhere. “But the IHC provides that platform. At the same time, for scholars from Delhi University and JNU [Jawaharlal Nehru University], the IHC is the only place where they can get to know what kind of work is being done outside,” he said. The flip side was that the sheer volume of papers to be presented re stricted the time slot for each person to introduce their work and receive feedback. “The benefits of presenting a paper at the IHC are of a different kind and not purely academic. Since scholars from all colleges and universities come to the IHC, one gets a broad sense of work being done across the country. Had I not gone there I would not have got to know a whole range of scholars.
It is also a good experience where one learns how to pitch your work and what sort of questions can be asked on that work. Unlike at other gatherings, one is not speaking to an established canon here but to young scholars. Interactions in elite universities are of a particular kind, with one speaking to the converted. But here it is a heterogeneous house with a w ide range of concerns being raised.”
The IHC has been functioning with a massive support base and offers a healthy forum for ever-changing paradigms in history writing, Prof. Shrimali said. “Whenever politically guided non-academic challenges/threats have emerged, they have been confronted through bold and courageous convictions. Be it the attack on the freedom of writers and authors during the infamous Emergency (the IHC was the only academic body to pass a resolution condemning it) or the subversive act of banning /withdrawing history text books written by eminent historians by the Janata government in 1977-78, the IHC showed through its open debates that it has the necessary resilience to sustain itself and that it would not be cowed down by such political forces.
“The IHC is not just an academic body. It is a movement committed to nurture the ‘Idea of India’ that is pluralistic, secular and questioning. This IHC spirit will continue to sustain it in the foreseeable future,” he said.
COMMents
SHARE