What ails MU's study and research centres?
MUMBAI: Around five years ago, on December 6, 2020, a senior Shiv Sena minister led the ground-breaking ceremony of what was to be a world-class study and research centre on the legacy of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, founder of India's Dalit movement and architect of the Indian Constitution, at the Kalina campus of the University of Mumbai. The event, presided over by then minister for higher and technical education and currently industries minister, Uday Samant, was conducted with much fanfare and attended by then chief minister, Uddhav Thackeray.
The centre was to be the go-to research academy for scholars, faculty and students from all over the world, anyone who wanted to immerse themselves in the life and work of Dr Ambedkar. It appears to have been no more than a pipe dream, for five years later, the centre functions out of temporary premises in the absence of a permanent space. And while it offers a Master's degree and a diploma, its goals remain frustratingly out of reach.
Study and research centres such as this have been in focus since a new study centre named after Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who shaped the Hindutva ideology, was inaugurated recently. Many of the older ones, at the university's Kalina campus, are barely limping along, keeping themselves afloat via workshops and lectures, and the occasional academic programme. Lacking funding and absent from the university's priority list, some of these centres operate out of vacant classrooms and office spaces.
Announced by politicians, academics say these centres are either little more than publicity stunts targeting specific vote banks or serve to appease senior political figures. With a vision as myopic as this, how can these research centres achieve their grand academic ambitions?
Let's take a closer look at five research centres at the Kalina campus.
Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Contemporary Studies
It was established in 2006 to mark the university's 150th anniversary and to honour the legacy of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. The centre began as a special chair funded by the Union ministry of human resource development through the University Grants Commission (UGC). Over time, it developed into a full-fledged study centre focusing on contemporary issues.
Today, the centre offers a Master's in Social Work (MSW) degree but little else. It lacks sufficient full-time faculty members to support the course. The centre has its own space, but it's not big enough to conduct proper classes.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Ravindra Kulkarni said that while the centre was initially supported by central government funds for five years, it now runs on aid from the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). 'We are trying to make it more active,' Kulkarni said. 'Recently, we organised a conference for NGOs through the centre, which brought in fresh ideas and perspectives.'
Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar International Research Centre
When it was announced in December 2020, this research centre was meant to attract scholars from all over the world, to be inspired by the legacy of one of India's foremost social reformers, political leaders and the architect of the Indian Constitution. It was also to lead research on the life and work of Dr Ambedkar. Today, the centre still doesn't have its own space.
On its goals far from being achieved, Rohit Dhale, president of student organisation Chhatra Bharati, said, 'Just like political parties do, the university administration too offers no more than hollow assurances.'
In defence of the centre, Kulkarni said, 'The centre runs academic programmes and conferences. In recent years, we organised two conferences in London through this centre and are running a Master's programme in Dr Ambedkar Studies and Development Studies. We also offer a post-graduate diploma in Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Thoughts.'
Like many of the other centres, this one too lacks funds. After the initial provision of ₹5 crore ran out, the university submitted a proposal to the UGC to approve the Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar chair. This would help in appointing one professor, one assistant professor and one research scholar at the centre.
Balasaheb Thackeray Study Centre
Established in 2019 after being proposed in 2015 by then Shiv Sena ministers Ravindra Waikar and Vinod Tawde, this study centre is named after Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray. It was meant to promote research into Indian culture, regional languages, and public speaking inspired by Thackeray's oratory skills.
Currently working out of Sanskrit Bhavan at the Kalina campus, the centre still doesn't have a permanent space or academic programme. Yuva Sena (UBT) member and university senate member, Pradeep Sawant, said the centre was near-dormant. 'Other than events on Balasaheb's birth and death anniversaries, nothing substantial is happening. While we welcome the new Savarkar centre, older centres need attention too,' he said.
Kulkarni said, 'We have organised workshops in cartooning, drawing, aerial photography and lectures inspired by Balasaheb's philosophy. The centre is active, and more events are planned.'
Annabhau Sathe Centre
The Sahityaratna Annabhau Sathe Study Centre, launched in 2021 to promote the work of Dalit writer and social reformer Tukaram Bhaurao Sathe, aims to translate his literature into other languages and conduct training through short courses and cultural activities.
Despite these lofty ambitions, the centre has been running from Sanskrit Bhavan at the Kalina campus. A research scholar expressed disappointment, saying, 'I come from a rural area. I was excited to see the centre and wanted to sign up for a course here but it has no proper set-up or academic clarity.'
The centre's recent achievement: Publishing a book by Prof Baliram Gaikwad, who also serves as its director.
Bal Apte Centre
Named after Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ideologue and former Rajya Sabha MP Bal Apte, the Prof Bal Apte Centre for Studies in Students and Youth Movements has seen quick progress since its inception in August 2019. It is set to launch a post-graduate course on youth movements from the upcoming academic year. A building to house the centre is also under construction at the Kalina campus.
Kulkarni said, 'We have already hosted conferences and conclaves under this centre, and more will follow.'
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AK Ramanujan's experiments with ingesting mescaline – which leads him to some extraordinary verse-musings expressing great longing for his then-separated wife – or the linguist and poet HS Biligiri's experiments with LSD (which he writes about in Sakshi magazine in the early 70s) where he sheepishly wonders what his sheltered wife must be thinking regarding his latest proclivities – give us another interesting glimpse into the interiors of the self that the Navya generation desired to explore. Modernism (in life as in literature) could expand the self, breach puritanical codes, and lead to new sensorial pastures. Those in Karnataka on the cultural right might feel that you have given them short shrift. Your thoughts on their vision for society are clear enough. However, let us take up the claim of being grounded in religion, or rather a pure version of it. What does Hindu conservatism have to say for that bit of religion that is beyond codes of interpersonal conduct? Did you find anything appealing or interesting? The term 'cultural right' might require some unpacking, because culture, it often seems to me, is a realm where ideologies can be stripped of their rigidities and held up for scrutiny. But I see what you're getting at, and I think I have tried to track a trajectory of this sensibility throughout the book, beginning from the early twentieth century, through figures like KV Iyer or Pandit Taranath. That inaugural generation of Kannada literati was hugely animated by Gandhian ideals (austerity, reform, pluralism), and these strains of thought have exercised much influence on social movements thereafter too. Even in the second half of the century, writers like Ananthamurthy and Shankar Mokashi Punekar embodied forms of conservativism (vis-à-vis religion and spiritual traditions) that fell under this broad rubric – it was again a Gandhian attempt to rescue Indian philosophical traditions from the stranglehold of modern fundamentalists. The Kannada novelist Triveni adopted her penname as a tribute to Gandhi (his ashes were immersed in the Triveni Sangam and so on), and I heard from activist and playwright Du Saraswati that she had looked up to Gandhi and the Buddha as admirable figures since her childhood. Cultural conservatism and social progressivism can co-exist and need not be pitted as irreconcilable entities. The presently regnant right-wing ethos does seem to be quite far from these accommodative strains, and I have had to (unfortunately) quote some of their bigotry to prove my point. Of course, this twentieth-century supremacist project has also been helped along by pre-existing hierarchical ideologies that had already fragmented Indian society. The cultural right, which I found interesting, had tried to tackle these inheritances head-on, and they saw themselves as fiercely critical insiders. It is in this regard that I dissect Shankar Mokashi Punekar's 1980s novel Avadheshwari, which reanimates a historical time (set in ancient Ayodhya, no less) before the rigidification of social hierarchies, in an attempt to see religion and mysticism as the quest for personal codes rather than collective impositions. It produced an existentialist (and riveting) portrayal of birth-based caste organisation (and ancient queenship), and it was intriguing to me that Punekar himself was a deeply religious man, devoted to the Sathya Sai Baba (as well as Indira Gandhi), greatly interested in ancient Hindu traditions, who saw his bhakti-sensibility as a gift to be savoured. He was also widely respected and admired by the Kannada world – atheists, believers, and Emergency-opposers alike. I remember this scary looking map from around 2010 that showed large chunks of India in red, denoting the Naxal threat. But reading the chapter on Saketh Rajan, the Maoist revolutionary who was shot dead in 2005, it seems that in Karnataka at least, they were only a handful of people in self-exile and up in arms. There was a fork in the road that the state ignored in reacting as it did with overwhelming force. As we speak, Maoists in central India are surrounded, vastly outnumbered by troops who seem dead set on a 'final solution'. What might have been a happier ending for Rajan, and what could the nation still do to those who survived? It might also be worthwhile to recall that those were the years when the Salwa Judum was engaged in horrific forms of state-sponsored vigilante violence in Chhattisgarh, recruiting child soldiers for its activities and essentially turning entire communities against each other – the Supreme Court deemed it illegal and unconstitutional in 2011. This has since remained the high watermark of the state's malevolence towards its own people in the war against Naxalism, as well as a spectacular display of its incompetence and immaturity. The situation in Kudremukh during the early 2000s was very different from this theatre of war playing out in the forests of Dandakaranya – a reality that both the Naxals and the state failed to grasp. There was sufficient space for civil-society protests shorn of gun-toting, and the Karnataka government could have initiated genuine efforts towards dialoguing with what was, in reality, an extremely small group of Naxals – I heard there might have been around thirty people in the movement at its height in Karnataka. Disarmament and rehabilitation of guerrillas is the only happy ending really possible – this would also be greatly aided by the emergence of a sensible and discerning media to cover the process. The successful rehabilitation of ex-Naxals Noor Shridhar and Sirimane Nagaraj, who left the movement after Saketh Rajan's killing, is evidence that such things are possible. The two of them have also remained ardent advocates of furthering this model since they believe that there is a broad consensus regarding peaceful capitulation – Maoists mostly see themselves as a spent force and are presently requesting dialogue in Central India too. A truly happy ending would also have to be accompanied by the reining in of mining hegemons who wish to conquer vast tracts of resource-laden landscapes for private enrichment. What do you think of the relationship between liberalism and the state? One may not be in awe of it, but you need the state to enforce rights at the very least. The state might have to lean on its muscular arm to accomplish this. What are your thoughts on the very real practical, and ethical dimensions of exercising power? Increasingly, the role of the state in our country has been reduced to just advancing the interests of Big Business. Those who continue to believe in the benevolence of neoliberalism would like to see the state slim down completely – in America, you now have private prisons and so on. This is nothing less than a wholesale outsourcing of the practical and ethical purposes of the erstwhile state. Back here, I'm amazed to see people like Shekhar Gupta – who understands not an ounce of economics – vigorously endorse the disastrous austerity policies of those like Javier Milei. It is also becoming clear that India is trying to ingratiate itself on the world stage with new imperialist forces that are bent upon perpetuating an extractive oligopoly, in collusion with some of the nastiest demagogues on the planet. These developments must be critiqued fiercely. On the ground, the state's muscle should be directed towards strengthening democratic institutions, and towards investments in health, education, rural community-building, and a politics of care that goes beyond mere sponsorship. This is in addition to its traditional responsibilities in terms of defence and internal security, which goes without saying. Vittal Malekudiya was the first graduate from his tribal community but was arrested arbitrarily, on grounds that he was a Maoist since he had some literature about Bhagat Singh. The campaign for his release which brought in even the national leaders of the Left, was surprising and heartening to me. Today, Umar Khalid, Gulfisha Fatima and others are locked up on equally trumped-up charges. However, there has been little outrage or sustained protest regarding these. You write of the disagreement over '-isms' among activists. Has the fear of even pronouncing these words prevented civil society from banding together? There are actually some highly uncivil elements of our society, which includes the mainstream television media, that work extra hard to discredit individuals and morph public perception of these issues. Outrage and protests have happened on social media and many public figures have consistently highlighted these unlawful imprisonments, but there seems to be a more perverse and intractable crisis in the legal system as well. Vittal Malekudiya's story is really just a wild anomaly in a country where Gauri Lankesh's killers are out on bail, even as Umar Khalid and Gulfisha Fatima have been awaiting trial for five years. The lack of transparency, the nightmare of bureaucracy, the cunning of the incumbent regime – all of these come together, and there seems to be a desperate need for serious judicial reforms. What is the burden of history on modern Karnataka? Reading Prachi Deshpande in Creative Pasts, we understand that the search for a 'Maharashtra dharma' has been present for long, which helps in understanding the figure of Shivaji. How do you interpret society's tryst with the past? This is a really interesting question and connects with your earlier thoughts on the cultural right. If there is one thing that unites the Kannada world (left, right and centre), it might be the unhindered admiration for the treasure trove that is vachana literature, the genre-shattering, king-denouncing, free-spoken body of verses which emerged in the 12th century. Its outsize influence on Kannada cultural history cannot be overstated. The vachanas become nothing less than a primordial ore of ideas when seen through the eyes of all the eminent scholars and translators (from MM Kalburgi to AK Ramanujan to DR Nagaraj) who found in it a desi source of social egalitarianism and universalism – ideas we tend to conflate with the European Enlightenment. While the early 20th century sub-nationalists (like Alur Venkat Rao) looked to the Vijayanagar Empire to inform their sense of glory, the more serious historians of the succeeding generation (Kalburgi in particular) saw encapsulated in the Sharana rebellion and its vachana heritage nothing less than the genius of this land, a kind of 'Karnataka Dharma' perhaps. Also, if you scrutinise the founding historical fiction that went into the creation of the Karnataka statehood movement in the early 20th century, the first thing which might strike you is that this imaginary did not incorporate the many sultanates of the Deccan. Of course, this was more due to ignorance rather than malevolence at that time. In the years leading to his assassination in 2015, MM Kalburgi was leading an ambitious project to translate 16th century Adil Shahi poetry to Kannada (from Persian, Arabic, and Urdu), which was completed a few years ago. The excellent work of scholars like Richard Eaton and Rahamath Tarikere on the history of Sufism in the Deccan must also bear mention here. I was also intrigued to hear from a VHP ideologue that he'd read Manu Pillai's Rebel Sultans with some interest. I think we're seeing a new wave of reckonings with history (however contested they might be), and there is still much work to be done to recover (and chronicle) these pasts in all their complexity and wonder. There is an epigraph in the book from Ibrahim Adil Shah II's 16th century collection of verses Kitab-i-Nauras, which is his explication of the nava rasas, held together by his deep devotion to the Goddess Saraswathi. By all standards, he comes across as an extraordinary figure of aesthetic liberalism – this is reflected in Deccan art from that period too. I heard from an audience member at an event in Mysore that he had lived in Bijapur for years but still never encountered these histories. Might these universalist imaginaries not be valuable landmarks in our current search (the world over) for alternatives to parochial nationalisms?
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The 2,000-square-foot facility has the capacity to accommodate only four more birds. Since no other zoos have been willing to do a swap deal for penguins, the authorities in Mumbai have announced plans to expand the enclosure by 500 square feet and double the size of the quarantine facility. All this would cost around Rs 2.5 crore, they said. But if the birds keep breeding at this rate, it isn't immediately clear how later arrivals can be housed. Mumbai has waddled on a long way from the time the municipal authorities are first thought to have discussed penguins, about 35 years ago. Faced with a problem of mounting litter, they are said to have decided that offering dustbins with a cutesy animal design was the route to getting citizens to actually use them. Every creature was rejected except for the penguin. Evidently, it does not appear in Indian mythology and so no one would be offended by putting rubbish in its maw. If the BJP's demand for hatchlings to be given Marathi names is accepted, perhaps the penguin will finally go native after all. Here is a summary of the week's top stories. Bengaluru stampede. The Karnataka Police arrested four persons, including an official of Royal Challengers Bengaluru, in connection with the stampede that took place outside the city's Chinnaswamy Stadium. Those are Nikhil Sosale, the marketing head of the cricket franchise, along with event management firm DNA Entertainment Networks' Sunil Mathew, Kiran and Sumanth. This came after Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday said that the state government had ordered the arrest of representatives from the Karnataka State Cricket Association, DNA Entertainment Networks and Royal Challengers Bengaluru. A first information report was filed against the persons based on a complaint alleging that criminal negligence had led to the stampede. Eleven persons had died and several were injured in the incident on Wednesday. Fans had gathered to celebrate the team's victory in the Indian Premier League. The census roadmap. India will conduct its population census, including caste enumeration, in two phases. The first phase of the census will be conducted in hilly and snow-bound areas in Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The reference date for this phase will be October 1, 2026, the Union home ministry announced. The second phase will be conducted in the rest of the country, and the reference date will be March 1, 2027. The reference date of a census means the specific point of time for which population data is collected. The last decennial census exercise was held in 2011. In 2020, India was set to begin the first phase of the exercise but it had to be delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Ladakh's grievances. The Union government notified rules of a new reservation and domicile policy in the Union Territory of Ladakh in response to protests by political, religious and social groups since 2019. Now only those who have stayed in Ladakh continuously for 15 years, beginning in 2019, will qualify as domiciles. This means that non-native persons living in Ladakh will be considered domiciled only after 2034. The government also announced an 85% reservation for Scheduled Tribes in government jobs in Ladakh, addressing the fear that non-natives would corner employment opportunities. More than 97% of the population in the Union Territory belongs to Scheduled Tribes. Earlier, only 80% of government jobs were reserved for them. In August 2019, the residents of Ladakh lost exclusive rights to own immovable property and get government jobs in the region. This was after the Union government rescinded the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution and divided the state into the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. India's deportations. The Supreme Court refused to entertain a petition challenging the Assam government 'pushing' back to Bangladesh persons who have been declared foreigners by Foreigners Tribunals in the state. The bench asked the petitioner to approach Gauhati High Court. The court was hearing a petition claiming that the state government was arbitrarily pushing Indian citizens to Bangladesh without following due process under the guise of deporting undocumented migrants. The petition came against the backdrop of a surge in detentions of declared foreigners in Assam since May 23. Families say they have no information on their relatives' whereabouts. Some of them have identified their missing relatives in videos from Bangladesh, alleging they were forcibly sent across the border.
