http://blog.juggernaut.in/the-burning-forest-and-dus-academic-council/At my first meeting of the Faculty of
Social Sciences at Delhi University, some colleagues objected to a heading in
our Sociology of India introductory course, ‘India as an object of study’.
“India cannot be an object”, they said, “she is our motherland”. Subsequent
meetings of the Academic Council only confirmed my belief that there is
something deeply wrong with this procedure especially the higher up the
academic food chain it goes– at best it offers an opportunity for
non-social-scientists to show off, for how could any one from sociology dare to
comment on a mathematics course and be taken seriously? At worst, in an
illiberal regime it acts as a form of censorship.
It also means that courses are delayed irretrievably
– it took three years from the time we designed a Sociology of Law course for
the MA program for it to be taught, while the environmental sociology course in
an earlier iteration mysteriously disappeared altogether somewhere between the
Faculty of Social Sciences and the Academic Council. Exhortations to cutting edge knowledge can be
only be met with cutting laughter, given the hoops through which any course has
to pass. Any new course or even new set of readings for an existing course
(formally known as either a minor or major modification) is discussed at least
twice within a department, which is a very useful exercise, before being
formally approved by a Committee of Courses. It then goes to the relevant Faculty
(for instance, the Faculty of Humanities or Social Sciences), where again
anyone may object or suggest new readings. This again can be helpful,
especially in our increasingly interdisciplinary times, but is definitely less
useful than at the departmental level. It then goes to the Academic Council, which
meets a couple of times a year, where courses are passed in bulk, in sessions
that range over several hours and are marked by grandstanding over a variety of
issues, academic and non-academic. (And yet, when the Vice Chancellor wants to
introduce sweeping changes like the semester system or the choice based credit
course, none of these regulations appear to matter. In the last few years we
have been going through some kind of permanent revolution, reinventing our
courses practically overnight, to make it for the university’s deadlines).
Some years ago, the Faculty of Social
Sciences agreed that a teacher could change about 30% of the readings every
year, provided she or he handed out a reading list at the beginning of the
semester. But till then, whatever we actually taught, we had to ensure that
exam questions were framed on the printed syllabus – never mind if we were
still examining our students on socialist planning versus capitalist
markets. Students, of course, have
out-read all of us – and are on top of the latest literature, and certainly don’t
rely for their knowledge on what they are taught in class or even photocopied
course packs. Those who want to, will read The
Burning Forest, regardless of whether it is on their syllabus or not.
When reporters called to ask for my
reaction to questions being raised at the Academic Council on the inclusion of The Burning Forest in the MA Political
Sociology course, I was not surprised. I had been waiting for them to attack the
book. In the last year, thanks to our litigation in the Supreme Court which got
the Salwa Judum banned (2011), and the CBI’s 2016 chargesheet against SPOs for
burning villages, the Chhattisgarh government has ramped up its efforts to
harass me, emboldened by a sympathetic Centre. They have burnt our effigies;
put up huge flexiplex posters of us in Jagdalpur and run signature campaigns;
written letters to our universities forwarding false accusations, and accused
me (along with other colleagues) of murder. In the last month, they detained
and tortured a close friend, Podiyam Panda, to make him ‘confess’ to taking me
to meet Maoist leaders; wrote to Rajdeep Sardesai threatening legal action for
hosting me on his show; and circulated a fake whatsapp exchange through
fakenews sites, purportedly between ‘Nandini Madam’ and an unnamed Maoist.
The NDTF members who objected to The Burning Forest admitted they had not
read the book, but didn’t like the sub-title: India’s War in Bastar. But their pet channels routinely use
headlines like “War against Maoists”, or “Will apologists take a bullet for the
nation?” It certainly looks like a war to the jawans who are ‘martyred’, part
of the 116 battalions of Central Armed Police Forces who are posted there.
Fortunately, sociologists are not easily
scared. The book has been referred back to a departmental committee for
consideration and no doubt the department will respond appropriately. Ultimately,
this is not about me, or Bastar, or The
Burning Forest, but the collective right of our department to its own
judgment. No doubt, too, this will not be the last of the attacks on the book
we will see from the RSS and its fronts, but I hope that readers will make up
their own mind.
