Falling Standard of Debate?: AMUTA-GBM, 6 May 2010

Quite often I don’t attend the General Body Meetings (GBM) of the AMU Teachers’ Association (AMUTA). The degree of my reluctance to attend these has increased manifold since it willfully failed to have a quorum in August-Sept 2008, when it was forced to address the issue of ravaging flood in eastern Bihar. Besides raising a fund for relief, it was supposed to mount a pressure of ideas on the ruling elites of the nation to address the issue of horrific regional imbalance, and terrible negligence of the Union govt (in disgusting connivance with the regional elites) in controlling the recurrence of flood.

I am often told about deep-seated anti-Bihar prejudice of AMU. This has got almost confirmed when it has repeatedly refused to have Patna as a venue of its entrance tests. Thanks to the sycophant silence of Bihar’s elites in AMU.

This brief digression apart, this time I decided to attend the GBM, more as an onlooker. One of the reasons why did I do so was that I did not have a clear idea about the merits or demerits of having a large number of CCTV towers for intrusive video-graphic (round the clock) surveillance of the campus. I could only recall/surmise that probably a former VC’s press statement [that “AMU is bristling with ISI agents” (Times of India, 15 April 1997)] has been taken by the Union Home ministry too seriously. Groping for definite answers in justification and/or rejection of the already installed cameras, I felt it necessary to attend the GBM on 6th may 2010.

I am leaving apart the meritorious points that came forward in the GBM, for or against the motion. In an assembly of academicians, what makes news, and what needs attention are the poorly argued points, as they raise questions about our professional abilities as well.

The debate started with the arguments of those who are on the side of the administration. The first speaker was no less a person than the Proctor, who is a senior professor of Mathematics, and I am told, he is a PhD from the prestigious IISc, Bangalore. His articulations however only made me learn that longer association with the establishment might lead to intellectual degeneration. I may be wrong, but this is what came out of the event. The proctor, a valuable ally of the pious Islamic group called the Tablighi Jamaa’t (hence expected to be more conscientious), made two kinds of factual statements, one in absolute contradiction with the other, a volte face. First he persuaded us to believe him that he did not see the video clip filmed into the absolute privacy of the late Dr Siras. After few speakers, he again rushed to the dais to rectify himself, and made a frank and unambiguous confession of having actually seen at least a flash of the film (Should I call it a killer film, as it ultimately led to the death of Dr Siras?). This senior professor, looking after the law & order and security of the campus (if AMU could be called a state, proctor would be the home minister), demonstrated his innocence, naivette, inexcusable ignorance of and insensitivity to the fundamental right to privacy guaranteed by the Indian Constitution, i.e. both Constitutional and Islamic morality abhor infringing privacy.

Now the question arises: Could a citizen (that too a high paid senior professor and very high administrative functionary of a historic, centrally funded university) be excused for having committed, by his own admission, the crime of invading somebody’s privacy? I am afraid, a good number of the Aligs might naively say a forceful YES. That is what is at serious stake putting AMU to indefensible embarrassment.

The “Deputies” and “Assistants” of the Proctor were equally deficient in oratory. Apart from grammatical errors they made, and refused to acknowledge the audience’s corrective promptings, they also failed miserably in pleading the defense of the administration.

May I appeal to the honourable Vice Chancellor to kindly re-assess the abilities of such functionaries in articulating the positions taken by the administration. The way they mis-handled the issue of Dr Siras (from 8th February to 8th April 2010 and even beyond), has brought massive embarrassment for AMU across the globe. Arguably, they owe the major responsibility of this irreversible embarrassment to both our honourable VC and our alma mater.

Did this mis-handling emanate from incompetent and un-wise:

(a) Proctorial management,

(b) Media management, manned arguably by illegally recruited teacher(s),

(c) functionaries oblivious of : (i) the law of the land, and (ii) basic senses of morality?



If yes, then how could these teachers (functionaries) act as role models for the students, and for the society at large? If they failed to articulate the relevant points of the administration in the GBM, are they failing in the class-rooms as well? Or am I stretching the things too far?

I am groping towards answers. Will I succeed in getting the answers? Is academics, and therefore politics (in best sense of the word) in AMU moving towards “death throes”- to use the expression of Upendra Baxi, a former VC of Delhi University? Or has AMU become, “intellectual and social slum”, as put by Amrik Singh?

On raising such pertinent questions, if a naïve/ moron asks me to shift to another university, then a reply has to be slapped into his/her mailbox- “far from shifting elsewhere I must ask for and debate about improvement of my alma mater”. This must be an unceasing exercise. That is what, I suppose, is the spirit of the Aligarh Movement.

In other words, we must be perpetually self-critical, as suggested by Edward Said. Who said that the role of intellectuals is ‘to understand the role of authority and learning, to remain constantly engaged in search for knowledge, endless investigation, ceaseless searching, interminable doubts, to raise a challenge (to the students and to themselves) to continue their investigation, questioning, and to discover what is wrong around us. Dialogue, tolerance, skepticism and eternal quest are the essence of human exchange, so that critical consciousness is raised to new heights. Intellectuals should try to understand truth from among many conflicting ideas. They must have the courage to speak uncomfortable and embarrassing truths. The universities must not produce court intellectuals sitting at the feet of Sultan’.



Postscript: Meanwhile construction work of a private house in Jamalpur is in rapid progress, truck-loads of the construction material are put inside the AMU campus, in front of the transit houses of the Medical Colony, and these materials are being used by the masons by making a big hole into the boundary wall of AMU. The CCTV videographic camera, and proctorial patrolling mobile van are preferring to look the other way. Somebody must listen.
09 May'10

Regards,
Dr Mohammad Sajjad www.cas-historydeptt-amu.com/dr-mohammad-sajjad
Lecturer
Centre of Advanced Study in History
Aligarh Muslim University (India)