DU VC: The man who courted controversies

DU VC: The man who courted controversies

Rollback of the four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP) and the uncertainty over the resignation of Vice-Chancellor Dinesh Singh may be making news now, but Prof. Singh has been embroiled in several controversies and demands for his resignation began right from the beginning of his term. In the year 2012, Prof. Singh was accused of giving in to the Right-wing and not standing up for academic integrity when the Academic Council headed by him decided to purge from the university’s history syllabus, A.K. Ramanujam’s celebrated essay on the Ramayana: “Three Hundred Ramayanas – five examples and three thoughts on translations.”
During this time, the History department had been ransacked by activists of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad demanding that the essay be purged since its contents hurt religious sentiments. The matter then went to court and was finally redirected to be decided by the Academic Council.
“I did not say anything for or against the essay,” Prof. Singh had told The Hindu in his only interview on the matter after closeting himself inside the lodge and refusing to meet the press for several months. It was from this period that demands for his resignations began.
The Delhi University Teachers’ Association also started accusing the Vice-Chancellor of refusing to give them an appointment. A protest for long-standing service issues was met with warning letters from the university administration, ordering teachers to desist from protesting or to face the consequences. This continued every time the DUTA took out a protest.
For around three years, the relationship between the university and the DUTA has been at logger-heads. “He refused to acknowledge us, let alone meet us,” was the former DUTA president Amar Deo Sharma’s long-standing complaint. Instead, the V-C organised a “Durbaar” where he sat cross-legged on a white stage for some Thursdays and announced that anyone in the university, including the DUTA, could come in and tell him their woes.
The DUTA said he was not king and they were not his subjects to come to his “Durbaar”.
In addition to this were the “surprise visits” to colleges usually on day one of the new term. Here the V-C and his entire university entourage would descend on one college and if classes were not taking place, the principals and teachers would be pulled up in front of their students. “It is not so much the V-C. He was always polite, unfailingly so, but it was his entourage. They used bad language and spoke in a manner that was humiliating,” said a teacher who did not want to be named.
As demands for his resignation continued, it was his “reforms” that made the clamour for his resignation loud and strong.
The “College on Wheels” or the “Gyanodaya Express”, where the university booked an entire train in which it took 1,000 students every six months to different parts of the country, was also introduced during Prof. Singh’s term. The students were made to do projects and learn practical things about the different regions they visited. An announcement that the university would also buy a whole train had the teachers questioning: “Where is the money coming from?”
Another “reform” was an anonymous call centre he had set up where students could call and complain against a teacher who was absent or not taking class. “Flying squads” of select people would then swoop down on the college and the said teacher would be punished accordingly.
Another “reform” was the “Antardhvani” or university festival where colleges showing “best practices” got special funds projects running into lakhs. This also invited criticism from the teachers.
“The last straw was when he came riding into the university stadium on an elephant like a maharaja in February for the Antardhvani. And, to top it all, his guards kept pushing us away. We are Ph.D. scholars and also part of the university, why treat us as if we are some fans trying to get a look at some celebrity?” a teacher had questioned then.