Trouble in Miranda House

NK SINGH

Rebels .....

 "Women's lib Miranda House style," screamed headlines of newspapers with more-than-imaginative campus reporters. 

The trouble, which started with disciplinary action against two boarders for allegedly scaling the hostel wall to attend a late-night party, assumed wide proportion when the Miranda House Students Union (indirectly) took up the victims' cause and utilized the occasion to launch quite an agitation -- with all those slogans shouting girls -- in support of their much-prolonged demand for students' participation in college administration. 

Fashionable girl students coming in streets, and that too by themselves, was quite a spectacle for the 'conventional' Delhiwallas -- the timing of agitation which coincided with the action against wall-jumping belles, too, had its share of blame and the local pen-pushers could not resist their temptation to romanticise the whole issue. 

Even a Malayalam paper from Kerala, Malayalam Manorama, commented on the episode.

Face to face with one of Delhi's press corps, naturally, the President of Miranda House Students Union, K B Valsala, exclaimed, "Lord save the profession of journalism!" 

The Mirandian leader was sore with the newspapers for their "wilfully faulty vision, seeing the event in a topsy-turvy manner." Yes, there were less malicious ones, "enjoying the spectacle through their magnifying glasses of reporting."

Trouble in Miranda House, which is supposed to be Delhi University's elite women's college, is, by no means, over. In the middle of November (the agitation had taken place in the last week of October) the students' union threatened to go once again on strike if the authorities did not "honour the terms of the agreement" reached upon between the college governing body and the student leaders. 

In a letter to the pro-Vice Chancellor, the student union informed that the governing body's chairman had yet to implement the first point of the agreement, which proposed a new hostel committee consisting of five student representatives, the warden and the housekeeper. The letter sought the PVC's intervention, failing which the students would choose their "course of action."

However, the 'course of action' for Valsala was pure and simple enough: law. She would like to study and practice law after doing her M.A. in English. A former student of St. Teresa College, Trivandrum, Valsala joined Miranda House only last year. 

This year she was chosen (uncontested) as the chief of Mirandians. Though she is not very keen on pointing out, Valsala has a great interest in student politics; she took an active part and interest in student union even in her undergraduate days and was the President of St. Teresa at Trivandrum.

Unlike many student leaders -- nay, politicians -- Valsala does not like political parties' interference in the campus which she complains, is growing day by day. The students should not indulge in politics. True, they've problems, but that should be solved by the student community itself. 

No need to become a pawn of power-lusty politicians. The core of their activities should be "raising a voice against all injustice." No, she has no political commitment. Does not think herself mature enough to arrive at any judgement, as yet. She has read a little of Marx and dislikes his "overemphasis on economism."

..... With a "Cause"

Writes K.B. Valsala: 

The Mirandians were fighting for a long-felt, legitimate demand, namely the overhauling of the then-existing, illogical and undemocratic hostel committee and the formation of a new hostel committee with the warden, the housekeeper and elected resident student and resident teacher representatives. 

The authorities refused to constitute such a reasonable committee and said that two elected resident students could be "invitees" to, and not "members" of the committee with voting powers. But the students were very firm about their stand, viz all five elected student representatives who form the hostel union be represented in the hostel committee, the warden, the housekeeper and resident teachers also be represented on the committee. 

The students disapproved of the idea of nonresident teachers, who did not know about the problems and grievances of the resident students, to be included in the committee. The crisis arose when the then-existing so-called hostel committee decided in a meeting relating to the hostel, in the absence of student representatives. 

Various letters and memorandums were sent in vain, to the principal asking her to find an urgent solution to the explosive situation. On the third day of the agitation, the students union took up the issue which was till then a matter of the hostel union. 

According to the unanimous decision taken in a general body meeting of the college, the Mirandians went on strike on October 27 and 28. Meanwhile, student representatives were granted admission to the staff council meetings to present their case. The various rounds of.. talks with the staff council proved to be fruitless

Understanding the full implications of spreading the issue to the whole university, we asked the Vice-Chancellor to intervene directly in the problem and find an urgent solution to it as we wanted to avoid further unpleasantness. 

Under the mediation of the Pro-VC, the chairman of the governing body of Miranda House in consultation with the principal and student representatives agreed on October 28 which was mutually acceptable. 

According to the agreement, a new hostel commitment with the warden the housekeeper and elected resident student representatives is to be formed. It was also agreed upon that students would be given equal representation as the teachers in all decision-making bodies of the college.

What the Mirandians fought for and achieved was not any special privilege but a legitimate right of theirs. Students' participation in the administration of the college is just the starting point. The logical extension of this would be student participation in the university administration which is a foregone conclusion.

We live in an age which is full of clamouring for the democratization of all institutions. When many of the foreign universities including French and German universities have granted effective student participation in all decision-making bodies of their universities it is high time that the Indians discarded their conservatism and ivory-tower-mindedness and granted student participation in the administration of universities.

For the democratization of universities, for greater participation and involvement and above all for revolutionary changes in the existing system of education which was introduced by Lord Macaulay to manufacture thousands of clerks to fill up the posts in the lower rungs of the ladder of administration, we need meaningful and effective student representation at all levels of the university right from the college level to the executive council. 

Already certain Indian universities have granted student representation in their senate or court and the University of Cochin (Kerala) has made provisions for student representation in the syndicate as well.

When big businessmen and non-academic elements who have no connection whatsoever with the academic world are members of the decision-making bodies of the universities, I do not see why students, the progressive element which is directly connected with the academic field, should not be given a say in university administration. 

Once there is effective and meaningful student participation in the university administration, automatically there will be better communication between the students and teachers, and by sharing the responsibilities of the university, students will understand the difficulties and complexities of the university, and the university in its turn will understand the grievances and aspiration of the students. 

Otherwise, there will continue to be indirect interference of the students in the decision-making processes of the university through their agitations which the authorities label as 'student in-discipline'.

..... Without a Cause

All the colleges are not Miranda House.

Nor all the student leaders are Valsala.

Most of them, unfortunately, belong to the variety of Sri Ram Khanna (Vidyarthi Parishad) who technically ceased to be the President of the Delhi University Students Union on November 17 when he was suspended and on November 21 rusticated for two years from the University.

But this is the case of rebels without a cause. 

Since November 14 last, following a clash with the police outside the State Secretariat, Delhi students and their union have been on a warpath. 

University and Delhi Administration offices were ransacked, the VC's house was besieged, university employees were manhandled, and an innocent woman was killed by one of the numerous hijacked buses allegedly driven by a student resulting in the rustication of four student leaders.

In a statement accompanying the rustication orders the VC, Dr Sarup Singh, said: "These students have been trying to explain the acts of violence committed in the university on November 14 and 15 and they have also been mixing other issues (the demands include the participation of students in the policy-making bodies, the release of all the arrested students, taking over of 'sick' colleges and withdrawal of restriction orders) with the acts of violence which are unconnected.

"Freedom is the essence of the functioning of the university but it should be recognised that violence is ultimately the greatest opponent of freedom.. all members of the university should be free to hold any opinion, political or otherwise, and have the right to express them freely and boldly. 

"Such freedoms have not been involved in the recent disturbances. I am acting under the clear conviction that what the university is up against is not any student movement, which the university will have no desire to discourage, but an unprecedented manifestation of violence."

One may or may not agree with Dr Singh. At times violence may be unavoidable and necessary. or even But it is a means to achieve a certain cause -- in the words of Marx, "the midwife of history" - and not the end in itself, as a handful of Delhi University students seem to be assuming.

Young Indian

23 November,1972