The suicide attempt by Nitish Kumar, a young bright student of the reputed Patna College of Arts and Crafts, has rekindled memories of the Rohith Vemula episode. There is much that is similar between what happened in Hyderabad and what is happening in Patna. Like Rohith, Nitish too is a dalit student victimized by the college and university administration and like Rohith, Nitish too is a committed fighter for justice for all his fellow students. Students of the Arts College have not only been suspended but also arrested under false charges, and Nitish is fighting against this ongoing repression on the students. The ironical difference is that in Hyderabad, Rohith and his fellow students were being persecuted by a nexus that began with local ABVP activists and the University administration on the ground and went right up to key BJP ministers at the Centre, and in Patna, the nexus revolves around the Nitish Kumar government which claims to champion social justice and good governance and received a massive mandate precisely against the BJP and on the very plank of social justice, secularism and democracy.
Nitish and his friends in the Patna College of Arts and Crafts have been fighting against the college Principal Chandrabhooshan Shrivastava who has earned tremendous notoriety among students during his ‘stopgap’ tenure since October 2012 for his rank casteist and sexist conduct and thuggish way of running a college which promises ‘a participative and creative environment’. A petition signed by more than 130 students demanding removal of and action against the Principal lies before the VC as well as the Chief Minister and Chairpersons of the Women’s Commission, SC/ST Commission, and Human Rights Commission. Since late April, students have also been agitating for the revocation of wrongful suspension of students who have been victimized for raising their voice against the sordid state of affairs in the college. Students allege that despite all their complaints, the Principal continues to stay in office because of his close proximity to the Principal Secretary of the Chief Minister.
The appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as the chairman of FTII, Pune and Pahlaj Nihalani as the head of the Central Board of Film Certification in India came as rude shocks to the creative community across the country. The protests against these appointments have been triggered not just by the democratic concern to save institutions from the design of saffron subversion but more by the shock caused by the arrogant disdain for these institutions writ large in these appointments. If loyalty or proximity to the ruling dispensation becomes the biggest criterion of choice in key posts in institutions meant to promote creativity then it sounds the death knell for creative freedom and excellence. The Patna Arts College case is no less shocking. A Principal governing a creative institution in an atmosphere of fear and dictatorship with shocking overtones of casteism and sexism is an affront to the creative community and an assault on the present and future of the students, and when such a person continues to enjoy political patronage and backing of the higher authorities despite repeated complaints by students it is a clear case of arrogance and abuse of power that must be opposed by everyone who cherishes democracy.
The Arts College episode is no isolated case, it only symbolizes the deeper and growing rot in Bihar’s education system. The sensational ‘Toppers scam’ is another shocking case in point. Modi’s alleged degree in ‘entire political science’ may have caused ripples of laughter, but when the topper in the Arts stream in this year’s plus-two board examinations said she learned ‘cooking skills’ in political science, it raised millions of eyebrows in Bihar. The chief of the Bihar School Examination Board, Mr. Lalkeshwar Prasad Singh, reportedly a Nitish Kumar acolyte, (whose wife, a former JDU MLA from Hilsa in Nalanda district, has now also been exposed to have made dubious degree claims in her election affidavit), has resigned and gone underground to evade investigation. Bachcha Rai, the reported kingpin of the toppersgate scam, who runs the Bishun Rai College in Vaishali named after his father and produces dubious Toppers, has finally been arrested and his close ties with leaders of JDU, RJD as well as BJP are now hogging the headlines in Bihar. If properly investigated, the Toppers Scam may well turn out to be Bihar’s equivalent to the Vyapam scam in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh. Soon after becoming the Chief Minister of Bihar in 2005, Nitish Kumar had set up the Muchkund Dube commission with the stated aim of overhauling the education system in the state, but now the emerging facts tell us that while the common school system recommended by the committee was consigned to oblivion, a systematic subversion of education went on with high level political blessings and administrative backing. A high level judicial enquiry must be set up immediately to get to the bottom of this rot and punish all the guilty.
Bihar has historically been a cradle of powerful student movements. Leaders like Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad owe their political rise to the famous 1974 students’ movement. Radical student activists from the 1970s and subsequent generations are an important pillar of the revolutionary communist movement in the state. Beginning with Chandrashekhar to the current generation of Kanhaiya Kumar, Ashutosh and Chintu, student activists from Bihar have played a leading role in shaping the progressive student discourse in JNU and other campuses in the country. Today, when student activists in Patna University are being dubbed terrorists and subjected to all sorts of victimization and persecution, it is time for the progressive student movement to reassert in Bihar, stand by Nitish and other fighting students of Patna Arts College and Patna University and rise with all might against the ongoing mockery and betrayal with the youth in Bihar on the twin fronts of education and employment.
