And mind you, Aditya Thackeray, grandson of the Shiv Sena's founder and son of Uddhav Thackeray is himself all set to enter politics with the launch of the Yuva Sena, the youth wing which is apparently distinct from the Vidhyarti Sena of which nothing much is heard from its leader Raj quit the party. One expected that being modern, educated, and young, he would be more tolerant to the not so favourable references to the Shiv Sena in Mistry's work. That is a disappointment for intolerance is being carried to the third generation. His great grandfather, generally referred to as Prabhodhankar was a progressive.
My lament is less about the blood and DNA being stronger in the Thackeray family than ideas are. My anguish is about the willingness to accept intolerance without even batting an eye. Ambedkar's Riddles in Hinduism, then Salman Rushdie's book, and yet again, James Laine's Shivaji: Hindu King in a Mughal India have all been proscribed not because of any scholarly objections but by the unthinking leaders of political parties who have a gallery to play to, not lead the country into a new era where critique becomes essence of democracy. There was that film Fire, if you recall which was victim of mob fury.
Adiyta is a poet, and I am sure within the family, there would have been some celebration at the manner in which he secured compliance. he has drawn the first blood using intolerance. Tomorrow's dictator is thus born.
This decision to excise Mistry's book mid-term, even after the test papers have been set for the course, is a sad reflection of the university's leadership. This supine compliance by Welukar even before the world debated the demand shows that the university is not going in the right direction. He was the first to be picked by a rigorous selection method to ensure the university's academic progress; this first milestone is a negative, surely.
Other segments of the media did not react at all to the news item on the front page of the Mumbai Mirror and only person who argued against such tendencies, again only in the Mirror the next day was Aroon Tikekar who pointedly said that "timidity has no room in academics". The silence by others is ominous and distressing.
The point I would like to make is that Welukar is differently positioned that the government's executive and he has no political compulsions to ride to keep the university going. He is the custodian of the university's autonomy. If he had had the Academic Council review the syllabus and found that Mistry's fiction was not worth being in the syllabus, it would have been different. No such review of syllabus is periodically rigorously carried out.
Not acceptable.
No comments:
Post a Comment