The current ‘situation’ at IIMC, New Delhi invariably leads one to the proverbial question ‘Is this really what we have come to?’ In the bizarre twist of events, for these events may be considered singular by any standards and by every school of thought, the college witnessed further division in its ranks. Actually, a fair share of protestors amongst the propagandists protesting against the authorities and the key authority figures separated themselves from this protest.
The question to be asked here is what are the factors responsible for this unnecessary disruption in India’s premier journalism institute. According to sources, the protest is being caused by a series of events, which have snowballed into this effect. The so-called ‘liberal’ cabal, is responsible for this particular protest, which in fact was not staged with the primary objective of securing demands, but was targeted at key authority figures at the institute itself.
The roots of this ‘feud’ between these IIMC ‘liberals’ and the authorities were established long ago, even before the appointment of KG Suresh as the Director General of IIMC. These so-called liberals ‘labelled’ him as a right-winger, instead of judging him by his credit, his capabilities, discriminated and ostracised the academia at IIMC on basis of ideology. This may have begun when Amit Sen Gupta, another man of ‘Leftist’ inclinations decided to protest against the many things wrong with his life and submitted his resignation to the college authorities. This resignation was unfortunately approved.
Furthermore, Naren Singh Rao, an integral part of this particular liberal movement at IIMC, was relieved of his duties on December 24, 2016 on the basis of more than a few formal complaints lodged against him by his colleagues, including females, citing misbehaviour and outright negligence of duties. The academic associate was known for defiantly demanding senior teaching positions despite not being qualified to teach. The air was also rife with definite rumours of his alleged association with a female senior professor at IIMC, staying at the girl’s hostel, where he was also the warden. A testament to how liberal the ‘conservative’ Director General really is, despite this all, Naren was dismissed honourably and with just cause.
Left Gameplan
It is really understandable that the authority was in two minds about letting Rao stay on Campus at the Girl’s hostel for it is only prudent to refrain from letting a man of such questionable character stay on premises where female sanctity is paramount, for even rumours are enough to warrant dismissal from such a sensitive post. But how such a man can be looked up to by young minds, in what ways can such a man inspire and what do these students wish to learn from him, all this is food for thought.
Rao got busy lobbying for the leftist wing at IIMC full time after losing his job. His antics make it quite clear why he was never qualified to take up any position of responsibility. He indulged in all he could, to make his presence felt, from misleading students to drop their studies to create an unrest on the campus to writing ‘open letters’ to his former seniors, just falling short of committing libel on a public platform and hasn’t been persecuted by IIMC authorities only due to his sorry state.
The protests don’t by any standards mark the first time he has mislead impressionable minds. He has been preaching his false doctrines for a long time. In early February 2017, when he had filed a lawsuit after he was dismissed against IIMC at the High Court, he impelled and directed a student at IIMC to write an article about it with an aim of changing public opinion, knowing full well that the matter was a sub judice one and that the article would also be in complete violation of the IIMC student’s code of conduct. As a result, the student was expelled by the college authorities.
Amit Sen and Rao have certainly been busy since being freed from their duties, it comes as no surprise. They seem to have gone far and wide, spreading their message of how the liberals were being oppressed at IIMC and invited a number of student leaders from a number of marked leftist organisations to IIMC with the sole objective of creating disruptions and causing public unrest. From time to time, left-wingers from various havens like JNU have staged a number of ‘disturbances’ at IIMC.
This time around, these ‘free thinkers’ at IIMC began to demand a 24 hour open library and directed the Director-General to ‘dislodge and displace’ the female students from one of the Girl’s Hostel wings (which was given to them in face of rising crimes against women) post-haste for a Boy’s Hostel on campus, which of course would be Rao’s new seat of power.
“This protest is a farce, just being staged by the IIMC Left lobby for the sake of a few of their leaders, who were lost to them because of their own actions. Students are actually staging protests against the protestors themselves, This explains the situation really well. These people are giving the institution a bad name, but they have always been doing this, for they are fervently criticising the institution on social media. “These people are in the wrong and will never succeed. They talk of liberalism, yet they can accept no one but fellow leftists, I think that is the reason they hate the current authority so much because it favours everyone these days” said Raghavendra Saini, an IIMC alumni.
Hardly Liberal
This may not and cannot be termed as liberal behaviour. Trying to accomplish unreasonability incarnate at the expense of those you consider impressionable and expendable, aiming to cause discord amongst the student populous of an institution just achieve the end of a ‘lost job’ and to make one ‘miserable’. Just to extract a personal vendetta can never be deemed as a liberal thought. Is Rao really worthy of leading anyone to anything? For what are the protests taking place? One does not go to these lengths to stroke one’s ego and certainly not while infringing your fellow women’s privileges. ‘Discriminating and dividing them young’ seems to be the strategy of the false leaders in question at IIMC. They have been following this wrong path that has been an established norm at IIMC.
These people really wish for anarchy, while not knowing how to make it as such in face of adversity.
(The writer is a Delhi-based journalist)
