The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is perhaps best known for advanced studies in the social sciences, all aspects of which are embodied in its School of Social Sciences. At different periods, other schools and centres of the university have contributed to and strengthened its intellectual ethos. I write to bring the (relatively) more recent School of Arts and Aesthetics (SAA, established 2001) into public focus. And this focus is punctual: SAA is an institutional innovation within JNU; its curricular resilience plays a role in conceptualising higher education in the field of the arts in India and abroad.Headed at its inception by Professor Jyotindra Jain, art historian and Indologist, the School of Arts and Aesthetics was conceived as a configuration of cross-disciplinary fields: Visual Studies (including, specifically, art history), Theatre and Performance Studies, and Cinema Studies. Each discipline within the School continues to appoint faculty members committed to an integrated curriculum of creative and critical discourse. Along with its own diverse faculty, SAA regularly invites visiting academics from universities across India and abroad to guide research, examine doctoral theses, lecture and teach for extended periods. Among the numerous scholars so invited, I mention just two whose lecture series I assiduously attended: Griselda Pollock (University of Leeds), distinguished feminist art historian; and Thierry de Duve (now Hunter College, City University of New York), art historian and theorist addressing twentieth-century aesthetics including the claims of the avant-garde.SAA’s diversely equipped faculty offers straight pedagogy in the form of lectures and research, but it also, given the nature of the subjects taught and studied, organises marathon film screenings and student-curated exhibitions. This environment enables students to expand the pedagogical boundaries with experimental forms of practice and activism.The School of Arts and Aesthetics auditorium at JNU. Credit: www.jnu.ac.inNot surprisingly, students at SAA learn to appreciate the subtle nature of aesthetics and grasp, at the same time, the complex framework of cultural studies. The contextual rigour of JNU as an institution also empowers students to scale the historical, to examine societal structures and to critique ideology. This approach gives to ‘arts and aesthetics’ (often regarded as an esoteric or, alternatively, a ‘soft’ discipline where philosophical reflection and reclusive sensibilities are nurtured) the necessary edge.A unique academic department in India, the School of Arts and Aesthetics at JNU fulfils the need for an institution addressing important areas of study that are still relatively scarce in Indian universities. In Visual Studies, it succeeds two institutions that set the precedent in the 20th century and where a substantial input of art history was a part of the fine arts courses, Kala Bhavan at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan and the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU) of Baroda. In Theatre and Performance Studies, the antecedent would be the National School of Drama in New Delhi, though that is essentially practice-driven whereas SAA’s curriculum is primarily academic. In Cinema Studies, SAA follows the Department of Film Studies at Jadavpur University but adds Cultural Studies as an important aspect, akin to the Cultural Studies Department at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad.Importantly, JNU’s SAA precedes and is complemented by the distinctly innovative School of Culture and Creative Expressions (SCCE) at Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD). Set up in 2012, SCCE’s curriculum includes Visual Art, Literary Art, Performance Art and Cinematic Art.The SAA-administration tussleJNU has been in turmoil ever since Professor M. Jagadesh Kumar took charge as the vice chancellor in February 2016. At that time, the then dean of SAA, Professor Bishnupriya Dutt (from Theatre and Performance Studies), joined her colleagues from SAA and from other Centres and Schools at JNU to challenge a slew of intimidating orders issued by the university administration. Today, SAA works closely with the democratically elected Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) and the Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers’ Association (JNUTA) in fighting the anti-intellectual policies of the administration.The dean of SAA, Professor Kavita Singh is a figure who signifies the present intellectual and administrative conflict at JNU. An art historian, she became the dean of SAA in July 2017. She is known internationally as a scholar of medieval miniatures (of schools and styles of painting practised across several cultures in West, Central and South Asia). She also works on museums as repositories of civilizational heritage, analysing their purpose and functioning in terms designated in contemporary discourse as Institutional Critique. I mention these details not only because I understand the modalities of scholarship in the visual arts best, but also because it may interest the general reader to appreciate how, in stressed circumstances, specialist knowledge extends itself to engage with urgent issues; how scholars take up contestatory positions when institutional upheaval demands intervention.Prof. Kavita Singh speaks at JNUTA’s Aakrosh Dharna Credit: Samim Asgor AliOn March 14, 2018, Professor Kavita Singh was removed from her deanship, along with six chairpersons of other departments, for objecting to the university administration’s attempt to impose a policy of mandatory attendance on students. Their contention is that the policy was neither discussed nor passed in the meeting of the Academic Council, and that the Minutes that claim otherwise are false. A petition, ‘Kavita Singh and Others Versus JNU’ was presented in April 2018 for hearing to the Hon’ble High Court of Delhi.Although Kavita Singh, along with her co-petitioners, was reinstated by a direction of the High Court on April 27, 2018, she was debarred from attending the 146th meeting of the JNU AC, held on July 13, 2018. Deans of schools have a mandated right to attend meetings of the AC, the highest decision-making body on academic matters. Singh’s debarment was attributed to her insistence during the previous AC meeting held on May 18, 2018, that the views of representatives of the teaching faculty be heard.The matter at stake is the manner in which the present university administration is manipulating the proceedings of the Academic Council by stacking the meetings with special invitees who have no locus standi but to endorse the unilateral decisions announced by the Vice Chancellor. The imposition of mandatory attendance, first on students and now on faculty members, is but one of the many such arbitrary calculated decisions to destroy the academic status and distinctive reputation of JNU.In their ‘prayer’ before the court, ‘Kavita Singh and Others’ are asking for the quashing of certain passages from the Minutes of the 144th Academic Council meeting (held on December 1, 2017) wherein it is claimed that an attendance policy was passed – and quashing thereby all related actions such as rule amendments, unsympathetic circulars and threats, etc. (see page 78 of the petition). The case will be heard on 29 October 2018.Attendance is not an issue It is entirely misleading to claim that students do not want to attend classes at JNU. They do attend classes, but they are well aware that classroom teaching is only one part of learning in institutions that deal with research, discourse and practice in context. Students of SAA, for instance, need to view situated performances, attend screenings, go to exhibitions, make study visits to sites of art-historical importance, and use dispersed and obscure archives. Demanding attendance from PhD students is not only absurd but the whole debate is also unnecessary. As a norm, learning systems extend beyond the classroom in universities across the world! The purpose, clearly, is not to ensure attendance but to instil in the students a culture of fear by threatening to expel them if they do not oblige.JNU VC M. Jagadesh Kumar has faced criticism for his ‘anti-intellectual’ policies. Credit: TwitterThe present Vice Chancellor’s diktats are incremental. JNU teachers have been arguing against policies that undermine the democratic spirit in key bodies of the university such as Boards of Studies, the Academic Council and the Executive Council; they have been pointing to the interference with new appointments wherein advertised posts are hastily filled with candidates conducive to the interests of the ruling dispensation but lacking appropriate (and sometimes even the minimum required) qualifications.Also at stake is JNU’s admissions policy, which is carefully calibrated to address gender imbalance and to bring socially disadvantaged students at par during the entrance procedure. The university’s curricula in diverse fields are attuned to a social justice mandate precisely through a structured discourse on the political. JNU’s developed system for entering into and imbibing disciplinary knowledge is sought to be annulled by the present administration – by retracting provisions for gaining equality as well as by the proposed ‘objective’-style examination system that not only devalues critical discourse but evacuates knowledge of its substantive content.The faculty and students of JNU have put up an unrelenting struggle since 2016 against the present vice chancellor’s retrogressive policies. Case after case has gone up before the public, the government and the law. Those of us who support the cause and its purpose need to assert – in consort with the enlightened forces within the university – why a boldly erected structure of thought and practice must be defended. We need to determine that authoritarian rule in public institutions will be defeated.Geeta Kapur is a Delhi-based critic and curator. Her essays are widely anthologised, and her books include Contemporary Indian Artists (1978), When Was Modernism (2000) and the forthcoming Critic’s Compass: Navigating Practice.
