PROF Amartya Sen’s distinction and fame transcend those that normally belong to Nobel laureates. He is a public intellectual of international renown and noted for his liberal, secular values and commitment to independence of academia.

His Feb 19 resignation letter to the governing board of the Nalanda University raises vital issues concerning the independence and autonomy of universities.

A university is a body corporate with a legal personality. That can be conferred only by legislation. Colleges possess no legal personality and are registered under the Societies Registration Act. That is where the problem arises. The acts make the head of state, president or governor, the chancellor of the university. After long debate it was accepted that he acted in his individual discretion and not on the advice of the Council of Ministers. That helped, but not much.

The Nalanda University was set up by the Nalanda University Act and came into being in 2010. It has an international character with a governing board comprising nationals from different Asian countries besides Indian academics. Prof Sen was appointed its first chancellor. The university has the Indian president, Pranab Mukherjee as visitor while the external affairs ministry coordinates with the visitor’s office.

Last month, the board decided, in the absence of Prof Sen who properly recused himself, to ask him to serve as chancellor for a second term when his present term expires.

However, the decision of the board becomes operational only after the visitor (the president of India ex-officio) gives his assent. The decision was conveyed to him after the meeting on Jan 14 drawing his attention to the urgency of the matter.

Acts setting up universities are modelled on those of the colonial era.

More than a month passed without the visitor according the requisite assent. Not only the president’s office, but also the external affairs ministry did not reply. Prof Sen decided to resign. He made two points. One concerns the government’s functioning, the other the independence and autonomy of academia.

He pointed out: “Non-action is a time-wasting way of reserving a board decision, when the government has, in principle, the power to act or not act. This … also happened to the revised statutes that the governing board passed unanimously last year. Many of these statutes (including the one pertaining to the chancellor’s term of office) also never received formal acceptance or rejection from the Ministry of External Affairs.” This is a shabby way for the government to deal with any citizen; more so with a university of international character.

He said: “I am also sad, at a more general level, that academic governance in India remains so deeply vulnerable to the opinions of the ruling government, when it chooses to make political use of the special provisions. Even though the Nalanda University Act, passed by parliament, did not, I believe, envisage political interference in academic matters, it is formally the case — given the legal provisions (some of them surviving from colonial days) — that the government can turn an academic issue into a matter of political dispensation if it feels unrestrained about interfering.”

This point is well taken. The acts establishing universities are modelled on those enacted in the colonial era. Like much else, they were faithfully copied by the politicians who assumed power after India’s independence. They had no notion of the place of free institutions in a democracy nor of the role which universities play in moulding the outlook of citizens.

No one summed up these truths better than the sage Walter Lippmann. Democracy had worked in the US because, “outside the government and outside the party system there have existed independent institutions and independent men”. He named “free universities” among them besides the judiciary and press.

Academia is respected for its freedom from partisanship and vested interests. “The role of the universities, apart from their specific task of training men and advancing knowledge, is not unlike that of the courts. They are places to which men can turn for judgments which are unbiased by partisanship and special interest. Obviously, the moment the universities fall under political control, or under the control of private interests, or the moment they themselves take a hand in politics and the leadership of government, their value as independent and disinterested sources of judgment is impaired.”

State power is not the only threat to academia’s freedom. In accepting endowments universities must insist on “their freedom from the promptings of private interest”. Also, academics must “renounce their ambition to play a part in partisan political controversy”.

Only in freedom can the truth be pursued. In India the battle for the separation of learning from the state has yet to begin in earnest.

The writer is an author and a lawyer based in Mumbai.

Published in Dawn March 7th , 2015

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