Frontline

September  2000
Open letter


Stifling freedom with public money

Hari Sharma

Last month, the Government of India successfully put pressure on the Canada–based Shastri Indo–Canadian Institute to withdraw Sahmat’s posters from an exhibition at the Harbour Front Centre, Toronto. The foreign ministry of the Government of India justified its decision on the ground that Sahmat — a group that has chosen to challenge Hindutva on the cultural front — had a right to criticise India’s nuclear policy but not with government money.

Foreign ministry spokesman, RS Jassal, justified the intervention of India’s high commissioner in Canada, saying: "The government has the responsibility to see that public funds are spent in conformity with its objectives".

The ‘government money’ logic is nothing short of a brazen attempt to interfere with institutions whose first task it is to promote academic and artistic freedom. Understandably, the action against Sahmat has created a major controversy within academic circles in Canada and led to the decision of a prominent academic of Indian origin, Hari Sharma, to withdraw entirely from the Institute.

We reproduce below Sharma’s letter to the Institute’s president.

August 23, 2000

Prof. Hugh Johnston

President, Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute

Dear Hugh,

It was very shocking to know that the Canadian side of the Shastri Institute establishment has totally succumbed to the pressures of the Government of India, and has compromised on the principles of academic and intellectual integrity, at least, as we know it in Canada.

Attached here is a press release dated yesterday, August 22, coming out of Toronto, as well as a back-grounder on the "Dust on the Road" exhibition, a collaborative effort between artists from India and Canada, and supported by the University of Western Ontario, among others. You, as president of the Shastri Indo–Canadian Institute, capitulated under the pressure mounted by the high commissioner of India and wrote to the University of Western Ontario withdrawing Shastri’s support to the exhibition.

It isn’t just the shock I felt. I was angered and I felt horribly embarrassed: embarrassed for the long time association I have had with you as a colleague at Simon Fraser University, embarrassed for the fact that I have worked for over three decades at a university (and whose Professor Emeritus title I carry) which is associated with the Shastri Institute and is thus put in a most awkward position to having to live with the stigma this episode has undoubtedly created, and embarrassed also for the many years of my many involvements with the Shastri Institute’s functioning. I will return to this personal involvement a bit later.

Let me ask you to examine this scenario: suppose a Shastri-sponsored scholar from India gave lectures here denouncing globalisation, the World Bank and the IMF agenda, and the complicity of the Canadian state in all this. We both know that such things have happened. Would the Government of Canada put pressure on the Shastri Institute to un-sponsor such visitors, and publicly disassociate the Institute’s name from the events? Very unlikely; but, maybe, not an impossibility. The key question is: would the Shastri Institute succumb to such demands from the Canadian government? You know what would happen. The whole of Canadian academia would be up in arms.

You are a distinguished academic, a historian. Among other things you authored a most important book on the infamous Komagata Maru incident of 1914, and exposed the hugely racist and discriminatory policies of the Canadian establishment of the day. How would you feel if you were to be put under governmental pressure to not print the book? I know and we all know that you would scream "academic freedom". The entire academic world would come to support you.

What then were the compulsions you felt that you could not tell the agents of the Government of India that it was none of their business to interfere in the academic and intellectual commitments of the Shastri Institute? What remains of your own personal integrity on these matters?

You very well know that lately there has been tremendous interference from the high circles of the Government of India in the day to day functioning of the Shastri Institute. I am aware of your personal frustrations as reflected in the Presidential Updates you have been kindly sending out to some of us. The five–year Memorandum of Understanding has not been signed by the Government of India, even though more than eighteen months have elapsed. The rupee allocation has not been made. The scholars who have won fellowships to go to India this month may not be able to go.

A most blatant interference made by the Government of India was in the case of the workshop jointly planned by the University of Waterloo, the University of Guelph and Jawaharlal Nehru University of New Delhi, on the topic of "Accommodating Diversity: Learning from Indian and Canadian Experiences". A very noble venture, indeed.

Canada could certainly learn a lot from the centuries–old composite civilisation India has inherited, with eighteen different languages spoken and differently written, and practically every religion of the world followed by its citizens. But given the present–day character of the rulers of India, they are certainly afraid to open the learning process of what little Canada could teach them. They are not interested in honouring and enriching diversity; they are interested in homogenising the whole of India under their rubric of Hindutva.

And so, predictably, came down the letter from the high commissioner of India, to Shastri, that the proposed workshop on "accommodating diversity" was "beyond the scope and mandate of the Shastri Institute"! And the Shastri Institute promptly obliged the high commissioner by refusing funding for the workshop. It was shameful, to put it mildly.

I firmly believe that it is futile, and escapism of the worst kind, to take cover under the technicalities, under the so–called framework of a Memorandum of Understanding. I haven’t seen the MoU, and I do not care. If the MoU contains guidelines which prevents a workshop of the kind mentioned above, or forces you to withdraw support from the "Dust on the Road’ exhibition, I think that the MoU needs to be thoroughly trashed.

It is not that you are not aware of what has been happening in India over the last few years. You and I have talked about it, from time to time. As a professional historian you should be especially aware of the onslaught the present government has been making on the academic world. The national body, "Indian Council of Historical Research" has been restructured to suit a particular vision of India’s past. An important book by the noted historian, Dr. KN Panikkar, was forced to be withdrawn from the publisher (Oxford University Press) — because it painstakingly showed the facts of history which does not jive with the fascistic agenda of the present day rulers. Incidentally, Dr. Panikkar has been a guest of Canada, on Shastri funding.Can you dare sponsor a visit by him now?

I can give you a whole bag of examples of how the present Hindutva government is systematically destroying all the basic tenets of academic pursuit and intellectual discourse. But that would not be necessary, because I am absolutely sure that you know of them.

It is absolute necessary, and time has come, that the Canadian component of the Shastri Institute bring out the on-going problems it is confronting, and relate them to the larger academic and intellectual (artists, journalists, writers) community — here in Canada and globally.

There are more fundamental principles at stake than the question of making an institution work. The choice has to be made, even though there may very well be powerful vested interests in Canada which would rather not face the ugly realities of present–day India.

I am making my choice. I hereby declare that I sever my ties with the Shastri Indo–Canadian Institute. It is my very modest protest.

Over the years I have actively, and enthusiastically, helped to the best of my ability in the functioning of the Institute. I have acted as a referee/assessor for Shastri’s fellowship applications. I have participated in orientation sessions for the Canadian students who go to India to study. I have encouraged my students to avail of the Shastri fellowships to pursue their studies in India. I have hosted very many Shastri scholars from India — at times even providing them accommodation in our home. I have accepted the responsibility of providing guidance/supervision, for almost a whole year, to a JNU PhD student, and facilitated her fieldwork in the Shuswap First Nation of BC’s interior — with whom I had been working as the university–side co–Chair in the Partnership program.

And over the years, I have been principally, if not exclusively, instrumental in having renowned scholars and academics, writers, film makers, theatre artists, feminist activists, journalists, and even Members of Parliament from India to come to Vancouver under Shastri sponsorships, and enrich the academic and public discourse in this city. The number (just off the cuff) runs in over a dozen people. Maybe there are more I cannot quickly remember. I do not have to name them; but they are people with outstanding records in their respective fields.

I did this with a firm conviction that India needs to be understood by the Canadian people; that a free flow of ideas, as well as exchange between peoples of different cultures, can only enrich the two societies.

Not anymore. I cannot be a part of an outfit which succumbs to pressures of the kind the present day fascist rulers of India make, in their determination to turn India into a Hindu Nation.

And I wish to raise this whole matter with the larger community at Simon Fraser University — so that they examine if the university should be a party to such blatant governmental pressures. A copy of this is going to Dr. Bruce Clayman, vice–president, research and to Dr. John Munro, vice-president, Academic of SFU.

We here at this university could at least get some inspiration from the people at the University of Western Ontario who made a decision to forgo the grant rather than accede to the demands of the Indian government. Said Arlene Kennedy, director of the McIntosh Gallery and Visual Arts Department of that university: "In my view the request is a violation of two fundamental tenets that are central to any university and all public art galleries, including the University of Western Ontario and the McIntosh Gallery: the principles of academic freedom and arms–length relationship". Very well done, indeed.

And please note that I will be widely broadcasting this to concerned people here and in India. On your part, I hope, you will circulate it to the Shastri Board.

With warm regards and best of wishes.

(Hari P. Sharma, is professor emeritus of sociology, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada)

e-mail: [email protected]

 

 


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