Death of a professor: fear and frustration in small-town India’s neglected colleges

The violent death of Prof. H.S. Sabharwal in Ujjain is the fallout of widespread student anger and frustration sweeping the Indian hinterland. Its fury could halt the momentum of the fast-track Indian economy. Dilip Thakore reports Beyond the glow of the bright lights of mega shopping malls and soaring plate glass skyscrapers of metropolitan India where smug chauffeur-driven corporate chiefs take home annual salary packages of Rs.4-6 crore, and glitzy page 3 parties crowd political and economic news reports out of daily newspapers, there’s an uncoiling serpent of student anger in small-town India’s under-served colleges and universities. Its fury could halt the momentum of the fast-track Indian economy currently growing at 8 percent-plus per year.  The violent death in the small town of Ujjain (pop. 700,000) of Prof. Harbhajan Singh Sabharwal, head of the political science faculty at Madhav College of Arts, Commerce and Law (estb.1890) on August 26, which was graphically depicted on several television channels on the eve of Teachers Day (September 5), is the fallout of this anger and frustration sweeping across the Indian hinterland. The trivial issue of postponement of student elections at the college, prompted a posse of students under the banner of the ABVP (Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad) — the students wing of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — to storm the gates of the college in protest. In the ensuing melee, Prof. Sabharwal (62) who reportedly made a mild show of support of the faculty decision to postpone the college election during an argument with the militant students, was manhandled and suffered a fatal heart attack. Some eyewitness reports say he was inflicted several blows to the chest, which triggered a cardiac arrest. Whatever the facts of the case, the identity of the aggressors is beyond doubt. The main protagonist was Vimal Tomar, the burly, thickset secretary-general of ABVP who was clearly shown to be threatening Prof. M.L. Nath (who was actually in charge of the college’s students union election) and Prof. Sabharwal standing beside him, on several television news channels. It’s a telling indicator of the extent to which students unions even in obscure colleges have been captured by political parties that Tomar, who is in his mid-thirties, has no direct connection with Madhav College. Since then following a national uproar and the opposition Congress party in the state making capital out of the “murder” of Prof. Sabharwal, Shashi Ranjan Akela, the president of the Madhya Pradesh unit of ABVP and several other members of the BJP-supported students union have been arrested. With the BJP — the parent party of ABVP — in power in the sprawling (308,252 sq. km) Hindi heartland state of Madhya Pradesh, infamous for its lawless dacoits in the ravines of the Chambal Valley as also for the open, continuous and uninterrupted exploitation of its native tribal population, a massive cover-up operation to suppress the ugly face of student unionism in the state (pop. 49 million) has begun. Perpetually haunted by fear of transfer to obscure colleges in rural outbacks and the…