Rakesh Batabyal’s book JNU: The Making of A University gives readers the real story behind the establishment of Jawaharlal Nehru University, one of the pioneering institutions of the country.
The university came into existence in 1969 but the idea of its establishment first came about in the early 1960s as a second university to relieve Delhi University of the increasing number of students. Seventeen colleges located south of Kashmiri Gate were to be part of the new university. However, after Nehru’s death the leadership decided to name the university after him, which made many members of Parliament and leading educationists oppose the idea that the new university bearing the name of a world leader should be a routine affiliating university. They wanted it to be unique university of international repute matching the reputation of Nehru as a world leader.
Uniqueness was attempted to be brought in by federating many existing institutions like IIT, ICAR, AIIMS and others. However, this model did not work and the Parliamentary Select Committee as well as the other members of the Parliament suggested that the university should be a post-graduate university alone. This is how JNU became primarily a research university. The book meticulously brings out the contributions of personalities, many of whom have been long forgotten, one such personality being MC Chagla who is described as the real founder.
Since its inception in 1969, the university has passed through testing times. There were constant efforts by political parties, initially by the communists, to capture it for their political or ideological campaigns. However, as the book shows in graphic detail, the intellectuals of various hues created a democratic space where all such efforts were challenged and the space was made amenable to all ideas to intellectually test themselves. The university passed through the tumultuous period of emergency, when the freedom of students in terms of their democratic spaces, was thwarted. The subsequent administrative changes took away some of the unique features that the university community had developed in these initial years.
By this time, however, the intellectuals of the university were producing an entire range of works that were in some unconscious collective ways reflecting the vision of the early nationalist intellectuals of India — a vision of an equal, free and just society. The historians, economists, political scientists and sociologists as well as the area studies experts were charting the life of the mind towards a broad and shared vision. Notwithstanding lapses, the JNU vision of the founders remained the guiding force for the community. The internal political structures in fact worked in bolstering this vision by making the academic exercise cognizant with the concrete social reality. This explains the very layout of the university with its clustering of staff and student residences together and the relationship based on mutual respect was seen as a hallmark of JNU. The dhaba as an extension of the classroom, the post-dinner debates within the hostel and the many marriages emerging out of this shared space remains a lasting legacy.
It is a book that tries to capture in a comprehensive manner the life of the university. It weaves together the global, national and the local politics and foregrounds these within the university, to critically analyse the working of the minds within the university.