Universities are the latest victims of Modi’s cult-building

Abhay Kumar

I teach as a Guest Faculty at the University of Delhi. On Saturday morning when I reached my college, my eyes fell on a “selfie point”.

A big picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also visible there. Later, I came to learn about the fact that the selfie point had been constructed by the college authority.

Recently the UGC issued guidelines to the university to erect a selfie point at a prominent place so that students could take pictures and they could develop a “collective pride” over “India’s achievements in various fields”, reported the web portal The Wire.

When the UGC policy to promote the “cult building” of Modi was widely criticized, the UGC withdrew its direction.

The authority of my college seems to be hesitant to take note of such a withdrawal notice. It has been experienced that the college authority often does not act promptly in case a request is made to provide students with basic facilities.

But in the case of erecting selfie points, it has acted at lightning speed. This points to the location of the priority of the administration. This is one of the classical examples of how our public educational institutions are fast turning into the propaganda machinery for the establishment, while at the same time failing to give basic facilities to students, teachers and nonteaching staff.

It appears that Delhi University is using public money to promote the image of a particular leader. Earlier, the same job was being done by the mainstream media.

It does not miss any opportunity to indulge in hero-worship and give all credit to Prime Minister Modi for every success. But when failures occur, the same media makes the opposition parties a scapegoat.

For example, if the BJP won elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, it was because of Modi’s magic. But when the same party lost elections in Karnataka and West Bengal sometime back, the mainstream media held factors other than Modi for the defeat.

The University administration appears to be falling into the roles of Godi journalists. The Selfie point with Modi’s image has not been put up for the first time at my college.

From book fairs to trade fairs, such selfie points with Modi’s photo were erected earlier. The new development is that the educational centres have also been brought within the ambit of propaganda machinery.

These developments are manifestations of the rot in our educational institutions system. The acts of heroworship and self-promotion of a particular leader pose a serious threat to our democracy.

If such a trend is not countered, our democratic system will become more authoritarian. Look at the doublespeak of the Hindutva forces: while the BJP has often criticised student activists and activist intellectuals at the public university for politicising education, the same party is silent about the act of hero-worship in politics.

The student wing of the RSS/the BJP is the ABVP. It claims to be the largest student body in the country. How many times has the mainstream media accused the ABVP leaders of doing politics at colleges and universities?

Several leaders of the BJP, including Arun Jaitley, came from the ABVP, yet the saffron leaders are assumed to be non-political during their students’ days.

Even the current Modi Government has two ministers from JNU: Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of Finance of India and S. Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs.

They are the product of the same JNU, which is being vilified as an “anti-national” university. The Hindutva forces have often argued that the university space has been misused by the secular/left forces but they never speak about how our education centres have been saffronised.

From recruitment to the distribution of scholarships and projects, the political factor and one’s affiliation to the ruling party work more than the merit of the candidate and the strength of the work.

Even the syllabus and courses have been modified to strain the country’s secular fabric. The falling of the educational institutes as a saffronised space could be better grasped by looking at the act of setting up selfie points ahead of the General Elections 2024.

Long back Babasaheb Dr. B. R. strongly criticised the culture of hero worship in politics.

In 1943, he gave a lecture on “Ranade, Gandhi and Jinnah” and called hero-worship “dangerous to the country”. However, it appears that these negative trends have become stronger under the Modi Raj because even the autonomy of public education institutions has been eroded.

Those who do not see anything wrong in the selfie point with the image of Modi, are quite silent to see the formulation of