The idea of the autonomy of educational institutions from the impact of religion, in a country as diverse as India, seems like a very far-fetched idea. This has indeed been the case for a while now. The soft-Hindutva play in Uttar Pradesh’s Banaras Hindu University under the RSS-crusader, Girish Chandra Tripathi, or Kerala’s Muslim Educational Society’s decision to prohibit women from wearing religious veils are a few recent examples. A fresh addition to this list has been Delhi University’s St. Stephen’s college.
Earlier this month, the college’s Supreme Council announced that it would incorporate one of its members, who would also have to mandatorily, be a member of the Church of North India (CNI), into the admissions panel of the college. To get the facts straight, according to the constitution of the college that can be found on the institute’s website, the Supreme Council has been declared responsible for controlling “… religious and moral instruction of the students of the College and all matters affecting its religious character as a Christian College of the Church of North India.” The document also goes a step forward and declares the matters of all religious and moral instruction as the sole concern of the Supreme Council.
Following this announcement, a few teachers of the college, including Nandita Narain, from the Department of Mathematics, NP Ashley, from the Department of English, and Abhishek Singh, from the Department of Economics, released a statement and condemned the step taken by the college’s administration. In their notice, the associate professors had argued that the step was against the Constitution of the college, and rightly so. In point number 5 under the section named: rules of the society, the document states, “The Supreme Council of the College shall have no jurisdiction over the administration of the college.” Along with this, the morality and ethics of appointing a religious figure to the admissions process of a college are questionable, at best.
In response to this step by the faculty, the college sent “warning letters” to the involved teachers, commenting on how they were informed of the changed guidelines in the governing body meeting held on March 14. The entire incident has brought out the internal tussles of the college’s workings in the limelight, with the Delhi University Teachers’ representatives also writing a letter to the Vice-Chancellor of the university, condemning the steps taken by the college authorities.
Another point to note is that the teachers have alleged this entire incident to be a case of ‘a clash of interest’ because the Principal is elected by the Supreme Council itself. As the college gears up for its admissions process to begin on May 22, it remains to be seen if this step by the authorities was indeed an attempt to regulate the religious diversity of the student body.