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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
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HomeOpinionThe chairman of Delhi’s Dyal Singh College is a mini-Modi

The chairman of Delhi’s Dyal Singh College is a mini-Modi

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The long-running drama at Dyal Singh College — between day and evening courses over poor infrastructure and funding — has now found a curious new solution. Rename the college.

The Governing Board of Dyal Singh (Evening) College in their collective wisdom has changed its name to Vande Mataram Mahavidyalaya without any prior consultation or warning.

You would think the Governing Body of the college would pay attention to more pressing problems. But no, why deal with real problems when you can change the name of the college to Vande Mataram Mahavidyalaya, declare victory, and then accuse anybody who questions your decision as being inhuman. Such are the times we live in.

It should not come as a surprise that the Chairman of the Governing Board Amitabh Sinha, is a member of the BJP. He told a newspaper: “Whether it’s your own mother or Bharat mata, mother is mother. Those who have a problem with paying obeisance to mother, there is a question mark on whether they are human beings or not.”

The colleges in question are named after Dyal Singh Majithia one of the great sons of Punjab who amongst other things founded Punjab National Bank, The Tribune newspaper, and set up an educational trust that first set up Dyal Singh College in Lahore and then after Partition in Delhi until they were taken over by Delhi University in 1978. It was also the Dyal Singh Trust in 1959, which played a key role in giving a permanent structure and running the administration of a Camp College in Delhi for the Partition refugees from West Punjab. Ironically, Dyal Singh College in Lahore still exists and has kept its original name.

As the governing body struggles to calm the rising disquiet among the students and teachers of both the Dyal Singh morning and evening colleges — over the use of a common campus and conversion into a regular shift college — a dose of nationalism is a handy tool of distraction for everybody.

Now I understand that the Majithia name has been besmirched somewhat in recent years but Dyal Singh Majithia is still held in the high esteem in Punjab. The name change of an institution with such a rich history has caused a lot of anxiety among the people of Punjab. But more importantly, it is yet another example of the unthinking knee-jerk nationalism that has afflicted India since the 2014 election.

The Akali Dal has been in the forefront in protesting the name-change with its sole Delhi MLA, Manjinder Singh Sirsa registering an FIR against the Governing Body, challenging their authority to make the change.

Senior functionaries of Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee, the SGPC, and the Akal Takht are some of the other bodies that have voiced their protest. Delhi’s AAP government has remained silent on the issue.

The Delhi Congress, as usual, was confused with Amit Maken and Sheila Dikshit contradicting each other. Finally, on Wednesday, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh joined the fray by tweeting his strong opposition to the renaming. He reiterated that Dyal Singh Majithia was a progressive visionary whose legacy should be preserved.

But as the country is consumed with the debate over the release of a movie called Padmavati, the death threats to its actor and the all-important upcoming Gujarat elections, many have missed this smaller eruption.

The country is seeing a rising number of “mini-Modis” everywhere who want to replicate their supreme leader’s ‘decisiveness’ in whatever sphere of authority they are allowed to lord over. The Chairman of Dyal Singh College is just one of them.

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