It passes comprehension how even a clueless bureaucrat — one who is lazy, sloppy, fuzzy in the head and out of sync with current affairs although he may have cleared a general knowledge test before embarking on a career in babudom — can be misled into believing that Vishwanathan Anand, international chess grandmaster beyond
compare and world champion many times over, is anything other than an Indian. It must indeed be painful for Anand — arguably one of the greatest sports personalities that this country has produced — to go about proclaiming that he is indeed an honoured citizen of India who has brought the country more laurels internationally than most of his compatriots. In a situation such as this, if anyone is foolhardy enough to question the grandmaster’s nationality on file and proceed to make a suggestion that is patently absurd, he should first be asked to establish his case before doubt can be cast on what everyone from Chennai to Cherrapunji knows to be more than true. Ordinary rules of common sense and indeed also those of governmental procedure take this for granted. But we are talking about the hoary Indian bureaucracy, and nothing should come as a surprise. In the event, the first call on human resources development minister Kapil Sibal is to determine how the goof-up occurred and recommend exemplary punishment. If the procedures are to blame, then those need to be overhauled without delay. So far Mr Sibal has been suitably gracious in making a personal phone call to the champion to make amends. It is a pity nevertheless that the astounding stupidity of the file-pushers prevented a great Indian from accepting the award of a honorary doctorate from the University of Hyderabad at the International Mathematics Congress hosted by the university. It is also worth asking why the university in question did not sound an alarm within the system it operates before the issue came out into the open. If it had, Anand would not have been put through his agony.
In all this, the germane issue is why a university cannot simply decide on whom to confer honorary degrees. Why should government permission be needed to honour foreign nationals of eminence if a university wishes to do just that? If such regulations actually exist, as has been reported, then it would appear we are living in a police state. If a university is going to be so shortsighted as to offer an honorary doctorate to an individual not deserving of that distinction, it will be reviled and will attract public ridicule, possibly even opprobrium. And that would send it on a path of course correction. But why should an issue such as this be anything to do with the government? After all, universities are not required to apply to the government for permission when giving honorary degrees to Indian nationals. This is a subject that Indians will do well to ponder if they value the autonomy of their institutions. Those from academia would do well to raise the appropriate questions. If the government seeks to assume such overarching powers, and people keep quiet, the government is likely to stop at nothing. Thus, the bungling in Anand’s case points to a particularly serious malaise that afflicts our university system. Its existence appears singularly incongruous for a country whose Prime Minister is a distinguished man of letters and known to foster the cause of institutions whose business is knowledge creation.
What has happened so far is that we have insulted an Indian who has reached great heights in his chosen field of endeavour, and we have also shown to the world that we run a system which permits mere officials to preside over the affairs of our universities. A country that is pushing to move ahead in life, to build bridges with the future, and to retain its democratic aspirations, is likely to get nowhere if its universities are made to kowtow to the whims of the government.