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Journalism of Courage
On Sunday, Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan, who has locked horns with the CPI(M)-led LDF government over several issues, picked up an incident from three years ago to launch a caustic attack on Gopinath Ravindran, the Vice-Chancellor of the state’s Kannur University. Calling Ravindran a “criminal”, Khan said, “This man (Ravindran) is sitting as V-C because of political reasons. This man has been ruining Kannur University. He had made several illegal appointments.”
Khan was referring to the 80th session of the Indian History Congress that was hosted in Kannur University in December 2019. There, as Governor Khan reportedly deviated from his speech to talk about the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), a few members in the audience and on the dais, including Prof Irfan Habib, whom the Governor called “a goonda” on Tuesday, objected. Following the protest, Khan had to abruptly end his inaugural address and get off the dais.
While Ravindran is yet to respond to the attack, over 50 historians and prominent academics have issued a statement “deploring” Khan’s remarks and extending their support to him.
Ravindran, 61, is on deputation to Kannur University from Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia, where he has taught Modern Indian Economic History in the Department of History and Culture since 2004, and which he headed from 2009. He also headed several centres at Jamia, including the Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution.
Considered an expert on the historical demography of colonial India, his work on the agrarian history of modern south India is recognised as an authoritative source. Many of his works – including Agrarian Regimes and Demographic Change: Fertility Change in Southern India, for which he was awarded the prestigious H K Barujari National Award in 2011 by the Indian History Congress, and The Changing Late Precolonial Political Economy of Malabar – have led him to work on his home state, Kerala.
But it was in Delhi that he spent much of his early life and career. An alumnus of Frank Anthony Public School, and later St Stephen’s, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and the London School of Economics, where he did his postdoctoral research, Ravindran taught at St Stephen’s and Jamia, before moving to Kerala as Vice-Chancellor of Kannur in 2017.
The move came two years after he quit as member-secretary of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) over differences with then chairman Y S Rao. Ravindran had objected to Rao’s move to dissolve an advisory committee to the council that had Irfan Habib, Romila Thapar and others as members.
Historian Kesavan Veluthat, who has known Ravindran for over three decades as fellow academics in Delhi – “he at Jamia, me at DU” – says he holds Ravindran in high regard for being both a “brilliant academic” and an “efficient administrator”. “As a historian, his works are considerably lauded in India and abroad. And when he was made V-C of Kannur University, he turned around what was a haphazard and lawless university and gave it the shape of a university,” says Veluthat, retired professor of history, Delhi University.
In November 2021, a month before he would have turned 61, Ravindran was reappointed V-C of Kannur University – a selection that kicked up a major political row as he was reportedly the first V-C to be reappointed in Kerala.
The Save University Campaign Committee, which was the first to oppose Ravindran’s reappointment, pointed out that it was a contravention of the Kannur University Act of 1996, which says no person above 60 shall be appointed VC.
Governor Khan, who, in his capacity as Chancellor, had approved Ravindran’s reappointment, shot off an angry letter to CM Pinarayi Vijayan, accusing the state of interfering in university appointments and saying he was forced to pass the reappointment order “against my conscience”. Khan had also threatened to quit as Chancellor.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Ravindran had then said, “I cannot comment on the Chancellor’s opinion. But the controversy is purely political. It is politics that’s playing out… It is certainly not going to advance the interest of higher education. The casualty in all this is the higher education sector, which is lagging behind in north Kerala. When I took over as VC, Kannur University had a NAAC rating of B. Now it has improved two notches to B++. Perhaps that is the reason I was retained. Otherwise I had even booked my return tickets to Delhi.”
The Congress-led UDF had also alleged favouritism in Kannur University’s decision to shortlist Priya Varghese, wife of CPM leader K K Ragesh, for the post of associate professor in the Malayalam department. The matter is pending in the High Court.
Calling the Governor’s remarks against Ravindran “preposterous, concocted and fabricated”, R P Bahuguna, who retired two months ago from Jamia’s Department of History and Culture, says he was present at the IHC event in Kannur that Governor Khan referred to.
“It was the Governor who deviated from his speech and started speaking about a subject that was bound to rile many people. And when Prof Irfan Habib got up and went towards the Governor to object, my understanding is that it was the V-C who intervened to restore decorum in the meet. In fact, (Ravindran) was even criticised by the other side for letting the Governor continue with his speech,” says Bahuguna, who was Ravindran’s senior at JNU and who later followed him to Jamia.
