Resignation from CSD _ Dhruva Narayan
7 October
2017
To
Prof. Muchkund Dubey
President
Council for Social Development
New Delhi
Subject:
Resignation from the post of Managing Editor, Samajik Vimarsh.
Dear Prof.
Dubey,
I would like
to convey my decision to withdraw myself from the responsibilities of Managing
Editor of Samajik Vimarsh, our important initiative conceived as a meaningful
intervention in the process of knowledge creation in Indian languages.
The letter
from the Director, Dr. Ashok Pankaj dated 6 October 2017 to Ms. Neetu Kalra of
Sage asking her to withhold the process of publication of the journal without
obtaining registration number from RNI came as an extreme surprise to us. The
CSD is well within its right to seek a legal opinion and arrive at a decision
when to publish its journal. What pained us was the way it was rushed to her
bypassing all normal channels of communication with Sage regarding publication
of Samajik Vimarsh throwing aside the established democratic norms of
functioning. The matter could have been discussed with the editorial team of
Samajik and with Prof Mohanty who has been in constant touch with Sage in this
regard. Of course, we always kept the administration of CSD in loop marking all
the correspondence with Sage in this regard to the Director and discussing new
developments in person from time to time. In this case, instead of rushing a
letter to Sage the CSD administration could have called us and discussed the
issue and asked us to communicate the decision to withhold the publication to
Sage. Instead, while we were in final stages of closing the inaugural 2017
issue of the journal this unilateral letter was sent to Sage and a copy was
marked to editor and managing editor of the journal.
I do not
think there was any emergency situation where such rash action was required as
any publication has its own process which takes time. As an accomplished author
you are well aware that there is a time gap between submission of a manuscript
and actual production. Hence the manner in which this letter was rushed to Sage
was totally uncalled for.
But this is
not the first time that the CSD administration has formed an opinion and acted
in haste violating all decency and democratic norms. It seems the personnel
manning the administration are not fully convinced of utility of bringing out a
Hindi journal from CSD. I am listing some incidents where the administration
particularly the Director tried to stall the publication process.
- After taking over as Director of the CSD, Dr. Ashok Pankaj first raised the issue that being an FCRA holder we are not allowed to publish a newspaper (according to him journals are also issued license as a newspaper by RNI as there is no such category as journal in the Act). That time too the Director violated the normal channels of communication with Sage by calling a meeting with its representatives bypassing the Vice-President who has been in-charge of communication and negotiations with Sage. Anyway, the situation was clarified to him that academic journals are a separate category and there is no legal provision prohibiting CSD from bringing out an academic journal.
- Then, doubts were raised that maybe due to editorial team’s political views the government was delaying the registration. We tried to clarify to you and to the Director that this is a normal procedural delay which requires approval of more than eight ministries and departments of the government. Since publication of a journal is not on the priority list of the concerned ministries, the delay could be a result of the normal bureaucratic lethargy our government departments suffer from
- Since the registration process got stuck with delayed approvals from various ministries and departments, Sage decided to explore other ways of expediting the process and applied to RNI through licensing branch of Delhi Police. This accelerated the process. But again there were attempts on part of the CSD administration to scuttle the process by not supplying the required documents for submission in time. On one occasion, the attempt was allowed to time out and Sage had to start over the whole process once again. This time fortunately a title was secured by the Sage team for our journal. We all were very enthused and were waiting for registration number to be allotted after the verification process is over.
- Meanwhile, I received a letter from Ms. Pallavipushpa Sinha of Sage on 28 September 2017 requesting us to submit the final contents list of the first issue by 30 September 2017 and all the material by 5 October 2017 as they wished to ready the journal for publication by November end. I thought that they just wanted to keep everything ready so that when the registration number came there was no further delay in publication of the journal. Later, Ms. Neetu Kalra clarified that they intend to go ahead with its publication while continuing to pursue the process of obtaining the registration number. Accordingly, we started working overtime in consultation with Prof. Mohanty to complete the process in time and shared with them all the material. We were waiting for your message to readers, as promised by you to Prof. Apoorvanand.
- Giving the journal a sound footing involved creating an ecosystem to support and encourage scholarship in Indian languages. Towards this we proposed a series of activities like monthly discussion forums, inviting young scholars to share their research findings, organising writers’ workshops, etc. In fact, the Director himself proposed a series of lectures on pluralism which we incorporated in our proposed activities and roped in Shri Ashok Vajpeyi to deliver the first lecture. The Director without discussing with us stopped the AO from booking a space at IIC. He even did not show the decency to call us for a discussion over the issue, instead chose to instruct the AO not to entertain our request. This compromised not only our standing but the whole organisation’s prestige. We still kept quiet in order to maintain the decorum and dignity of the institution and its management.
This is just
to list a few instances where we felt our authority as editors of the journal,
personal integrity and public standing is being undermined deliberately.
Sir, let me
clarify here that we never tried to conceal our political views. In fact, you
were well aware of our political views before inviting us to join you in
bringing out this journal. It would be a gross misinterpretation of facts to
say that we ever intended to use this journal as a platform to propagate one
type of view. We are firm believer in plurality of views based on a sound
system of academic rigour. Hence we invited authors and chose articles which
represent this plurality of methodology and understanding. We were always
willing to go extra mile to accommodate differing opinions.
I would like
to mention that Sage requested us to withdraw one particular review of Praful
Bidwai’s book on left movements in India as it mentioned JNU disturbances last
year. The Sage representative suggested dropping this piece from the first
issue on the basis of their informal chat with a clerk at the Ministry of Information
and Broadcasting. Against my conscience I agreed to accede to their request
despite the fact that the review in question was highly critical of left
politics pointing out its failings and mistakes.
There was another
instance of an article analysing the Una incident and the dalit upsurge in its
aftermath. Again this article was pointing out the failings of the dalit
movement and left politics in general. The Director even without looking at the
abstract of the article formed an opinion on the basis of its title and
insisted on dropping it. Since we had already decided to defer its publication as
it had become somewhat dated in the light of results of UP elections and
developments since then, we preferred not enter into any argument with him.
Sir, I am a Marxist
but being a Marxist is no crime or stigma. Marxism is a philosophical and
methodological category used by scholars all over the world to understand
social realities and give direction to processes of social change. Yes, it is
true that Marxist traditions in India and elsewhere have lacked inner democracy,
and persons in power have misused it to foster an ideological uniformity. But
this is equally true of other methodological and
ideological persuasions as well, be it rightist or liberal. The lack of
democratic values and norms is a much deeper question and the scholars and
activists all over the world are grappling to understand it and devise ways to
counter such tendencies. There is no dearth of people coming from within Marxist
traditions raising the issue of democratic deficit in the established left
movements. I too belong to the category of people who repose their faith in
pluralist and dialogic traditions.
When I was
told that the direction of most of the articles was anti-government, I was
surprised. As editors all we were concerned with was whether the articles we
were selecting were sound in their method and represented rigorous scholarship.
I have a
great respect for you as a scholar and a public personality. I joined the CSD
thinking that I may be able to contribute meaningfully to the Indian
scholarship under your and CSD’s distinguished faculty’s guidance. But it seems
that CSD too suffers from same kind of mediocrity and absence of democratic
spirit afflicting other institutions in India.
Since the
process of publication of the journal has been stopped unilaterally and our
standing as editors has been challenged and compromised systematically I do not
think there is any point in my continuing at CSD. This letter should be considered
a notice to terminate my current contract ending on 20 January 2018 with
immediate effect.
I must take
this opportunity to express my gratitude to academic colleagues and staff who made
me feel at home at CSD and extended all the help and guidance in my work as
managing editor and communication advisor of the CSD.
With warm
regards,
Dhruva
Narayan
