The ongoing discussions about appointing a new vice-chancellor (VC) at Tribhuvan University have elicited responses from the public, media and parliamentary committee. Their focus revolves around a persona who would be selected as the VC from the shortlisted names. The gist of the discussion is: The university should be free from the hamartia of appointing a leader based on internal major party agreement of bhagbabnda that has gone down in the later history of this institution.

The semantics of this overused cliché is created by a psychology of dividing something and sharing it among the stakeholders or those in control of the institution and its leadership. That sounds like sharing the perks, which sounds uncanny and unnecessary in an academic institution. I have felt bad by this use of the term. Some others, like me, who have retired after spending the best parts of their lives working at TU, express mixed opinions and dismay about its leadership pattern.

This matter concerns me for two reasons. First, TU is my alma mater. Second, I have spent several years teaching there and continued participating in research and pedagogic activities even after retirement. I have witnessed TU’s various moments of organisational structure and its good and bad days as a student, an active teacher and an emeritus professor—though the latter term is not used for a retired professor in Nepal. Earlier, the term professor was commonly used for those who taught at colleges. After passing the Public Service Commission examination, I joined Patan Multiple Campus in Lalitpur in 1970 as a professor or pradhyapak of English before moving on to Kirtipur Campus as a lecturer after some years.

As a compulsory subject, an English teacher would teach students of all faculties. Later in life, these students became bureaucrats, medical doctors, engineers, teachers and government ministers. To take one example, I taught "Stories from Shakespeare" to Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal. What we taught at colleges did not have any direct bearing on the careers of the students. I cite one eloquent story. Years ago, Bijay Pandey, in a Nepal television programme, asked me what I had taught Dahal. I replied metaphorically, “I taught him tragedy, comedy and history; now he is practising all three”.

My colleagues (some of whom were my students) and I taught literary criticism and theories, modernism, postmodernism, feminism and cultural studies that included Marxist interpretations and postcolonialism, besides literature written in English at the graduate department of English. We also changed the English curricula to broaden the sphere of the course of studies in the department.

Here, I try to link the story to the structural aspect of the university and its relationship with the actual pedagogy at the university’s various institutions that have sprawled over wide areas with its affiliated colleges and institutions. As a member of various committees at the university, I saw how intelligent scholars trained in universities in the West and South Asia glibly moved out of TU and started their own institutions or universities.

One pattern was working in all these activities. TU gave them positions, responsibilities, prestige, and also accoutrements for shaping their lives and society when they left the university to start something different. Was it a flawed act to use the good name of TU to make their careers or create rival institutions? It is a subject of mimamsa. I would not say people left TU in the lurch, but what can be said is that they took an indifferent attitude towards the problems that the university was or has been facing in the course of modern educational experiments. It became an easy and convenient institution to exploit for the advantage of individuals or groups. None of such moves helped the university.

The confusion surrounding the VC’s appointment today should be understood against the background of how this university was used by people who found it a fertile ground for the augmentation of their political activities. Both students and teachers used the university for that purpose. The political parties who could not expand the sphere of their activities among the people of society found it convenient to experiment with the student organisations of the nationwide campuses, especially of the Kathmandu Valley, which openly challenged the Panchayat autocracy. After the restoration of democracy and the party system in the country in 1990, neither the political parties nor the students and their organisations bothered to act in the changed operational modalities and speak in the new idioms of democracy to restore the prestige and status of the university. Instead, the teachers and students created alignments, sometimes of uncanny nature, to use the university for political purposes. Lockdowns, assaults on teachers and wreckage of the hard-earned systems left the university, including the administration and pedagogic practices, in difficult and awkward positions.

The hamartia is deep-rooted. The political parties, governments and even several student leaders failed to assess that when the political system changes in a country like ours, it impacts the entire system. At first, it becomes easier to feel excited, but serious challenges are created when a semi-anarchic system becomes a norm. Students and teachers are known to be politically active in other countries, too. We can take the example of India, France, and Spain in Europe, not to mention the East European countries where students have played a role in transforming ideas of political imports.

In Nepal, too, credit should be given to students and some teachers for creating political consciousness in society. But the problem started when the political alignments involving party governments and dividing perks became a norm. This practice is at the root of the hamartia that invariably haunts dear old TU and other universities in Nepal today. Some writers have cogently discussed this subject.

I think the irony of the algorithm of selecting the VC from among “the best” and the “properly screened people” has its roots in the already squandered opportunities. The government and the parties cannot suddenly wake up to a new realisation, to what the Zen call satori and correct their course. They should be able to understand the impact of the bhagbanda culture, recognise the hamartia and act prudently and courageously to overhaul it.