Rajesh Kochhar

The Tribune, Chandigarh (Op-ed page) 1 October 2007

60 years of Panjab University
In pursuit of excellence

by Rajesh Kochhar

PANJAB UNIVERSITY Chandigarh completes sixty years of its eventful existence on October 1, 2007. The occasion provides a convenient opportunity for taking stock of the past, understanding the present and planning for the future.
It is no coincidence that the University’s diamond jubilee closely follows that of India’s independence. Indeed, one of the very first acts of independent India was the establishment of a University as a successor to and in continuation of the University of the Punjab at Lahore (established 14 October 1882) which fell into Pakistan’s lap, even as most students and teachers crossed to India. By a coincidence, the diamond jubilee of Panjab University coincides to the month with the 125th anniversary of its Lahore precursor.

It was naively expected that the Lahore University would conduct the examinations for both parts of the Punjab even after partition, but that was not to be. East Panjab University, as it was then called, had to be “hustled into an unceremonious birth” through the promulgation of an ordinance, without even a Vice-Chancellor, leave aside any infrastructure. (Panjab was advisedly spelt with an initial “a” to distinguish the new University from the old. The appellation East was dropped by both the state and the University in 1956.)

The University began with a part-time Vice-Chancellor, Justice Teja Singh (February 9, 1948 – March 31 1949), whose successor Mr G.C. Chatterjee served for merely four months (April 1 – July 31 1949). The appointment now went to Dewan Anand Kumar (1894-1981) who remained at the helm of affairs for eight long and crucial years (August 1, 1949 – June 30, 1957) through four terms of two years each.

Kumar joined at Lahore in 1920 as a Reader in zoology and was appointed Dean of University Instruction in 1946, a post he continued to hold in the new University. He was also, since 1924, a member of Dyal Singh College Trust Society as well as Dyal Singh Public Library Trust, Lahore. It was left to him to administer both these after partition.
Extremely wealthy in his Lahore days through his inheritance of a 6000 acre landed estate, aristocratic, benevolent, imbued with a strong sense of noblesse oblige, well-connected, related to the Nehrus through ties of marriage (Brij Kumar Nehru was his sister’s son),and committed to high academic and ethical standards, the Cambridge – educated Kumar (affectionately and reverentially known as the Dewan Sahib in his time) is the true builder of the University as we know it today.
“Over some difference of opinion with the Chief Minister [Pratap Singh Kairon], Kumar retired from the Vice-Chancellorship in 1957.” While the administrative offices moved to Chandigarh in 1956, teaching department assembling in Chandigarh 1958 onwards. The honour of leading the University from its elegant new home thus befell Dr Amar Chand Joshi whose tenure extended from 1 July 1957 to 30 July 1965.

After a brief sojourn in a cramped Simla, the University offices shifted to hill-top military barracks spread over an area of about eight kilometers in Solan. Kumar functioned from here till 1953 when he shifted to Delhi because of a heart problem.

To meet educational aspirations of the large number of Punjabi refugees now in Delhi, East Panjab University was permitted to intrude into Delhi University’s jurisdiction and start an evening Camp College, with tents serving as a hostel. It is here that the journalism department was restarted in 1948, which borrowed the services of eminent journalists as faculty. (It shifted to Chandigarh in June 1962.) The Camp College itself was acquired by the Dyal Singh College Trust in 1959.

As early as October 1947, physics and chemistry classes were started under the auspices of Delhi University on an initiative by students like Prof. Yash Pal, while chemical engineering was accommodated in Delhi Polytechnic.
For the rest, the University had to depend on the reluctant charity of colleges and schools within its own territory. For full 11 years the University Punjabi department within Khalsa College Amritsar prepared students for the lower-level Gyani and Vidvan examinations only while the M.A. classes remained under the control of the College, as before.
Commerce classes were shifted from Bakrota in Dalhousie after two years to an evacuee property in Jullundur when it was realised that because of the high cost of living in Dalhousie, “only the rich people could afford to send their children there”. Concern for the under-privileged which was so typical of those days seems to have been forsaken by its erstwhile beneficiaries.

In October 1948 Kapurthala, then in Pepsu, offered to host all science departments, but the East Punjab Chief Minister Gopi Chand Bhargava was adamant that the University would not go out of the state. Finally, early 1949, the Government College Hoshiarpur was placed at the disposal of the University. Under the name University College, it became the dominant, but not the sole, seat of the University.

The dual control did cause some problems but the arrangement generally worked well. Prof. Ram Prakash Bambah, who later became the Vice-Chancellor, joined at Hoshiarpur as a Reader in mathematics. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was an economics student and then a research scholar at Hoshiarpur. (Later he served in Chandigarh also.)

In 1956, on the eve of merger of PEPSU with East Punjab, it was belatedly suggested that the University be housed in the former’s capital Patiala to “maintain the prestige of that town”. The University however rejected the suggestion, one of the recorded argument being that “Patiala still had a feudal atmosphere while Chandigarh was free from any such thing”.

Chronologically, a product of the mid 20th century, Panjab University is culturally anchored in the 19th century, because the Lahore University’s extant rules and regulations were simply re – validated in 1947. Unlike Bengal where the British were dealing with a social class they themselves had created and enriched, in Punjab they had to come to terms with pre-existing social elites which were duly represented in the University’s governing body, the Senate.
Increasingly worried about the growing Indian nationalism, the colonial government wanted to exercise control over the universities. For the native leadership, Senate was a forum for articulating nationalist aspirations. With passage of time after independence, the Senates seem to have generally lost much of their original focus.

The University was amply compensated for its early travails by the provision of a beautiful campus in the new city of Chandigarh. The University does not carry any scars from its early days, which is a good thing. But memories of the heroism of those days can serve as an inspiration.

For the past many years, Panjab University vice-chancellors (VCs) have been complaining of shortage of working space and demanding that the situation be remedied. A few months ago, it was reported that the present VC had expressed his keenness for a new office. Obligingly, the budgetary committee has sanctioned the construction of a two-storeyed extension building, according to a plan that was prepared a few years ago. By way of explanation, it has been recorded that there is a need for a new annexe because a lot of staff are working in the basement of the present VC office building, facing inconvenience. According to a present estimate, the proposed construction will cost more than Rs 4 crore. If past experience is any guide, the final cost will be substantially higher.

The proposal has met with opposition from faculty members and others who have rightly pointed out that under the present resource crunch, such an extravagance couldn’t be justified.

Conscious of the adverse public opinion, constrained by the realities of numbers in the Syndicate, and hoping to start the second year of his tenure on a pleasant note, the VC has flatly denied that there was any plan of this sort. This means that the plan would be taken up again when the time is opportune.

There are aspects of the plan, which have not received attention. Even if funding were not a problem, even if the university were overflowing with money, an additional building as envisaged should not be built on historical and aesthetic grounds.

People have been talking of the present VC office as if it were an independent building. VC’s office itself is an annexe to the main chemical engineering building! The small building was meant to accommodate the offices of the department head. The chemical engineering building stands apart from other academic blocks. It is a long imposing edifice. To soften its forbidding effect and break the monotony, a small, one-storeyed building was constructed at its front. If another building is raised adjoining the present VC office, it will be violence to the aesthetics of the whole structure.

Chemical engineering department building was the first one to be completed on the new campus. When Amar Chand Joshi, the first VC to function from Chandigarh, set up his office, there was no other space for him except the present one. He in fact shared space with the chemical engineering head. Right into the 1960s, VC and the department head sat under the same roof. In the course of time, the department head was moved out.

If the VC is the usurper of chemical engineering space, the senate hall is an unauthorised construction in the main administrative building. In its original plan, open space is left in the middle of the building to bring light and air to the rooms. This space was converted into a meeting place for senators and syndics.

It is obvious that the original architects of Panjab University campus would not have planned for VC to operate from a teaching department. Old plans should be dug up to see what arrangements were envisaged for VC and other high functionaries as well as for Senate meetings.

VC’s office in the chemical engineering block was a stop-gap arrangement even though it has continued for 60 years. This stop-gap arrangement must be brought to an end and the aesthetics of the whole structure respected.

Already enough slummification of Sector 14 has taken place. Mathematics department building co-houses psychology department. If more space was needed for mathematics, psychology should have been shifted to new premises and mathematics department given the vacated space. This was not done. Instead a new building was constructed behind its building. Teaching blocks in the university are rectangular and run parallel. This new building is a square one and is the only building for teaching on the campus, which has a courtyard. Original architects of the university would not have approved of it.

The university, in its wisdom, decided to affix the name Gandhi Bhawan on the building itself. This building must rank among the most beautiful buildings in India constructed in the modern era. The ugly sign board has disfigured the building forever. The first principle of renovation is that it should be reversible.

Old buildings should be left strictly alone as far as outward appearance is concerned. There should be a moratorium on new buildings in Sector 14 unless a provision exists in the master plan. Keeping the long-term interests of the university in mind, the authorities should prepare a plan for a suitable structure for the VC’s office with provision for other related activities, even if it takes many years to fructify. More specifically, the chemical engineering buildings, according to the original plan, should be left strictly alone even if a VC feels cramped in the space available to him.

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/chandigarh/burying-aesthetics-to-raise-buildings-not-done/807396.html

Rajesh Kochhar

Reprinted from Kochhar, Rajesh et al (eds) (2013) The Making of Modern Punjab: Education, Science  and Social Change c. 1850-c. 2000, pp. 63-65( Chandigarh: Panjab University). 

The Punjab University Lahore became part of Pakistan at the time of Partition, while most students and teachers migrated to India. It had been naively expected that the Lahore University would conduct the examinations for both parts of the Punjab even after Partition, but that was not to be. To protect the interests of the  large number of school and college students suddenly left without an examining body, East Panjab University, as it was then called, was ‘hustled into an unceremonious birth’ through the promulgation of an ordinance on 20 October 1947, under a provisional Syndicate, without even  a Vice-Chancellor leave aside any infrastructure. (Panjab was advisedly spelt with an initial ‘a’ to distinguish the new University from the old. Both the State and the University dropped the appellation East on 26 January 1956.)

Two of the Vice Chancellors of the Panjab University, Dewan Anand Kumar and Ram Chand Paul, had been in service in the Punjab University Lahore.The first two Vice-Chancellors, both  former members of the Syndicate of the Lahore University, were part-time and short-term. Justice Teja Singh, a puisne judge of the Punjab  High Court, was formally appointed honorary Vice Chancellor  four months after the establishment of the University, that is on 9 February 1948. He however resigned on 31 March 1949 to devote full time to his new office of  Chief Justice of PEPSU ( Patiala  and East Punjab States Union) High Court, which he had accepted  in November 1948. He however continued to be an active member of the University Syndicate. His successor, Mr G.C. Chatterjee of the Indian Education Service, and Director of  Public Instruction, East Punjab,   held office only for four months ( 1 April – 31 July 1949) as he was elevated to the membership of the Union Public Service Commission.

The appointment now went to Dewan Anand Kumar ( 1894-1981)   who remained at the helm of affairs  for eight long and crucial  years (1 August  1949- 30 June 1957).  Educated in Cambridge, Anand Kumar was appointed a reader in zoology in 1920 , and head of the department in 1942  at Lahore. In 1946 he was made the Dean of University Instruction, a post he continued to hold in the new University.

Extremely wealthy in his Lahore days through his inheritance of a 6000 acre landed estate, aristocratic, well-connected, benevolent, imbued with a strong sense of noblesse oblige,  and related to the Nehrus through ties of  marriage (Brij Kumar Nehru was his sister’s son),   Kumar ( affectionately and reverentially known as the Dewan Sahib in his time) is the  true builder of the university as we know it today.

The   turbulence  of the   early Panjab University is brought home by  the fact  that it was funded not only by the state government and the central education ministry but also by the central ministry for rehabilitation. After remaining in a crowded Shimla for a short period, the administrative offices were shifted to Solan cantonment where they were housed in  hill-top barracks  spread over an area of about eight kilometers.

Restoration of teaching was not an easy task. Since there was no institution in Punjab with facility for science practicals, physics, chemistry and chemical engineering  classes were started in Delhi. Since Delhi now had a large number of Punjabi refugees who wanted further education, Panjab University was permitted to intrude into Delhi University’s jurisdiction and start  a Camp College, which  could offer instruction only in the evenings because the  two  school buildings it was located in ran their own classes during day time. The College even set up a hostel in 150 small canvas tents pitched in the grounds. It is in the Camp College that the journalism department was restarted in 1948, which borrowed the services of eminent journalists as faculty.

For the rest, the University had to fall back on its own affiliated colleges. Zoology was shifted to Government College Hoshiarpur, while botany and pharmacy were hosted by Khalsa College Amritsar, which also accommodated Punjabi. The unusualness of the times can be gauged from the fact that for full 11 years the University Punjabi department within the Khalsa College prepared students for the lower-level Gyani and Vidvan examinations only while the M.A. classes  remained under the control of the College, as before. Hindi and Sanskrit were looked after by the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College Jullundur, while Law was accommodated in an evacuee property there, after a brief sojourn in Shimla.

The political and educational leadership at the time was very sensitive to the needs of the underprivileged. Commerce classes were started in  Dalhousie, but it was soon realized that the because of the high cost of living at  the hill station, only the rich people could afford to send their children there. Accordingly, 1951 end, the Commerce College was also shifted to Jullundur and  housed in an evacuee property. Early  in 1949   the  building of Government College Hoshiarpur was placed at the disposal of the University, under the name University College. The dual control did have some problems but the arrangement generally worked well. Two eminent later Vice-Chancellors of the University, Professors Ram Chand  Paul and Ram Prakash  Bambah  both were at  Hoshiarpur, though Prof. Paul  had begun his career at Lahore itself. As early as 1951, the Central Government led by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru decided to build a new capital for the Indian Punjab. Interestingly Patiala made a generous offer of land to accommodate Panjab University there, but very farsightedly, the Government  opted for a new campus in a new city.The various components of the University began assembling in Chandigarh 1958 onwards.

“Over some difference of opinion with the Chief Minister [Pratap Singh Kairon], Kumar retired from the Vice-chancellorship in 1957.”  The various components of the University began assembling in Chandigarh  1958 onwards. The honour of leading the University from its elegant new home thus befell Dr Amar Chand Joshi, at the time Director of Public Instruction Punjab, whose tenure  extended from  1 July 1957 to 30 June 1965. His successor was Mr Suraj Bhan, who was at the time of appointment the Vice-Chancellor of the newly founded Kurukshetra University.

The well-known chemist Ram Chand Paul (1919-2002) who held office for 10 and a half years,  from 1974 till 1984 end, has been the longest serving Vice-Chancellor in the history of Panjab University. Born in Shakargarh ( now in Pakistan) he had his early education  at Central Model School Lahore, and the Hindu and Khalsa  Colleges in Lahore Amritsar. Since his father and the eldest brother both were doctors, he dutifully enrolled for MBBS. But since his first love was chemistry he abandoned medicine  within a few weeks and joined Honours school in Chemistry at Punjab University. After passing his B. Sc. Honours School from Punjab University Lahore in 1939, he began research for the M. Sc. Degree under the guidance of Professor Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar, with whom he published his first ever research paper.  He obtained his (first) Ph. D. from the University in 1947 with Dr. S. D. Muzaffar as his thesis supervisor. In the meantime in 1944 he published a paper in the prestigious Journal of American Chemical Society, jointly with Muzaffar.  This work in turn enabled him to obtain admission in Cambridge University in 1952 for his second Ph. D, which he earned in 1954 under the supervision of the internationally acclaimed inorganic chemist, Harry Julius Emeleus.

After serving the Punjab University and Panjab University as a Demonstrator, Lecturer and Reader, he went to Karnatak University Dharwar, as Professor only to return the next year to Panjab. Interestingly, the unsettled conditions in the University in the early days can be seen from his long list of publications which has a conspicuous gap for 1948 and 1949. Professor Paul was succeeded by his  colleague from the Hoshiarpur days, Professor Ram Prakash Bambah who held office from 1 January 1985 till June 1991.

( I thank Prof. Ram Chand Paul’s daughter, Dr Madhu Kaul and son, Dr Krishan Kant Paul, for their help and inputs.)

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