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

(An abridged version was published in The Tribune  Chandigarh (op-ed) on 1 October 2007 ( 60th anniversary of the University) under the title “60 Years of Panjab University in pursuit of excellence”.

Panjab University Chandigarh completed sixty years of its eventful existence on 1 October 2007. Though numbers such as 60 or 50 have no intrinsic significance, they provide 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 the traumatized Indian portion of the Punjab and the Central Government  was the establishment of a University as a successor to and continuation of the University of  the Punjab at Lahore which fell into Pakistan’s lap, even though 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, 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.)

All schools and colleges affiliated to  the Punjab University Lahore were ‘deemed to be affiliated to this University’. They however remained closed after Partition and opened only on 1 March 1948. Leadership for the infant University came from three  former members of the syndicate of the Lahore University.  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. In 1924 , he was appointed member of both  Dyal Singh College trust society and 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, 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.

“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 whose tenure  extended from  1 July 1957 to 30 July 1965.

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. The  tasks before it  were clear cut from day one: To find a place to operate from; conduct examinations; resume teaching; and look after the educational needs of the vast number of displaced persons.

Simla was a natural place for the University to start from, because  it was the temporary capital of the state The University camp office remained here till 1948 end. In the mean time the administrative offices  were shifted to Solan cantonment, where they were housed in  hill-top barracks  spread over an area of about eight kilometers. Anand Kumar operated from here till 1953 when he shifted to Delhi  because of his heart problem.

It is creditable that the University was able to bring its examination system back on the rails by 1950. But  the restoration of teaching posed serious problems. Quite obviously no existing institution could have accommodated all the teaching departments and colleges the University inherited from Lahore. Piecemeal work had to be thrust upon semi-willing and unwilling hosts.

In October 1947 itself , physics and chemistry classes were started in, and under the control of, Delhi university, because this was the only place where facility for carrying out  science  practicals existed. Information was passed on to the students and teachers  over All India Radio and through newspapers.

Chemical engineering was hosted by the Delhi Polytechnic (later Delhi College of Engineering ) from February 1948. 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, from 1 March 1948 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. In 1950 , the College   admission was restricted to bonafide employees only, displaced or not . It thus became the precursor for later undergraduate evening colleges the university set up. It is in the Camp College 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 in 1959 by the Dyal Singh College trust .

For the rest, the  University had to fall back on its own  affiliated colleges, though expectedly the sailing was far from smooth. 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.

The remnant of Lahore’s undergraduate Hailey Commerce College was attached first to   Vaish college Rohtak, but since classes could not be started, the College was taken to Bakrota in  Dalhousie (1 September 1949.  It was realized that the “ cost of living at Dalhousie was much higher as compared with that in places in the plains”, so that “the students were finding it very difficult to cope with expenses and only the rich people could afford to send their children there”. Accordingly, 1951 end , the Commerce College was shifted to Jullundur and  housed in an evacuee property. Concern for the underprivileged was typical of the times, although it seems to have been forsaken now by the erstwhile beneficiaries.  Hindi and Sanskrit were looked after by the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College Jullundur , while law was accommodated in an evacuee property , after a brief sojourn in Simla.

It was proposed in  October 1948  that, all science departments be located in Kapurthala ,  then in PEPSU.  Chief Mnister   Gopi Chand Bhargava was however adamant that the University would not go out of East Punjab. Finally ,  early 1949  Hoshiarpur was chosen, and the building of its Government College 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 . Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was an economics student and then a research scholar at Hoshiarpur. ( Later  he served in Chandigarh also.) Two  later Vice-Chancellors,  professors Ram Chand  Paul and Ram Prakash  Bambah  were also of Hoshiarpur vintage, though the former had begun his career at Lahore itself.

As early as 1951, the  Central Government led by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had decided to build a new capital for the Indian Punjab. The University was to be a part of it, even though the University authorities would have liked their campus to be “ about 10 to 15 miles from the capital”, and with a water-front.

It is interesting to note that in 1956 , when the proposal to merge PEPSU with the Punjab was being finalized, it was suggested that  the University  be housed in  the latter’s capital Patiala to “maintain the prestige of that town”. The Government  came up with an offer of 1000 acres of land , but the University was content with a smaller estate in the new city, one of the argument recorded being “Patiala still had a feudal atmosphere while Chandigarh was free from any such thing”. ( It would be instructive to obtain details of the patial offer and the detailed discussion on it.)

 University of the Punjab, Lahore

Chronologically, Panjab University may have been founded in the mid 20th century, but  culturally it is anchored in  the 19th century, because the Lahore University’s extant rules and regulations were simply re-validated  in 1947. Punjab came into the British fold a 100 years after Bengal. There was a basic difference between Calcutta and Lahore. In Bengal the British were dealing with a social class they themselves had created and enriched, while in Punjab they had to come to terms with pre-existing social elites.

A Government College was opened in Lahore on 1 January 1864 and affiliated to the far-off Calcutta University. The local leadership, supported and guided by the British Government officials,  eventually pressed for “an Anglo-Oriental institution in the Punjab”  . Four years later when fears arose that the new University might go to Delhi  rather than Lahore, the influential members of the area contributed a sum of about a lakh of rupees towards the University fund. (Contrast this with Calcutta where the Presidency College and its predecessor Hindu College were amply funded by the Government.)

Consequently, when the Punjab university Lahore was finally established on 14 October 1882, its governing body , the Senate, was “more representative than the Senate of the older universities”. The University was reconstituted in accordance with the provisions of  the 1904 Act, which among other things constituted a senate comprising  85 members, of whom  10 were  ex-officio ; 60 were nominated by the Chancellor, and the remaining 15 were elected by the University graduates. Those were the days when the colonial Government was getting increasingly worried about the growing Indian nationalism and wanted to exercise control over the Universities. For the native leadership, participation in  the Senate proceedings  was a means of articulating nationalist aspirations. With passage of time after independence,  the Senates seem to have lost much of their focus.

In retrospect, it is as well that Panjab University remained unsettled for more than a decade. If it had found passable premises, it might have remained there for ever. The University was amply compensated for its early travails by the provision of a beautiful campus in the new city of Chandigarh.

Panjab University has come a long way from its pitiable beginnings in a couple of rooms kindly loaned by the army. The university does not carry any scars from its early days, which is a good thing. But then it also does not carry any memories of the heroism of those days, which is a pity. Because such memories can serve as an inspiration.//