NLSIU Bangalore alum Sidharth Chauhan, who was dismissed from his temporary faculty position at the law school last month, wrote an open letter to the NLSIU community on Friday alleging that his dismissal was “a warning meant to discourage other members of the faculty and administrative staff from asking difficult questions”.
On 31 January, the NLSIU administration terminated Chauhan’s temporary contract of service without an explanation over email.
He told Legally India on the day of his dismissal, that the development was a direct result of his “criticising the VC [vice chancellor]”.
Chauhan had sent two open letter emails to NLSIU VC Prof R Venkat Rao in December, copying in NLSIU's faculty, student body and administration. In his emails he criticised Rao’s manner and method of imposing a curfew on students, following an alleged rape of a student nearby.
When asked by Legally India, Rao declined to comment on the decision, attributing it to the Executive Council (EC) of the school.
Thursday, 28 February was Chauhan’s last day on campus. In Friday’s 2,000-word email, sent to the Student Bar Association (SBA), LLB and LLM students, faculty, research centres, and the administration, Chauhan alleged:
While it is open to the Vice-Chancellor to attribute my dismissal to the Executive Council, let us not keep up with any pretence. Those who were present at the emergency meeting of the Executive Council (EC) on January 13, 2013 have confirmed that there was a resolution passed in that meeting which authorised Prof. R. Venkata Rao to act as he deemed fit in my case.
This was evidently in response to the tabling of the e-mails which I had sent to all of you on December 12 and 13, 2012 as well as a private e-mail sent to the Vice-Chancellor on December 17, 2012. Hence, it is not plausible to say that my dismissal is unrelated to these e-mails which were openly critical of some of the Vice-Chancellor's decisions in the recent past.
It is clearly a decision made by Prof. R. Venkata Rao in the exercise of his own judgment, albeit under the authority of the EC. Needless to say, it reflects a retrograde approach which is out of place in a 21st century law school. Institutions such as ours have evolved in an environment of self-criticism and open dialogue, both with respect to academic and administrative matters. However, the present incumbent has refused to recognize the instrumental as well as intrinsic value of deliberative decision-making, primarily by discontinuing the established practice of weekly faculty meetings.
Furthermore, my dismissal comes across as a warning meant to discourage other members of the faculty and administrative staff from asking difficult questions. The head of the institution seems to have worked out a convenient strategy. He chooses to ignore the inputs and the opinions of the faculty members by refusing to call meetings and then hides behind the authority of the EC to push through ill-considered measures. Never mind that the EC has a floating membership that largely consists of sitting justices, practicing lawyers and civil servants who visit the school twice or thrice in an academic year and hardly have the time or the inclination to understand its inner workings.
If there were indeed some other reasons behind this decision, those reasons should at least have been informally communicated to me before the issuance of the notice. Were there serious inadequacies in my own teaching? To the best of my knowledge, the feedback received from students has largely been on the positive side. [...]
NLSIU was designed so as to be insulated from the pressures of partisan politics and short-term thinking that could undermine academic pursuits. Its' autonomous character not only signifies independence from undue influence by external parties but also a certain degree of autonomy for its faculty and staff. While a centralized style of functioning maybe appropriate for some settings, it has no place in an academic institution that claims to be the national leader in the field of legal education.
In the school built by Dr. N.R. Madhava Menon, the faculty, staff and students have a duty to constantly ask questions about their immediate environment so as to collectively work for its improvement. Building an academic institution is an arduous process and consolidating it is even harder. In the twenty-fifth year of its teaching programmes, the school can profit from more robust questioning of its own workings.
By dismissing me and seeking to silence his critics, Prof. R. Venkata Rao is desperately trying to undermine the deliberative ethos of the institution. What is even more serious is the evident lack of communication amongst the faculty members. [...]
Given the absence of regular faculty meetings, there now seems to be a presumption of distrust among several factions as well as a reluctance to collaborate in meaningful pursuits [...]
Hopefully this is not the endgame for me at the NLSIU and there will be a chance to return on the other side of a doctoral degree and more importantly a leadership change that will see the restoration of the deliberative ethos of this institution.”
Chauhan concluded that he was in talks to join another institute in the coming academic year, “proceeding in the hope that the idea of an autonomous law school is not a lost cause”.
Rao declined to comment when contacted.
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But... what a beautifully written letter.
You hardly know who Sid C is! Also, what he did was within a law school the telos of which is to bring about a rule of law society. He stood up against undemocratic and rather autocratic rule of one person who believes himself to be bigger than the institutions he is asked to run.
As regards the point that no other place shall accept Sid after this, you are wrong again. I shall let him announce as to where he heads next but let me assure you one of the top institutions in the country has extended him and offer which has been accepted.
Cheers
many thanks for your concerns about my employment prospects. As has already been mentioned in this forum, that is not a problem at the moment. As for the propriety of copying other faculty members, administrative staff and students in the e-mails that are directly critical of the V-C, please understand that I had to resort to this medium since the regular faculty meetings had been discontinued. As a teacher in a temporary position I also had no right of representation before the Executive Council (EC) of NLSIU. Furthermore, we are part of an academic institution. Hence the rigors of an organisational hierarchy do not apply in the same manner as they would in a profit making-firm. My time at NLSIU has taught me to value open dialogue. The problem is that the present incumbent has not really understood that basic proposition. Otherwise, we would not have the sorry scenario of some of our best teachers leaving to join other institutions. Unlike me, they left quietly. I took a chance because I do have a safety net.
Please note that I have not left out of my own volition. Would you at least acknowledge that dismissal from service is perhaps a disproportionate response to open criticism? The V-C could have easily responded to my objections in a faculty meeting or by way of a written memorandum. If you have read the content of my e-mails which opposed the reduction of the campus curfew in December, the attempt was to seek a broad-based discussion on the issue. Perhaps our experiences as students at the school were very different. I saw a school where faculty meetings were held regularly and General Body Meetings of the student body would discuss campus-specific concerns threadbare. Maybe the decision-making was not optimal, but there was a strong sense of participation. Perhaps those channels had not developed in the early 1990s' but they were alive and kicking in the mid-2000s. There is something to be said for highlighting the normative characteristics of the school, even at the cost of over-simplification. Both of us should perhaps interrogate our own understanding of what this institution stands for.
Sending out e-mails on the internal listservs was the only option left for me owing to the discontinuance of faculty meetings. I came back to NLSIU with the intention of staying for the long-haul. It's just that the present incumbent does not appear to be too interested in 'seemingly vague' ideas such as academic integrity. Many other alumni have also been skeptical of my actions, principally owing to the adverse publicity for the school. It is very disconcerting to think that former graduates are unwilling to believe first-hand accounts of the school's mismanagement.
This is exactly the kind of regressive thinking that is damaging the institution from within. Respect for authority is an inherent part of academic institutions, but it cannot be taken to the level of blind obedience. I've had the opportunity to attend and then teach courses in political theory that examine our understanding of authority and obligation. Your understanding seems to be pretty simplistic and more suited to primitive organisational forms such as family-run businesses and feudal estates. If you're willing to step beyond the veil of anonymity, I would be happy to share the reading lists and then perhaps have a more meaningful discussion. For starters, I suggest 'The Morality of Freedom' by Joseph Raz and 'The Authority of the State' by Leslie Green. Oh, wait, even Aristotle's Politics (written 2,400 years ago) exhibits a more progressive understanding of authority.
As I have repeatedly stated (and now backed by the story about the false replies to the RTIs), Prof. R. Venkata Rao has done incalculable damage by resorting to grade-inflation to buy popularity with students. To cover up for his populist style of functioning, he stopped holding faculty meetings so that there would be no need to respond to criticism from the other teachers. It was in this background, that I chose the path of open questioning. Perhaps it was a strategic mistake to club the concerns about the academic malpractices with those about the reduction of the curfew hours (since loosened, since the safety of students seems to have miraculously improved in six months). Nevertheless, my continuing attempts to generate publicity about the academic malpractices at my alma mater do not amount to libel by any standard. I guess you weren't paying attention in your Law of Torts classes either. I have since joined NALSAR and you're most welcome to come here for debating the central questions of moral responsibility and the extent of our obligations to respect our superiors.
and fan, really, if the only source of authority according to you is age and "experience", then i really pity your kids.
And you're obviously not a (very good) lawyer, given your understanding of libel laws.
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