Coup D' Etat

This article follows up on my previous post “Yuganta” End of an Epoch” for which I received bouquets and brickbats in equal measure with wildly ranging opinions (surprisingly entirely in private) if not considered estimates of the reign of Dr ML Shrikant the former Dean of SP Jain. However I had with my own distance from events and probably prejudice a view of the happenings. Yet not entirely was I aware of the picture from the other side, one of whom I spoke to yesterday, confirming my fears that there seemed something much more than meets the eye. I also write this apologetically and with trepidation at what is an internal matter to the institution. Nor do i delight in being a harbinger of bad news, so shoot not the messenger. However I take shelter in defining the institution not merely as its brick and mortar or function but, like the Church the entire body of the faith wherever they maybe located and thus such privacy is misplaced. 

‘Palace Coup’ was a term that entered the media lexicon recently when Arun Jaitley described what Rahul Gandhi seemed to be facing within the grand old party. Palace coups have a very steady history since antiquity. In Indian history not only do we commence our history with Ajatashatru overthrowing Bimbisara his father but even the Buddha had faced an attempted deposition by his cousin Devadatta as the head of the Sangha. Coup d’ Etat  (stroke of the state) also termed Putsch is when a small set of the existing bureaucracy or state apparatus seizes key centres of sovereignty and monopolises communication to give a picture of a smooth transfer of power (even when violent) and creates a believable narrative that masks the original motivations. Often the environment that fosters such a transfer is an emasculated state long under a regime that jealously monopolized and concentrated power in one individual over an extended period of time e.g. Hosni Mubarak, Saddam Hussein. Muammar Gaddafi (not withstanding the black picture the Western press paints them in against a more complex narrative etc.). The resulting regime change is inevitably shaky and chaotic with most of the institutions unsure of the exact power each wields in the alleged spring. When coups fail a civil war is almost inevitable. It takes several generations if not oblivion to recover lost ground. Coup d’ etat exists not just for states but secular organizations as well e.g. Steve Jobs engineered two of which he succeeded in one at Apple.  

I have been intrigued why after such a long and distinguished service to the institute Dr MLS was not given a ‘state farewell’?  Why his departure was so silent that even the rabid and loquacious amongst the institute and us stirred not the boneless tongue to thank him? Why the administration that is usually ecstatic of its small victories fell silent and entirely incommunicative; while it chooses to communicate every silly trivia to the alumni, it fails to inform them of the dean’s exit? The standard reply is always that a trustee of the parent institution has been asked to find a worthy replacement against the dean’s own resignation. It now appears from some internal accounts that Dr ML Shrikant did not walk gracefully into the sunset but was rudely pushed out of it by a triumvirate of internal members who with support of the parent institution eased him out for whatever calculations or perceived inequities they claim. Not only him but Dr MLS’ closest allies like the former Chairperson of FMB Parimal Merchant was summarily asked to leave as soon as he returned from Karachi from his teaching assignment and all references to him and his work obliterated the very next day (even as Dr Shrikant’s name continues to exist as dean- so much for double standards) with email blocked. While the usual narrative stands that he was old and ailing and wanted rest and recuperation, it was against his will and consent. The argument against his rule was based on allegations of links that were not entirely above board with the Jain family’s enterprise in Dubai and over attempted spinning off of the lucrative FMB programme, a money spinner amongst the golden geese of the institute's spawn of programmes. While there might be small kernels of truth to this there are wildly varying accounts depending on who you are talking to on either side of innocence or complicity. As usual the truth if you may, lies somewhere buried in between. It is also true that Prof Merchant did plan to leave the institute two years ago to found a new one in Bangalore which was turned down by the dean, a fact that despite having served a legal notice returns to haunt his own exit. Some have laid the blame on the parent institution in reprimanding this ailing man for certain allegations of misrule (if not corruption) but yet some claim that seems like a fig leaf to cover an internally engineered coup with the blessings of the parent. I deeply dislike conspiracy theories for their sheer implausibility as this too also smacks of. And unless Dr Shrikant is publicly given space to clear the air surrounding his resignation this too sounds suspicious. But I believe that he would not be permitted to air his views. He continues to come and sit in his room, much diminished, stripped of all powers and probably dignity, resigned to fate, permitted to seek solace from his beloved Bhagavad Geeta.  

While Dr Shrikant was always criticized by some of us for the unholy alliance with the Jain family despite his pretensions to globalization, events from this chapter have come back to haunt his evening years as “unintended consequences of policy decisions” as he would have described them. It would be wrong to state that Dr Shrikant was entirely above blame and that he did not often veneer his personal convenience and caprice with institutional imperatives. Some including myself would even say that he has met his just desserts and is receiving back the way he gave. Yet I would still lay my sympathies with him for even though I was most seriously wronged by him personally out of vendetta for my criticism to his rule; I still hold him in esteem for what he did to institute. After what was called my ‘reverential panegyric’ to MLs in “Yuganta” I had for some of my colleagues who were grievously wronged by MLS even written a piece “Dark Side of the Moon” to mollify their hurt (as also my own) for he had hurt some of them psychologically for life. His narrative would be best described as the Dickensian Uncle Scrooge, uncaring, unforgiving, ungenerous, unloved. Ironically Dr Shrikant prided himself for being ‘the’ touchstone in judging people. But those who knew him closely also knew it to be his greatest weakness and was often prey to sycophancy, flattery and adulation; fatal for a leader as this case reveals as his minions mutiny aboard this 'unbounteous'. Amidst the swirl of the senatorial white Roman togas the cries “Et tu Brutus”, unto the mighty and arrogant breast of Caesar the Ides of September are here with its bloody stains. But for the rest of us the tragedy is only made worse as we decipher its sordid contours. I am writing this as I feel sad as few have acknowledged that in most of our lives our prosperity and secure warmth at our positions and those of our families come from in no small measure from what this man did to place the institute on the map unto the succeeding generations. The institute might totter as though nothing happened for a while, like a gruesome decapitated body; maybe sputter out or fade away like blue jeans, itself vanishing unto a sunset or who knows thrive to a greater dawn if not a false one.  

The dean for all his flaws and fatal clay feet will meet his “karma” as his beloved Geeta might proclaim (and sadly he seems to be and is probably praying for a “coup de grace”). 2014 would be a fateful year Cambridge scholar Nicholas Boyle says and the years events (the middle of the second decade) shape the character of the century whether for peace and prosperity or strife and poverty. As for us when the bells peal….”ask not for whom the bells toll, they toll for thee”!