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Campus unrest is not an uncommon feature in India. Recent weeks have seen Tezpur University in Assam and VIT University in Bhopal become the latest examples of student protests.
A well-known case concerning Tamil Nadu deals with the controversy triggered by Annamalai University conferring the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters, in July 1971, upon then Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi. The sad aspect of the row was the death of K.P. Udayakumar, a third-year student of B.Sc. (Maths), under circumstances that have remained a mystery to date.
A few months after he was sworn in Chief Minister for the second time, following his Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s (DMK) smashing success in the Lok Sabha-Assembly elections earlier that year, Karunanidhi was chosen by the University to be conferred the degree at the institution’s 40th convocation on July 23. The University was of the view that he was “a rare combination of politician and man of letters, one who dominated in the field of Tamil literature setting in many ways a new style, and moulded the thought of the youth in this part of country.”
At the convocation, Vice-Chancellor S.P. Adinarayana paid glowing tributes to the Chief Minister. “His dynamism, constructive idealism and courageous thinking have qualified him to meet the life’s challenge,” he was quoted by The Hindu (July 24, 1971) as having said.
When protests erupted
In his autobiography Nenjukku Needhi (Volume 2), Karunanidhi contended the bigger issue then was whether a person, who did not have formal education in any university and possess a degree, could be given an honorary degree. However, the University’s move to honour the Chief Minister had irked certain sections of students, who were, in the words of Karunanidhi, “radical youth.” In Nenjukku Needhi, he identified them as those belonging to the Annamalai University Students’ Congress and Indian Students’ Congress, which had published pamphlets, “paving the way for a huge furore.”
United Nations diplomat-turned-writer, R. Kannan, in his insightful The DMK Years, captures the situation as follows: “On 22 July, a day before the award ceremony, a pamphlet purportedly issued by the state’s ‘Youth Congress’ tastelessly described the awardee as a ‘folklore writer’ while another with a Marxist-Leninist bent said that only socialist societies could create jobs.”
When the convocation was to begin in the morning of the fateful day, the agitating students “are reported to have waved black, flags and obstructed some of the vehicles, which were proceeding to the Convocation Hall,” this newspaper reported on July 24. The youth were also alleged to have pelted stones. The police then made a lathi-charge and cleared the area. The students ran to a nearby hostel building.
The second spell of trouble started after the event was over. “...there was again stone throwing. The police, who were heavily guarding the area, made another lathi-charge, this time entering the post-graduate hostel,” the daily’s report stated. In the afternoon, over 100 students shouting vulgar abuses were stated to have again indulged in stone-throwing near the gate of the post-graduate hostel. The police rounded up most of the inmates of the Eastern Hostel, including a number of students who had received their degrees in the morning. It was alleged that while rounding up hostel inmates, the police broke open the doors of classrooms and used force to arrest 31 students, the report added.
Sensing the gravity of the situation, the DMK government had immediately decided to form a Commission of Inquiry, headed by Justice N.S. Ramaswami, Judge, Madras High Court, to go into the incident, wherein more than 70 students and 25 police personnel were injured. On July 24, Education Minister and no. 2 in the Karunanidhi’s Council of Ministers, V.R. Nedunchezhian, announced in the Assembly the government’s move.
However, the terms of reference (ToR) of the panel came under critical scrutiny as then vice-president of the Students’ Federation of India, N. Ram, approached the High Court with a writ petition and argued in person in the Court that ToR was vague. He also submitted that the University had been closed indefinitely but the best evidence would be forthcoming if the University was opened, classes resumed, and students were free to return to the campus. Praying for an interim injunction to forbear the Commission from enquiring into the incidents pending the disposal of the petition, he pointed out that from the reports appearing in the press, there was a misapprehension that the government would influence the University not to open till the enquiry was over, according to a news report of this paper on August 28, 1971.
Dismissing the writ petition, Justice T. Ramaprasada Rao did not agree with the petitioner’s contention that the ToR was vague. The terms of reference were wide enough as to take into fold all the incidents said to have taken place at the University. Insofar as the opening or the closure of the University was concerned, the judge pointed out that since it was an autonomous body, that could not be the subject matter of a judicial review but the Commission was seized of that question also.
An unidentified body
Initial reports of the campus unrest did not talk of the death of the university student. In fact, it was in the morning of that day that the body of a youth, aged 25, was found floating in a tank on the University campus. “The body, which has not been identified either by the staff or the students, is believed to be that of a former student. It has been sent to the Government Headquarters Hospital, Cuddalore, for post-mortem,” reported The Hindu on July 25.
Four days later, the matter was raised by H.V. Hande of the Swatantra Party, who later became Health Minister in the AIADMK regime led by M.G. Ramachandran. In his response, Karunanidhi showed leaders of the Opposition parties photographs of Udayakumar and of the dead student, and observed they did not look like pictures of the same person. Neither his government nor its officials had attempted to say that the body was not that of a student but “we, the members of this House, should be adequately careful as the wrong message should not be out that the discovered body was that of the student,” he said, according to a perusal of the records of the Assembly (pages 266-277, Tamil Nadu Assembly debate for July 29, 1971).
For his stand, the Chief Minister relied on the statement given by the father of the student in question and his relative when the body was found. They could not confirm that it belonged to that of the youth even though the father had said that the watch and the ring resembled those of his son.
Findings of Commission
Six months later, the report of the Ramaswami Commission was placed in the Assembly. The panel concluded that the body of the youth found on the campus “was in all probability” that of Udayakumar. It also stated that the student “did not die due to police excess and he should have died as a result of drowning only on the night of July 23,” this newspaper reported on January 12, 1972. The Commission, which had justified the police action in dealing with the incidents, had stated that the police used only the “minimum force necessary” to push away the students, who threw missiles.
On January 31, when R. Ponnappa Nadar, Leader of the Congress (Organisation) in the Assembly, sought to corner Karunanidhi on his previous statement in the House regarding the identity of the body, the latter denied that he had ever stated that the body was that of the student concerned. He also pointed out that the inquiry panel was established only to ascertain the truth.
For many years, the death of Udhayakumar had figured in political discourses. No doubt, it is an event that continues to disturb conscientious people.
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