Gujarat Vidyapith (university), an Ahmedabad-based K-Ph D education institution promoted by Mahatma Gandhi in 1920 as a nationalist alternative to the Western education system in the heady days of the freedom struggle, is caught in a clash between the traditional and modern.

On September 12, an estimated 250 of the vidyapith’s 4,300 students staged a protest fast before the registrar’s office after four postgraduate Master of human resource management students were rusticated for the grave crime of using cell/mobile phones in their hostel.

The vidyapith authorities had banned the use of mobile phones on campus in 2007. “The ban is as per the directive of the Gujarat state government which has prohibited the use of mobile phones in educational institutions,’’ says registrar Rajendra Khimani.

Though announced in 2005, an official government resolution (GR) prohibiting the use of mobile phones in schools and colleges was promulgated on August 31, 2010. According to the GR, K-12 students are not allowed to bring mobile phones into school premises and even teachers, staff, parents and visitors are not permitted to do so in classrooms, libraries and laboratories.

The state government’s ban also covers higher education institutions although usage of mobile phones is permitted in a few restricted areas. Students and faculty are encouraged to use conventional landline telephones instead. Somewhat sensationally Dr. Sudarshan Iyengar, vice chancellor of the vidyapith, joined with the students who staged a Gandhian protest by also sitting in dharna and spinning the charkha.

Though Dr. Iyengar doesn’t own a mobile himself, and was “out of station’’ and unavailable for comment, he had earlier informed the media that his dharna was a counter-protest to convey to the students that they needed to listen to the management’s point of view, i.e, that usage of mobile phones on campus had reached “epidemic proportions’’. Moreover, he reminded them that at the time of admission, they had expressly agreed to restricted and limited use of mobile phones.

Registrar Khimani denies that the vidyapith’s management is against technology and is interpreting Gandhism too literally. “We have provided internet connectivity in all hostels. Moreover we were the first institution in Gujarat to offer postgraduate education in computer sciences,” he says.

The student-management face-off ended after seven days following a compromise. Under a new agreement, student representatives and the management agreed to frame a new set of mutually acceptable rules governing the use of mobile phones on campus. The broad agreement is that cell phones will be restricted to hostels and used in non-congregational spaces.

Accorded deemed university status in 1963 by the University Grants Commission, Gujarat Vidyapith, which has an annual budget of Rs.30 crore funded by the state government, provides K-Ph D education to 4,300 students including 2,500 school children. Alumni include Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, former President Rajendra Prasad, former prime minister Morarji Desai, and former Union ministers Dr. Sushila Nayyar and Ravindra Verma, with Gandhiji appointed kulapati (chancellor) for life. The incumbent chancellor is Narayan Desai, son of the late Mahadev Desai, the Mahatma’s private secretary.

R.K. Misra (Gandhinagar)