GIVEN HER BLOOMERS AND BLOOPERS, former Miss India contestant and television soaps star Smriti Irani, the surprise choice as Union human resource development (HRD) ” aka education ” minister of the BJP-led government at the Centre which was sworn in on May 26, is proving less inspired by the day. Morale in the shady groves of Indian academia, particularly Delhi™s academy, is hitting new lows as the aggressive minister commits one gaffe after another and makes media headlines with monotonous regularity, for all the wrong reasons. The latest embarrassment caused by the HRD ministry to the seven-month-old Narendra Modi government in Delhi, is the abrupt resignation of IIT-Delhi director Prof. R.K. Shevgaonkar two years before the end of his term. According to the buzzing academic grapevine, Shevgaonkar was under pressure from the HRD ministry to permit the establishment of a Sachin Tendulkar cricket academy on the sprawling IIT-D campus, and also agree to an out-of-court settlement to pay BJP spokesperson Dr. Subramaniam Swamy a lump-sum of Rs.90 lakh. A former lecturer at IIT-D (1969-72), Swamy has a suit pending against the institute for firing him from his job for being critical of Indira Gandhi some 35 years ago. As is normative in the snail-paced Indian justice system, the case is still pending hearing. According to informed sources, Irani is in favour of an out-of-court settlement of the pending suit. However ministry spokespersons deny these œrumours. Instead an elaborate story detailing how Shevgaonkar had unauthorisedly helped the Mauritius government to establish an IIT-D-style technology institute has been leaked to the press, implying that the IIT-D director had committed a grave offence in lending a helping hand to a friendly government in Mauritius which has an Indian majority population. Just a few days earlier on December 10, the HRD ministry issued a circular to all Central government-funded schools and colleges to celebrate Christmas day, a national holiday traditionally celebrated as the birthday of Jesus Christ countrywide and internationally, as Good Governance Day to honour BJP stalwart and former prime minister (1999-2004) Atal Behari Vajpayee, also born on Christmas day. This brazen bid of the minister to devalue Xmas aroused national indignation and was widely interpreted as an insult to the country™s 24-million Christian community and to the large number of missionary-run schools and colleges across the nation. Confronted with a huge media and academia outcry, Irani was forced to issue a statement that the ministry had not intended to force children to attend school on Christmas day but had invited voluntary online essays on the subject of good governance. These are only the latest of Irani™s ill-considered initiatives which have aroused widespread suspicion that the new HRD minister is a closet sevak (disciple) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the cultural parent of the BJP and a motley group of hindutva organisations which aspire to transform constitutionally secular India into a Hindu rashtra (nation). Although government spokespersons ridicule this allegation, it might perhaps explain Irani™s October 22 circular to all 1,000 Central…
