Vikram Johri: Midnight knocks

With the arrest of five students from FTII in the wee hours of Wednesday, the saga bedeviling the institute has taken an ugly turn. The arrests came following the complaint filed by Director Prashant Patharbe who had been confined to his office on Monday by a bunch of students protesting their dismissal for overstaying on campus.

The mood in the institute has been disruptive for over two months now due to the strike against the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as chairman. In this climate, any news of arrests on campus, even for an unrelated issue, gives the scenario an ominous ring.

Besides, what message did the police intend to send by swooping down on the campus in the middle of the night? It will be rightly asked if the Pune police merely responded to the director's complaint or wanted to impress its bosses in Mantralaya with its zeal?

Meanwhile, other political players have jumped into the fray. Rahul Gandhi visited FTII earlier this month to express solidarity with the students over Mr Chauhan's appointment. After Wednesday's brouhaha, Arvind Kejriwal offered room in Delhi for FTII to conduct classes. One wonders at the point of this suggestion since the issue is not lack of space to conduct classes but disagreement over how the institute ought to be run.

FTII, as has been said ad infinitum, is an institute of some repute in a country where cinema generally translates to films whose narrative arcs are in thrall to the male protagonist's antics against sundry villains. Several alumni of the institute, including illustrious names such as Jahnu Barua and Mani Kaul, have contributed to the alternative arts and thus presented a critique of the all-mighty Bollywood.

A number of right-leaning commentators have sought to defend the government over its appointment of Mr Chauhan, saying that as a government-funded institute, FTII has little choice but to agree to the government diktat. But this goes against the spirit of education, especially in the arts, where debate is an essential part of the educational process.

A film school is not the same as, say, a B-school. I make this distinction because the government has also been facing heat from the IIMs over the proposed IIM Bill. (The government really should get its act together in education.) The IIMs contend that their autonomy will be jeopardised by some of the provisions of the new Bill through which the government will get greater powers over running their boards.

That may be undesirable, but it would still not affect the working of the institutes on a day-to-day basis. The syllabus at IIMs and other B-schools is taken after best practices abroad. Harvard Business School case studies are an important part of the pedagogy. Class work is pre-decided and innovation in curriculum is a drawn-out process, which is not beholden to the administration of the day.

This is not nearly true for an institute devoted to the arts. Who runs a film institute, what is his ideology, what is his contribution to cinema, and so on, are essential questions that shape the institute. Is the person at risk of peddling a certain ideology on campus? This has been the students' worry over Mr Chauhan's appointment. With his RSS background, would he thrust a Hindutva ideology on the campus? He may not but the worry cannot be dismissed offhand.

Ideology, to be sure, has been a sticking point in the Indian art scene. It cannot be denied that most well-respected Indian artists are left-leaning. But this is not necessarily an institutional problem. Art, when it has questioned established norms or exposed social ills, becomes anti-conservative by definition.

The Chauhan question is, in fact, not even about left versus right, but it has become so due to the players involved. Look at Hollywood, on the other hand. We do not seem to have the equivalent of a Clint Eastwood, someone who leans right politically, yet makes films that are artistically brilliant. It is entirely possible to make great art without being steeped in an ideology, even if art can be, and is, helped along by ideology.

The larger question with Mr Chauhan is of stature. Apart from his poor credentials as an actor, his candidature also rankles because the suitability criteria for chairmanship of a film institute are wider. Is he proficient in world cinema? Can he have an informed discussion on giants such as Akira Kurosawa and Krzysztof Kieslowski? The FTII director is not just another institute head. He is looked upon to inspire the students and cast the institute in his own image. For all the support pouring for Mr Chauhan from the conservative commentariat, he does not inspire that confidence.

In spite of Wednesday's events being about a separate matter, the FTII story will continue to fester until urgent action is taken. Prime Minister Narendra Modi should call Nagpur and tell the RSS top brass that this thing is becoming a headache for his government, and should they permit, he would like to hire a more respected fellow for the job. They may not listen to him but it's high time he made that call.