I returned to Nagaland University after four gruelling years of PhD toil, not just to collect my degree, but to reclaim echoes of a campus that once fueled my intellectual fire. Instead, I witnessed a grotesque spectacle: a convocation hijacked by VVIP pageantry, where public coffers fueled transient glamour while students navigated dust-choked paths in darkness. This wasn’t higher education’s triumph; it is neoliberal India’s academia laid bare—prioritizing elite optics over equity, accountability, and critical inquiry.
Three days before the event, the campus thrummed with frantic beautification. Selective roads near the convocation halls received hasty blacktopping, whitewash crews toiled round-the-clock, and rehearsals for Vice President of India C.P. Radhakrishnan and other officials of higher hierarchy arrival turned idyllic Lumami into a militarized zone. Indian Air Force choppers buzzed overhead—not once, but thrice. Police convoys, army personnel, intelligence operatives, fire tenders, and mystery vehicles clogged empty lanes. Over 30 vehicles for a two-hour visit? This is the arithmetic of VVIP culture in peripheral India, where Northeast campuses become props for Delhi’s gaze.
Contrast this with the university’s squalor. Only a few streetlights illuminate the roads within the campus, girl students trudge dusty roads twice daily, risking safety in pitch black after lab hours. The library operates skeletal hours. Non-teaching staff rely on proxies; faculty drift in and out sans biometric accountability. Yet Vice Chancellor Prof. Jagdish K. Patnaik stood proudly, touting faculty patents, external grants, and publications—metrics of a research economy that privileges the tenured elite. Student achievements? Barely a whisper. Where is the audit of how these “projects” trickle down to the downtrodden, the indigenous youth from Nagaland’s hills, whom this public university ostensibly serves?
The irony peaked in the hall. Radhakrishnan, son of “Bharat Mata,” invoked nationalist piety and praised Lord Christ—lip service amid VHP and Bajrang Dal’s vandalism of Christmas in other Indian cities. Nagaland and Manipur governor, Ajay Kumar Bhalla, echoed platitudes. Deputy CM T.R. Zeliang capped it with “Kuknalim!”—Naga nationalist war cry tied to NNPG demands—followed by “Jai Hind!” A confused fusion of sovereignty and subjugation, mirroring the Naga political theatre, a rhetoric of autonomy masking resource extraction and militarized “development.”
Students, too, resisted. Many sat through “Vande Mataram,” defying imposed patriotism after the Nagaland Students’ Federation’s directive. I sat in the corner, as always—neither left, right, nor centre, but as a critic of universities as nation-building factories. Nagaland University should be a pluriverse of ideas, accessible to the marginalized, fostering Foucaultian critique over Andersonian imagined communities. Instead, it’s a site of cosmetic development: infrastructure for VIPs, sermons for the masses.
Disillusioned, I skipped the circus, streaming speeches on my laptop while trimming pubic hair in my guest room—a profane rebellion against sanctified hypocrisy. As dignitaries droned on, I multitasked with existential relief. Post-speeches, I dashed to Ihoshe Kinimi Hall. My name rang out; I ascended, grasped my PhD—four years’ labour distilled into parchment for a Taiwan job interview. Satisfaction surged amid the farce. Choppers whirred away, convoys vanished, crowds dispersed.
The malaise of India’s higher education, elite capture via spectacle, where public funds (how many crores for this tamasha?) prop up a regime’s Hindutva-nationalist narrative while infrastructure crumbles. Nagaland, with its indigenous land struggles and environmental justice battles, deserves better—a university of transparency, where accountability trumps fanfare, and critical thought blooms for the excluded, not the entourage.
Defund VVIP extravaganzas; redirect to pucca roads, 24/7 libraries, biometric equity. Audit university “achievements”—do they serve the downtrodden or Delhi’s optics? Nagaland’s academia must reject elite capture, embracing transparency for true decolonisation. Otherwise, it’s just another chopper’s shadow over forgotten dreams. PhD secured, bottles uncorked with old comrades, I leave urging: Reclaim the university for all—or watch it wither.
~ Anonymous Contributor
