On how to manufacture a captive national audience - Convention Centre and Us: Nidhin Shobhana

Illustration by the author.

When we visit the official website of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, the image of the grand, glassed convention centre with its confusing installation at the entrance, will surely tempt you. We associate glass structures with new ideas of mobility. These ideas are made possible by specific temporal and spatial developments. It’s often potrayed as the perceptive face of the institute.

Over the years its thick carpet has collected a lot of meaning. The politics of images, embossed on its circular outer wall has attracted a lot of attention among Dalit and Adivasi students on campus.

One day, a close friend of mine, pointed out at the images on the walls and asked ‘Do you find Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar anywhere?’ He added that the images, which apparently highlight the diversities in India, choose a particular depiction, privileges a particular imagination. Imaging India’s diversity with the help of temples, M.K.Gandhi, Nehru, Thrissur Pooram and Kathakali reminds me of INCREDIBLE INDIA advertisements. This investment, possessive indeed, in potraying a particular kind of nonconflictual, harmonious diversity is not new. Sangh Parivar does the same.

The majority of students who enter TISS have long been consumers of this imagined community soaked in potions of uniformity, caste, masculinity and heteronormativity. They have received the required training.

The portrayal aims at warding off dissent. Differences which embody diversities are coloured with pleasant but desperate strokes of integration. The richness of the sight (thanks to affirmative action) made possible by incessant liberatory struggles, across the dimensions of the country, is overshadowed. Every social and spatial site, is then, very neatly, ‘taken care of' to produce a particular kind of response among students. In fact students become an annexe of this imagination. The image of diversity has many extensions. The persona and the poetics of the classroom can be read as an extension of this imagined unitary space called Nation. It forms a part of the Nation continuum.

Body becomes an important site of constructing this sweet portrait. By design, the institute will build a convention centre which facilitates a permanent seating arrangment. The chairs are fixed to the floor and you are fixed to the chairs. Fixed and arrested.

The permanence in the seating arrangement is assisted by an in built system of spatial surveillance. The semi-circle seating arrangment allows layered mutual surveillance. The corners however become sites of subversion. The teacher, especially the one who displays great faith in his charisma and dogma gets really disturbed by the creatures who occupy the corners. He believes in straightening them. He does not shy away from doing that.

The air is manufactured using a centralized system of air conditioning. In fact, A/C air has become a signature of power. It caters the extended image of the Nation; it caters the aspiration of the imagined national community.

Sam Pitroda was impressed by this image manufactured in the convention centre. He called the sight ‘bright, beautiful youthfulness’. The captive force of compulsory attendance was pushed under the carpet, as always.

Why do we need so many students in a classroom? Is it some sort of quality control measure? The national elite should look alike, should smell of the same perfume, should wear the same colour and should speak the same tongue. The norm excludes more than includes. Any deviance would attract straightening missionaries. A decentralized classroom would spoil the image of harmonious, conjugal sameness. It’s a threat.

Dissent, democracy and transformation are taught in such unhappy controlled spaces. We sleep, play games, crack jokes and try to take notes in silence. We do not discuss our internal conflicts, sense of hatred, and sense of betrayal or confront latent anger. Pleasure is a taboo in the classroom. There are a few teachers who long for greater engagements. Some try their best. However, they are crippled by the image; they are limited by the protocol of infrastructure.

They call it foundation courses. Yes, we find the foundations of a captive national audience in us. Constipated, sad, with a heightened sense of self.

And each time an aspirant looks at the image of the convention centre, s/he is tempted to join the ranks of the same captive national audience.

Nidhin was a student of M.A. Habitat Policy and Practice at TISS, Mumbai but dropped out in the third semester.

These are the personal opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions of the fieldnotes editorial team.