How India’s once-glorious University of Mysore became a cremation ground of knowledge; a powerful eyewitness account of political interference, caste politics, and the systematic destruction of higher education in post-Independence India.
THE MOTTO OF the University of Mysore is a perfect mirror that reflects the original ideal and aspiration of its founders. It is the profound phrase from the Bhagavad Gita: Na hi jñānena sadṛśam — There is nothing equal to knowledge.
The verse containing this phrase not only proclaims the supremacy of Self-Knowledge (Atma Vidya) but also, in a concise form, indicates the path to its attainment. In other words, it is in complete harmony with the fundamental philosophy, concepts, and practices of our country’s tradition of education and knowledge. The foundation of this tradition is the tenet embodied in, Sā vidyā yā vimuktaye (That is knowledge which leads to liberation). The meaning is clear: only that education which is a means to spiritual liberation (Moksha) is true education.
Sometime last year, I finished reading B.G.L. Swamy’s Mysore Diary. It taught me how the University of Mysore that Swamy saw in the late 1970s had, in the most ironic sense, become a hub of “liberation.” To put it bluntly, the essence of this teaching is that in Maharaja’s College and Manasagangotri (Mysore University’s campus), knowledge and education themselves had been liberated — i.e., set free from the campus.
Mysore Diary is Swamy’s last book. It was published fourteen years after his passing. Though it is a matter of regret, there is also a faint consolation: at least the book had the good fortune of being published.
In this slim 81-page booklet, Swamy’s distinctive stamp is visible throughout. As in his Collegu Ranga, Collegu Tarangagalu and Tamilu Talegala Naduve, Swamy’s trademark sarcasm, satire, bitter wit and the art of transforming the intensity of horrid situations into mirth, only to spur the reader into deep reflection, is evident here as well. Swamy had undoubtedly attained unparalleled mastery in this craft. If one travels the path of his humour, the journey ultimately ends in the capital city of disgust.
Mysore Diary is, in essence, the story of the downfall of the University of Mysore. It is a succinct chronicle by an eyewitness who pierced the veil of events unfolding before him. If one were to capture the emotional essence of Swamy’s words, it is a Shakespearean tragedy that played out in the Maharaja’s College and Manasagangotri. It is a bizarre mixture of the rasas of humour, fury, terror, disgust, and pathos. There is no place for the śānta (peace) rasa.
B.G.L. Swamy did not go to the University of Mysore on his own accord. He was sent there as a visiting professor by the UGC for a period of one year. By then, he had already retired several years earlier. He stayed in Mysore from 1979–80, and it was there that he passed away.
There is a reason for this longish preface.
In Mysore Diary, the Maharaja’s College and Manasagangotri that Swamy shows us had long since become an educational and cultural crematorium. With biting humour, he also informs us the terrifying truth of how all the traces of its past glory had been completely erased. It is because of this that this crematorium appears even more terrifying. What turned a place that was once a Vidya Kashi (the Kashi of Knowledge) into a burning ground was not war or natural calamity — it was the dance of destruction caused by Arishadvarga (the six inner enemies of man) armed with and empowered by political power.
In the foreword to Mysore Diary, the late scholar Sri H.M. Nayak also delivers the same verdict, in a tone mixed with despair and sorrow, along with a sense of helplessness. He writes that he had a lifelong bond with the University of Mysore and that it was a part of his soul. Though Nayak had himself held many high positions there for a long time, he had to accept defeat before this dance of destruction. When one recalls this history now, one realises the unimaginable power of that destructive force. The conclusion is inescapable: that the heinous events that occurred in real life in the realms of our education, culture and society in the recent past sound unimaginable today.
In many respects, Mysore Diary can be considered as a primary source of history. It is also a post-mortem report of the University of Mysore and a short chapter on the educational decline of post-Independence India.
Viewed within a limited framework, one finds several corroborative and divergent sources attesting to the truths contained in Mysore Diary.
The foremost corroborative work is the autobiography of the late S.L. Bhyrappa, particularly the sections dealing with his college days. Here, one finds a detailed account of how the University of Mysore became the aforementioned cremation ground — the process, the perpetrators and their petty intrigues that led to this outcome. The most apt title for that tragic saga would be Paradise Lost.
Among the divergent sources for Mysore Diary, the one that stands out is the late A.N. Murthy Rao’s elegant and evocative essay, The Common Room of the Maharaja College. In it, Murthy Rao gives only a glimpse of that paradise. In its concluding portion, he hides a profound truth:
"Everyone who was part of the Common Room had shaped the lives of all the others. If any one of them were to write his autobiography, he would have no choice but to write the story of all the others as well… they were all participants in one anothers’ enthusiasm, boredom, joy, and sorrow, … When faced with trials of character, when the mind leaned towards the lower path, the thought of what my friends would think of me acted as my protection. Some divine medicines, if consumed once, give strength to the body for an entire lifetime. The influence of my teachers, elders, and friends was akin to such a divine medicine."
It is noteworthy that B.G.L. Swamy visited the same Common Room and other buildings and rooms four decades later. He shows us what he saw there.
The scenes narrated by Swamy are mentioned in the essay Kaltugaḷu Paṭṭugaḷu (Cults and Tricks). When one reads it, the disgust that arises within us and the tears of blood we shed involuntarily gradually lose their intensity over time and make us even more desensitised. This condition corresponds to the principle given by M.N. Roy — considered India’s first Communist leader and intellectual — “normalise bad news.”
As the title of Swamy’s essay suggests, what we see therein are countless variations of the demonic dance of vile groupism. This essay is the heart of Mysore Diary. As usual, the author’s satirical finesse blossoms beautifully here — his newly-minted phrases such as “cult deities,” “cult scholars,” and “cult worship” make one burst into uncontrollable laughter. One may quote a couple of lines to give a flavour.
"Manasagangotri is expansive… I was astonished at the number of cults that have sprung up there; what’s more, I was bewildered. I could not even grasp the difference between two cults… Building one cult and forcibly keeping it alive, whether with life or without life — these are the acrobatics on display here. It seems the cult deities are never satisfied. At least four or five times a year, one must step into the arena, wrestle, and raise dust. Those particles must enter some people’s eyes and irritate them. This is a primary rule of the cult."
Another reality that emerges from this essay is that one of these cult offspring is our current honourable Chief Minister.
The story of the dawn of these cults is narrated almost from the scratch in S.L. Bhyrappa’s Bhitti. In the beginning of his student days, there were only two groups — B and Non-B — that is, Brahmin and Non-Brahmin.
But by the time Swamy wrote Mysore Diary, these had exploded into countless groups. Caste-subcaste, faction-subfactions, right hand–left hand — all of these were joined by various ideological groups such as socialists, rationalists, progressives, communists, Marxists, Lohiaites, and so on. What provided justification at different levels and times for all of them was the pure political perversion called Navya (or the “modernist” literary movement in Karnataka).
When this phenomenon is analysed at a more fundamental and philosophical level, its implication becomes self-evident.
All these pseudo-ideologies are rooted in attachment (Raga) and hatred (Dwesha), and in the intolerance and dishonesty that naturally arise from them. Another driving force behind such ideologies is inferiority of the Self; a clear expression of this inferiority is the prophetic mentality, or what Dr. Koenraad Elst memorably called the “Psychology of Prophetism.”
A representative Navya poem that expresses this mindset is Gopalakrishna Adiga’s Kaṭṭuvevu Nāvu (We Shall Build). In reality, it is a Communist war song, not poetry. It is in the model of hundreds of such war songs written by the Telugu poet Sri Sri. The main traits of the prophetic mentality are intolerance, indiscipline, untruth, unrest, cruelty, deception, selfishness, opportunism, and waiting for the right moment to seize power by backstabbing one’s own comrades.
Consequently, the Navya group split very quickly. S.L. Bhyrappa has analysed this entire sequence of events and its inner currents with great maturity in Bhitti. After all, he was both an eyewitness to and a victim of these ideologies and their real-world consequences.
It has now become common knowledge that among the many embers that flew out of the Navya explosion, the Bandaya (Rebel) and Dalit movements were the main ones. They too, used literature and poetry as political weapons. Adiga did possess genuine poetic talent and a rich vocabulary. He composed socially destructive songs in refined language and an appealing style. But those of the Bandaya movement, shaped in the same flawed mould, proclaimed their goal with naked fury. There was at least honesty in all such angry expressions. It was pure vehemence labelled as poetry.
B.G.L. Swamy has recorded his experience of reading many such acidic poems inscribed in several places at Manasagangotri. Here are a few selected examples:
1. “We shall build — the new age
We shall pound — the old age”
2. “Burn, burn, burn
Caste, caste, caste!
Quit, quit, quit
Your gotra, your sūtra!”
One more aspect that becomes clearly evident in all this is that the anti-Brahmin activities during S.L. Bhyrappa’s college days did not have a violent dimension. But by the time B.G.L. Swamy arrived in Mysore, an entire decade had passed since the systematic expulsion of Brahmins from the academic field — especially from the universities. Now, if there was any conflict, it was among various non-Brahmin communities. One main reason why this assumed a violent form was the political power and influence gained by the Communists.
Broadly speaking, it was the nationwide evil consequence that began from the mid-1960s when Indira Gandhi became a puppet in the hands of the Communists, and later gifted them the Jawaharlal Nehru University. A thousand-hooded serpent was let loose throughout India.
On one side was Devraja Urs’s petty caste politics; on the other, the Communists who infiltrated it or indirectly benefited from it stuffed the lessons of Soviet slavery into the minds of their students. A major example of this is found in Mysore Diary itself. Swamy had sat in U.R. Ananthamurthy’s class and listened to him lecturing his students about Existentialism, Socialism and Marxism in a mesmerising style.
The practical facet of all such indoctrination was organised violence. B.G.L. Swamy witnessed many such violent incidents during the one year he spent there.
The blueprints for such violence were prepared in the homes of professors or during the drinking parties they hosted for their close students. But ultimately, it was only the students who carried out the violence on the streets. Even now, when one reads Swamy’s book, the heart shudders. It generates rage and revulsion.
“Some members of the teaching staff conduct their own private durbars. They call their favourite disciples home or to a hotel, comfort them with drinks and snacks, and then taunt them: ‘What is this? Everything in the campus has remained peaceful this year! Will you let it remain like this for the whole year?’ Then they hold consultations with mantras and tantras about the actions that need to be taken next… A list of grievances is then prepared… Discussions about it fill the atmosphere of Manasagangotri… In modern, popular and “pure“ Kannada, messages are written on building walls and tar roads for public awareness… The movement [begins]… This is a very dangerous period.”
This incessant deluge of agitations, uproar, and movements reached such a point that Maharaja’s College earned the nickname Maha-holiday during that time.
In Bhitti, we find a prophecy of the situation reaching the nadir that Swamy witnessed. The main strategies employed by caste politics during Bhyrappa’s BA and MA days were these: favouring one’s own caste in academic power positions, suppression of the meritorious, sudden promotion of the undeserving, conspiracies against faculty of the “enemy” caste, shutting down subjects identified as “Brahmin,” and so on. Such strategies were also used against students. Bhyrappa himself was a victim of these sick intrigues.
Another development that happened slowly but irreversibly during that period was that professors began building groups of students who were personally loyal to them. This later grew into the monstrous private durbars of the teaching staff that B.G.L. Swamy describes.
We can now examine several inner currents in this brief survey of the comprehensive downfall of the University of Mysore.
This downfall is undoubtedly the evil spawn of petty caste politics stitched together by the Congress and the Leftists. The roots of this politics lie in the Aryan-Dravidian myth. The story of how it later took organised form as the Justice Party, Praja Mitra Mandali, etc., is well-known.
The first and most accomplished victim of this politics in Mysore was Diwan Mokshagundam Visvesvarayya — the very founder of the University of Mysore. A few years after his exit, the anti-Brahmin political movements that sprouted under the leadership of Justice Party devotees such as C.R. Reddy, culminated in reducing Maharaja’s College and Manasagangotri to a graveyard of knowledge — it is this that we see in Mysore Diary.
After Independence, there was an urgent need to sing the dirge of this Aryan-Dravidian-inspired caste and regional politics and bury it forever. There was also ample opportunity for it. However, the Congress party behaved in a more heinous manner than the British who had first injected the poison. The inferno of the Congress’ divide-and-rule subterfuge struck the colleges and universities of eastern and northeastern India most fiercely. The universities of Calcutta, Jadhavpur, Patna, Lucknow, and Banaras Hindu University literally burned for decades. In comparison, the condition of the University of Mysore was somewhat more bearable. The analogy I have given here is not between nectar and poison, but between poison and Halāhala.
Without any exaggeration, it can be said that more than politicians, it is the lecturers and professors who are responsible for the comprehensive downfall of “independent” India.
What we have observed so far is only the outer surface of the decline of the University of Mysore and its various limbs. But the real damage is the destruction of its soul — i.e., the annihilation of knowledge.
It is not an exaggeration to claim that the golden age of the University of Mysore was born at the time of its very conception. In a broad sense, its establishment was one of the beautiful inevitabilities of history. The University of Mysore was the proud future child of the cultural renaissance inaugurated by Krishnaraja Wodeyar III. From another perspective, it was also the realisation of a courageous resolve that flowed during difficult times. Its achievements are eternal witnesses and proofs to its golden chapter. The noble souls who made it possible are thus equally immortal.
Broadly speaking, the golden age of the University of Mysore can be said to extend from the year of its establishment until the exit of K.V. Puttappa (Kuvempu). In the terminology of the history of Kannada literature, this age spans from the Navodaya to the Navya period. To put it more pointedly, it is the interval from M. Hiriyanna’s Krtayuga to U.R. Ananthamurthy’s Kaliyuga. For more than half a century, a great flood of Karnataka’s cultural giants flowed from this very university. When one remembers this and is immersed in it, one realises how sacred and life-elevating its original fount was.
As mentioned earlier, A.N. Murthy Rao has given a delightful and attractive glimpse of that age. His essay is an expression of the admiration, affection, love, and sense of gratitude he carried within himself for the university and its greats.
Apart from Murthy Rao, scores of folks of that era have written richly, elegantly, and with deep emotion about various aspects of the University of Mysore. When we read the old issues of Prabuddha Karnataka today, the vastness and verve of the achievements of this knowledge hub renders us speechless. In that sense, Prabuddha Karnataka itself is one of the crowning glories of the University of Mysore.
One of the main reasons for such fame and prestige was the atmosphere that existed there. There is an abundant wealth of articles written specifically on this subject by former students. What emerges indisputably from this treasure is the greatness, dignity, and standard of scholarship of the teachers and professors of that time. For those students, celebrities meant such gurus. Mackintosh, Wadia, Radhakrishnan, Venkannayya, S.V. Ranganna, D.L. Narasimhachar, B.M. Srikantaiah, S. Srikanta Sastri… their classes were always packed. Students of science departments would abandon their classes and throng to listen to such towering professors. They would stand outside the classroom and somehow peep through the windows to listen to their lectures.
When one reads Murthy Rao’s vivid description of this atmosphere, envy, regret, and anger compete with one another within us.
“Our senior gurus… were anchored in their place like the eight diggajas holding up this earth from its eight corners. They did not leave their places and wander… There was never any conflict between their profession and personal pleasures. Without even consciously placing a sense of duty before them, duty was fulfilled. Ten of them would assemble to read a play, sharing roles among themselves; or they would ask their younger colleagues to read aloud Kuvempu’s latest poems; or they would conduct an in-depth study of some book — were all these duty or pleasure? [...]
“On one side, we received weapons-training from the Rishis of Bharata and on the other, from Aristotle, the Greek. The merit we earned by pouring oblations to them was obtained by studying Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti, and others…
“If we acquired scholarship back then, it was not scholarship washed by shedding our tears. Just as children gain knowledge of the world while playing, we acquired whatever scholarship we did.
“Along with all our professional duties… gossip and snacking also continued uninterrupted. The statement comparing us to drunkards is not entirely untrue. But this liquor was prepared in a special way. It was distilled by adding ingredients such as Tyagaraja’s lyrics, Dikshitar’s compositions, and the plays of Aeschylus and Shakespeare… The habit of swaying after drinking this brew still remains with us…”
When B.G.L. Swamy re-entered this divine atmosphere described by Murthy Rao, this is the scene he encountered:
“During the time when T.S.V., B.M.S., S.V.R., T.N.S., D.L.N. and others were engaged in the teaching profession, I had once walked through the classrooms and teachers’ rooms of Maharaja’s College. When I passed through those same rooms forty years later, nausea seized me…
“When I entered through the main gate, the first scene that met my eyes bemused me. Behind the staircase, four or five members of the lower staff were sitting around smoking bidis and playing cards. Although they noticed me, they pretended not to and remained absorbed in the game. [...]
“Next, the English Lecturers’ Hall appeared before me. There was no one inside. The portrait of Rollo, who had once been a professor, was hanging upside down from a broken cord on the wall. Two cows were peacefully chewing cud and had dropped dung on the floor. Just as I approached the door of the adjacent room, a donkey came out from inside, kicked me from behind with its hind legs, and went away.”
There was a generation of students in Maharaja’s College of A.N. Murthy Rao’s time who quenched their thirst for knowledge through the lectures and discourses of their teachers. From there, it didn’t take much time for a generation of students who carved out rooms for their own castes. This generation of students also became the fuel that fed the corruption of their own teachers, and indulged in violence and public vandalism.
The atmosphere of Maharaja’s College depicted by Murthy Rao belongs to the 1930s. The late S.L. Bhyrappa was born in 1931 and joined BA in 1950–51. By then, the generation of towering teachers like Venkannayya had already vanished. Not only had the number of scholars trained in that hallowed tradition dwindled, but the few who still remained had been completely sidelined. Luminaries like M. Hiriyanna, who had mastery over original texts, had returned to the womb of Time. There is authentic evidence for this lamentable state in Bhitti.
Two representative examples may be given.
H.K. Raja Rao, who had attained authoritative scholarship in philosophy, was treated unjustly by the University of Mysore because he was a Brahmin. As a result, intense bitterness arose within him. The outcome was predictable — his students received no proper guidance.
A similar example is Professor N. Balasubrahmanya. He too, had taught Bhyrappa and later became his close friend. Bhyrappa describes the distressing treatment meted out to this learned Professor at the University of Mysore:
“Among those who acquired multifaceted scholarship in the University of Mysore, Balasubrahmanya was the last. He joined service when the university had fallen on bad times, when true scholarship was not valued. His colleagues, instead of respecting his scholarship told him to his face, ‘We didn’t ask you to study so much; you studied to satisfy your itch.’ This appalling attitude naturally flourished in a climate in which caste alone became the sovereign qualification… Even in purely practical matters such as the reprinting of his books, the university did not behave with courtesy.”
The overall summary is clear. Except perhaps for Pakistan, it is probably only in India that one finds an example of the systematic and determined destruction of the acquisition of knowledge, its encouragement, and its safeguarding. This massacre occurred not in private realms but in our universities — after India gained independence. The story of the decline and ruin of the University of Mysore is mirrored in all such universities across India.
This essay began with Mysore Diary and so, it is is fitting to conclude with it as well. In his foreword, H.M. Nayak expresses his anguish thus:
“The University of Mysore is now celebrating its diamond jubilee. I heard that a history of it has been published recently. I have no doubt that that history will be a mere list of years. Such a history will have no soul. This “Mysore Diary” enables us to hear the profound breath of this great institution that is seventy-five years old.”
Forty years later, the Maharaja’s College that B.G.L. Swamy saw had literally become a cattleshed and a donkey stable. The place meant for imparting education was filled with cow dung and donkey excreta. I do not have the courage to find out what adorns its campus now.
There is one historical truth that B.G.L. Swamy has left unsaid. His revered father, D.V. Gundappa, was also one of the stalwarts who worked tirelessly and selflessly for the progress of the University of Mysore.
The birth of this Kashi of Knowledge was the fruit of the noble resolve of a Rajarshi and his enlightened Diwan. The cause of its downfall was ministers. As an indicator of that fall, it is most appropriate to change its motto to Na hi ajñānena sadṛśam — there is nothing equal to ignorance.
॥ Sā vidyā yā vinaśyati ॥
That is knowledge which leads to destruction.
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