Our colleague Alladi Uma retires from the University after a distinguished career of 20 or so years at the end of July 2011. Although this is just about two months since I joined the University, I have known of Uma’s work for some time now, particularly in the area of translation.
On the occasion of her retirement, her student (and colleague in the English Department) Sindhu Menon writes: Professor Alladi Uma joined the University of Hyderabad in 1991, after serving Sri Padmavati Mahila Viswavidyalayam and Osmania University for five years. She has opted to retire from our University at the end of this month having served the University with distinction for 20 years.
The hallmark of Prof. Alladi Uma’s work has consistently been the very rare combination of a questioning, dynamic perspective and an impeccable ‘traditional’ scholarship. She was largely instrumental in making “Indian Writing in English” a mandatory course. She was also responsible for arguing a case for two mandatory American Literature courses when the syllabus was heavily British literature centred. She was mainly responsible for making the Ph. D., courses Pass/Fail courses, rather than the traditional grueling grading system. She organized one of the first workshops on American literature syllabuses for teachers across the country. More recently she jointly co-ordinated a seminar on “Dalits and English”, a seminar that is perceived as a landmark event in the history of the Department
It is truly impossible to retain a comfortable complacency about any subject after one has listened to Prof. Uma’s inevitably perceptive, radical and demanding insights on it. This, in turn has generated work which refuses to be second-hand and bears the stamp of originality among her students, research scholars and all those who look to her for her unique brand of incisive and insightful critique. No wonder she was an extremely popular teacher and a much sought after Supervisor. She has inspired hundreds of students in her career spanning over 25 years. She has so far supervised 27 students. She is a rare example of an ‘other-oriented’ teacher who takes genuine pleasure in having communicated a fresh viewpoint to a class, in seeing the improved and self reliant work of a student she has inspired and in the manifestation in not just arid discussion but in actual social practice of the ideas she had set in circulation. She was always innovative in the courses she taught. Some of the Optional Courses she offered such as “What’s in a genre,” “In-discipline,” “Why teach these texts?,“ “Reading Dalit Reading Black” and “Women Writing Writing Women” bear testimony to this.
As a scholar she has significantly contributed to the areas of African American literature, Indian Writing in English, Women’s Studies, Translation and Dalit Studies. Prof Uma literally stands out therefore as one of a very limited number of teachers who are distinguished equally as scholars and as teachers in the true sense of the term.
One does not often have the chance to encounter an HOD who gets work done with the greatest of efficiency, but never for a second allows bureaucracy to make her forget the human element. Awe for her achievements and efficiency never deterred anyone—student, non-teaching staff or colleague– from approaching her if there was a genuine problem, as it has been repeatedly proved that such problems once brought to her notice were treated as her own individual concerns till they had been solved. She has held important administrative positions—she was the first woman to have held the position of the Head of the Department of English at the University of Hyderabad. She has also served more recently as Chief Proctor of the University. Teacher, scholar, activist and friend –qualities that need to be praised and admired equally–as all of these she held together simultaneously. But this remarkable achievement has been the signature tune of Prof. Uma’s work and bears testimony to her commitment and integrity. As a member of the School Board, the Academic Council and the Court, she was very forthright in her comments. She had always expressed her views fearlessly, even if some of them were unpalatable to the administration.
It will be hard to replace someone who has meant so much to her Department and the University. We wish her all the very best for the task she has carved for herself in the years to come.
The University will miss Prof. Uma, but we also know that she is close at hand, and always available to mentor, counsel, and help.
Month: July 2011
UoH-Physics-TIFR
Physics is one major link between UoH and TIFR… Come 1 August, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research will join us in organizing a conference on MODERN OPTICS. Its many homecomings, most importantly that of Prof. Girish Agarwal who was one of the earliest faculty members in the School of Physics at HCU, who had been Dean and steered the School for many years before he left for the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, and then in 2006 to the Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma, where he is presently Noble Foundation Chair and Regents Professor of Physics.
As Homi Bhabha Chair at TIFR, he will be spending a few days with us at HCU and will deliver a Distinguished Lecture on the 4th of August on Quantum Interference between Independent Photons. The abstract of the talk: Historically the observation of interference by Thomas Young established the wave nature of light and the founders of quantum mechanics like de Broglie and Schroedinger were motivated by the interference of light to arrive at the wave equation for quantum particles like electrons. With the advent of quantum theory of light by Planck, Dirac pondered over how the interference would arise with single photons. Contrary to the common belief, I show how interference between independent quantum particles is possible. This new possibility has strict quantum character and has applications in diverse areas such as generation of entanglement between independent systems remote or otherwise and in general in quantum state engineering.
The meeting that starts at 10:00 on the 1st of August (Monday) focuses on the Future of Optical Sciences in India.
Speakers from HCU include Subhash Chaturvadi, Nirmal Viswanathan, D Narayana Rao and Subhasis Dutta Gupta, while those from TIFR are M Krishnamurthy, S Mujumdar, and A Venugopal. In addition, the conference brings together a number of leading physicists from institutions such as IPR Gandhinagar, IIA Bangalore, BARC, CAT Indore, IMSc Chennai, and others.
Nina Saxena Excellence in Technology Award 2011
The Nina Saxena Excellence in Technology Award is an India-wide award to encourage and promote, technical innovation. This year, our colleague Dr S Maqbool Ahmed is part of the CHACE team that has been shortlisted for the prize.
The award commemorates the spirit and memory of IIT Kharagpur alumna Dr. Nina Saxena who passed away tragically in 2005. Conferred every year at the IIT Foundation Day, this award is made possible by contributions from IIT Kharagpur Alumni to remember Dr. Saxena’s desire and drive for technical excellence, during her short but illustrious life. (For details, see the site http://www.iitfoundation.org/?p=77)
Dr Ahmed was the the team leader of that payload on the Moon Impact Probe Mission of Chandrayaan project. Quoting from Rajesh Kochchar’s blog, “The impact probe MIP which deposited Indian national flag on the Moon also carried a scientific payload, nick-named CHACE, comprising a mass spectrometer. During the 25 minutes of fall on to the lunar surface, CHACE obtained data confirming the presence of water vapour in the Moon’s atmosphere on the sunlit side.”
There is more to the story, and that can be read elsewhere. This brief post is to give our heartiest congratulations to Dr Maqbool Ahmed!
Ratna Sadasyata
Shortly after I took over the Vice Chancellorship last month our respected and eminent colleague Nataraja Ramakrishna passed away. One of my earliest and sad tasks on behalf of the University community was to lay a wreath at his feet then…
Dr Nataraja Ramakrishna was one of the founding members of our University’s Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication. As the first appointed Professor of the Dance Department of the School, he methodically structured the entire dance curriculum and developed a pedagogic practice for teaching dance at the post-graduate level. Through the introduction of the doctoral programme in dance in 1991, he helped systematize the study of dance and brought in new research perspectives. As many as 9 PhDs were completed under his supervision. His association with the Department continued into his final years.
There was cause to celebrate his career once again last Friday. Padmasree Bharatakalaprapoorna Dr. Nataraj Ramakrishna was posthumously conferred the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship (referred to as the Akademi Ratna Sadasyata), along with noted vocalist Girija Devi, dhrupad maestro Rahimuddin Dagar, and mridangam exponent T. K. Murthy.
Guru Nataraj Ramakrishna was an eminent dancer, guru, scholar, and musicologist propagating classical dance in Andhra Pradesh for the last 50 years. He was the architect of Andhra Natyam, a dance form he recreated and made popular. He also reconstructed the “Perini Sivatandavam”, the militant male dance tradition of the tenth Century AD (Kakatiya Period). He revived “Navajanardanam” a great prabanda dance tradition that was being performed in Kunti Madhava Temple at Pitapuram in East Godavari District of Andhra Pradesh for the last 400 years.
He choreographed and staged “Sri Venkateswara Kalyanam”, “Kumara Sambhavam”, “Megha Sandesam” and won the Swarna Kalasam at Ujjain for the production of “Kumara Sambhavam”. He wrote over 40 books on Dance, six of which won him awards from the Government of India. His outstanding books are “Dakshinathyula Natyakala Charitra” and “Andhras and the Art of Dance,” a treatise covering a period of 2000 years.
The University of Hyderabad, in recognition of his seminal contribution to dance, conferred an honorary doctorate on him and has instituted the annual Nataraj Ramakrishna Lecture on Art and Culture in the year 2009. Recently, the University became the privileged custodian of many of his worldly possessions, including his Padma award and other honours.
I would like to thank Professor Vinod Pavarala, Dean of the S N School, for most of the above write-up.
Shameful
On Friday night there was an unfortunate and shameful incident in Men’s Hostel E Annexe on our campus. I am ashamed that such a thing happened in our University, and that it happened now.
Posters and photographs of our national leaders that were placed in the corridor were burnt in the middle of the night of 22 July. This is a deplorable act, and one that is simply incomprehensible. Whatever our beliefs and opinions, vandalism has no place in our University.
It is a matter of shame for us all that in the 21st century we have persons on our campus who entertain regressive prejudices. We will spare no efforts to identify and punish the perpetrators, and a Proctorial enquiry is already under way. This is also a criminal matter, and it is therefore being investigated by the police as well.
The University administration appeals to the entire campus community to maintain calm in this hour of crisis.
Please contact the Proctorial Committee if you have any information that can assist them in any way.
Archiving the University
It has often been remarked that we are, as a nation, poor archivists. One of the most eloquent institutional administrators- one who has had a long association with the University of Hyderabad and even now is a member of our Executive Council- is P. Balaram of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. As Editor of the journal Current Science, he has on many occasions shared his experiences with the wider readership on a number of issues. When the IISc celebrated the centenary year of its founding, he wrote a number of essays that touched on its origins.
One of them (Current Science, Vol. 94, 10 January 2008) starts “ A weakness for history and the temptation to retreat into the past, in order to escape the pressures of the present, has drawn my attention to two books which have appeared over the last year or so.” He goes on to discuss the books in relation to the IISc’s history. Later in the editorial, he comments ” In piecing together a documentary record of an institution’s early days I have had tantalizing glimpses of individuals and events.”
In the past few days, I have had some occasion to think about carrying out an exercise to document the campus of the University for a number of reasons. In the process, I (re)discovered an early booklet titled “Ideas Competition for the Design of the Master Plan of the University Campus”.
The two photographs in this post are both from that booklet (a copy of which is in my office, and a copy can be made available) which details a very comprehensive idea of what the founding Vice Chancellor and his team of planners had thought of the University and its role.
At that time, the total area earmarked for us was a little over 2324 acres, and in the 37 years since then, we have gradually seen the extent of the land reduce. In addition to the physical extent, there has also been a reduction in the diversity of the fauna, an increase on the various pressures on the land, a possible increase in the floral diversity as a large number of alien species have been introduced, and of course, development.
It is essential that we document this change, and our approaching 40th anniversary in 2014 seems to be a good time by which we should do this. There are records to be looked at, archival photographs to be collected, a history to be written. Many of the key persons are still with us on the campus, or at any rate accessible. In addition, it would be a good idea to document the environment, the geology, the flora, fauna, and the social history- a way to see what we were, what we are, and give us all an idea of what we can become.
Some- indeed most- of this material should form the basis of the University Archives, both physical and digital. And some of this could be the basis of a book on the University – something that is sorely needed, and would be a good way to celebrate our 40 years. This way, we could lay our own master plan for how we reach our own future milestones, the golden jubilee in 2024… and our centenary in 2074.
Distinguished Lecturers
The University has a tradition of inviting distinguished academics and other personalities to come lecture to the University community on matters of interest, both scholarly and general. These lectures are intended to attract a wide audience, and are therefore somewhat more like colloquia. Two that we have this month are on the 19th and 20th of July.
Today’s speaker is the distinguished neuroscientist, V S Ramachandran, Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego, where he is the Director of the Centre for Brain and Cognition. He will speak at 4:00 pm today in the DST auditorium on Neurology: From molecules to metaphor.
Ramachandran is internationally renowned. As Wikipedia says, his experiments in behavioral neurology which, despite their apparent simplicity, have generated many new ideas about the workings of the brain. In 1997 Newsweek magazine named him a member of “The Century Club”, one of the “hundred most prominent people to watch” in the 21st century and in 2011 Time listed him as one of “the most influential people in the world” on the “Time 100” list.
Our speaker tomorrow is the well known journalist P Sainath, Rural Affairs editor of The Hindu. Sainath was awarded the 2007 Ramon Magsaysay award for Journalism, Literature, and
Creative Communication Arts. Over decades of reporting, he has established himself as among the pre-eminent chroniclers of rural life in our times. Shri Sainath received the A H Boerma Award in 2001 for his contributions.
In July 2004, he was awarded the Prem Bhatia Award for excellence in political reporting and analysis in recognition of his “outstanding, indeed exceptional, work on the problems of the poorest of the poor, especially in Andhra Pradesh.” Dr. Amartya Sen has called him “one of the world’s great experts on famine and hunger”. Shri Sainath calls himself a ‘rural reporter’, or simply a ‘reporter’ – and photo journalist focusing on social problems, rural affairs, poverty and the aftermath of globalization in India.
P Sainath was born in Chennai and the grandson of the former President of India, Shri V. V. Giri. He was educated in Loyola College, Chennai. His preoccupation with social problems and commitment to a political perspective began when he was a student in college. He is a graduate of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi where he was part of an activist student population. He is now an Executive Council member of the same university. After receiving a Master’s degree in history, he launched his career as a journalist at the United News of India in 1980 where he received the news agency’s highest individual award. He then worked for Blitz, then a major South Asian weekly in Mumbai, first as foreign affairs editor and then as Deputy Editor. For the last twenty-five years he has been visiting faculty at Sophia Polytechnic’s Social Communications Media course and also at the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai, inspiring a whole generation of young journalists.
His talk is at 4:00 pm on Wednesday the 20th July, also in the DST Auditorium. He will speak on The Media – Another Kind of Convergence.
Lecturers scheduled in the coming months include Girish Agarwal (Physics), Srikumar Bannerjee (Atomic Energy), Richard Zare (Chemistry) and Veena Das (Sociology). Watch this space.
Hello UoH, Hello world!
It’s probably simplest to just start with what this Blog is about. Like it says, this is the UNofficial site of the VC, University of Hyderabad. Which means that I hope to use it to communicate with the UoH community somewhat informally, and to communicate on matters that relate to the University to the world at large. Unofficial, so that I can also add my own personal thoughts and ideas for the University or about matters that I feel are germane to us.
Some posts may be on academic issues, some on administration, some on events, and probably some on non-events. If there is something that any (and I do mean any) of you in the University would like highlighted here, send me the details and it will make its way onto the blog so long as it is pertinent.
I’d welcome comments and feedback, and like I say on the About page, everything is welcome though I may edit the comments for grammar and spelling, mainly. (Too many messages that are written in smsese or with scant respect for either punctuation or spelling have made me somewhat allergic to expressions like Kewl, Gr8! Or worse…).
The first post is datelined 15 July, 2011. It’s the first day of the academic session, a good day to start.
Last thing, the blog title. I’ve always felt that UoH has a unique position by virtue of the fact that it is located so centrally in the subcontinent. Quite apart from its being a Central (i.e. rather than State) University. If you have a better alternative, do send in your suggestions.