By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net
MIT India Conference 2019 has a lofty theme highlighting “India’s Competitive Edge,” however, events leading to it suggests that it is mired in mismanagement which is ironic not only because it goes against the theme of the conference but also because 14 of the 21 MIT students of Indian origin who are organising this conference are enrolled in MBA programs.
First thing first. MIT India Conference, modelled after more famous Harvard India Conference, got its start in 2011. This year’s Conference prominently featured controversial Indian politician Subramanian Swamy. Swamy is famous for his hateful statements and even more famous for being kicked out of teaching at Harvard Summer School for a hateful op-ed in which he argued for disenfranchising Muslims.
There has been a phone, email, and online petition campaign to get MIT and the Conference organisers to disinvite Swamy but both MIT and the conference organisers have not responded to the community. I have made calls and emailed to MIT and conference organisers including conference adviser Melanie Mala Ghosh, but there was no response to the media, not even an official statement.
However, curiously enough, on Tuesday before the conference their website was updated with a line above the list of speakers that simply read, “The conference speakers represent a variety of perspectives. A speaker’s invitation to participate in the MIT India Conference is not an indication that MIT or the MIT India conference endorse the speaker’s views or opinions.”
Fair enough, but how do you reconcile the homophobic and Islamophobic comments of Subramanian Swamy with the conference code of conduct, which stated, “The MIT India Conference is dedicated to providing a harassment-and-hostile free conference experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), or technology choices.” I must commend the organisers for going a step further and defining that “harassment includes offensive verbal comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion, technology choices, sexual images in public spaces, deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention.”
How does a Muslim feel safe in a conference where the start attraction is a guy who says, “Those who kill cows should be hanged” or that Muslims are “mental retards.” Or how about gay participants of this conference when they read that Swamy thinks that homosexuality is “not normal” and a “genetic flaw.” I wonder what Arundhati Katju, Supreme Court lawyer and a champion of LGBTQ rights feel about these statements.
How do conference organisers themselves not see the contradictions between what they show and what they tell? Curiously enough, the “code of conduct” link on the menu item doesn’t take you anywhere as the brilliantly-worded code is gone, perhaps an acknowledgement that MIT India Conference is not “welcoming and safe for everyone.”
Another update that was done on Tuesday was the message that one of the four co-chair chose to stay anonymous. This wasn’t there before and with simple investigation reveals that it GV Keshav Reddy, scion of the GVK group of companies. GVK group is known for its proximity with the BJP and choosing to go private now when there has been closer scrutiny of the conference maybe an attempt to show close association of BJP to this conference. Another co-chair is Aditi Shankar, daughter of Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
And that’s not it. Looking at the names of the 21 organisers shows that all are Upper Caste Hindus. A conference that claim to be organised in the name of India makes no attempt to include Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, or someone from the Dalit or Adivasi communities. The heavy north-India bias of the organisers also cannot be missed.
The opposition to the conference has been going on for several weeks and over the weeks most of the faculty speakers have dropped out of the conference. So the conference that began with the names of eight MIT faculty speakers now features only three faculty speakers out of which two- Melanie Mala Ghosh and S.P. Kothari are advisors to the conference so in reality there is only one faculty who has chosen to speak at the conference.
Another update, announced on the Facebook on Monday, is that Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis and Union Minister Prakash Javadekar have “regretted their attendance.” Was it that they never confirmed, and the organisers have listed their names without confirmation or that they declined in last few days? A conference run by mostly management students is managing its communication very poorly.
“Professor Raghuram Rajan, Sourav Ganguly, and Dr. Subramanian Swamy would be joining us through video conferencing,” reads a small note added above the list of speakers sometime over the last week. Which means that some of the biggest draws of the conference are not even going to be here on site. Now we have an organising committee consisting of 21 MIT students- 14 MBAs, 5 PhDs, and 2 grad students managing 15 speakers in one conference and doing a an awful job.