A glimpse into the classroom space of suspended SAU professor Srinivas Burra: Reflections on the irreplaceable loss of a dedicated educator

Kathir Tharsini Parameswaran | 23 July 2023

On 16 June 2023, the South Asian University (SAU), an intergovernmental institution established by the SAARC nations, suspended four faculty members for allegedly inciting student protests. The SAU Students were protesting against a decrease in their monthly stipend last year and asking for fair representation in sexual harassment and gender sensitisation committees. The four suspended faculty members - Irfanullah Farooqui, Ravi Kumar, Snehashish Bhattacharya and Srinivas Burra - had raised their concerns with the SAU administration as it allowed Delhi police to enter the SAU campus to curtail student protests. They questioned disciplinary actions against the protesting students, which, according to them, were not in accordance with the due procedure and urged the SAU administration to resolve students' concerns constructively.

Among the suspended faculty members, Associate Professor Srinivas Burra of the Faculty of Legal Studies (FLS) was my teacher while I was an LLM student at SAU. In the aftermath of the administrative actions against Srinivas Burra and his colleagues, both former and current students have come out in solidarity issuing collective statements and letters condemning the actions of the SAU administration. More recently, more than 500 global academics signed a letter in support of the suspended faculty members. As a former student, it isn’t a matter of surprise to me that Srinivas Burra stood for the concerns of protesting students even in the face of hostile administrative actions. To speak truth to power, as a form of praxis, was deeply embedded in how he conducted himself as a teacher.

Srinivas Burra always took note of plural identities, experiences and views in the classroom and is a thoughtful teacher and a graceful human being. This is a brief reflection based on my interactions with him both within and outside the classroom.

At SAU, the students from eight SAARC countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) share a space where contentious issues rooted in shared histories and current socio-political realities are discussed. Each student brings different perspectives informed by national, geo-political, socio-cultural, economic, gender, racial and other identities, which Srinivas Burra was always cognisant of. In his classes, “academic knowledge” was not just channelised through study materials and PowerPoint presentations. Rather his classes were a site of critical inquiry and a place to nurture intellectual curiosity. Here, education was “a practice of freedom” where we could, to borrow from Paulo Freire, “deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world”.

Once, during a classroom discussion, a student referred to the Sentinelese tribe of the Andaman and Nicobar islands as uncivil. Two other students objected by pointing out how the British colonised half of the world, including most of South Asia, by calling them uncivilised and inhumane. In moderating the conversation, Srinivas Burra calmly explained the problems of that student’s account of the Sentinelese tribe and used that opportunity to discuss and subtly exemplify our responsibilities as lawyers, academics and individuals. For Srinivas Burra, disagreement with an idea did not mean outright and forceful replacement of that idea with another. Instead, he stayed with that issue to show us what ideas entail – their world-making and unmaking potential. He subtly exemplified his position that learning “is an interactive process between what one already knows and what one is learning to know” rather than presuming that everyone has (or should have) equal access to certain kinds of knowledge, histories, techniques, idioms and vocabularies. His politics lay behind the description and contextualisation of complex issues with humaneness. He is among those rare educators who understand the need to inculcate critical thinking - not through monologues and ‘truth-telling’ but through dialogue, discourse and disagreements. For instance, in relation to a classroom discussion on sovereign states, I found him engaging with differing views on the role of states. He did not outrightly dismiss any one way of looking at the state and encouraged us to see how our ideas of the state could stand in conflict with the aspirations of marginalised people. From the beneficiaries of welfare programmes to those living under military occupation, people’s perspectives are shaped by the part of the state structure that they experience first-hand, even though any particular function of the state cannot be studied in isolation from its other functions. Therefore, in Srinivas Burra’s classroom, each experience and viewpoint was valued as much as the other. Being his student was a pivotal experience for me, as such classroom conversations broadened my understanding and expanded my worldview.

As Paulo Freire argues in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “[t]rue dialogue cannot exist unless the partners engage in love, humility, faith, trust, hope, and critical thinking … without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there is no education”. In a university space with persisting systemic inequalities based on gender, class, caste, religion and other forms of discrimination, there is often a need to find common ground to build solidarity and act in accordance with collective interest. This requires us to possess empathy and work towards reconciling our many differences. Therefore, it becomes imperative that the teacher lends an ear to students from all ideological hues and engages with them instead of being dismissive. While teaching feminist approaches to international law, he posed the question, “do you think South Asian University is a gendered space?” While most female students agreed, few male students thought there is gender parity today as the contemporary scenario is very different from earlier years. While the perception that there is gender parity may leave most female students enraged, there is a need for careful dissection of how some men conclude that women are no more treated as second-class citizens. It is here that dialogue with humility becomes necessary to induce critical thinking. Srinivas Burra always functioned from a place of radical hope that our dialogue will be reflected upon, if not today, then tomorrow. I always found him guiding us to optimism - hoping for a better future - and he treated classroom discussions as part of the process through which a radical change could be brought. He accommodated uncomfortable views and critically engaged with them. Thus, one of the most radical features of his classroom was the consideration of students as equal stakeholders in the social production of knowledge.

In contemporary South Asia, it is typical for the state and other institutions, such as universities, to crush dissent and dialogue and manufacture versions of histories and accounts that suit their agenda. Public universities have become one of the main targets of this authoritarian turn, and teachers and students are the victims. For a system that wants to commercialise education, teachers such as Srinivas Burra, who stand up to the hegemonic powers while defending critical thought, dissent and public education, are an aberration. Hence, they are targeted, silenced and compelled to join the bandwagon of those standing with power. In these difficult times, fighting for academic freedom is an act of rebellion. Thus, if anything, I (and perhaps many others) will remember Srinivas Burra and his colleagues for their act of courage in the face of brute power.

In a public university where students from different socio-economic and educational backgrounds often find it challenging to comprehend jargon-filled language, complex ideas need to be communicated through simple formulations. One of the main features of Srinivas Burra’s classroom was that his attention was directed at the most vulnerable students, and he always made an effort to reach out to them. He avoided verbosity and encouraged students to express themselves in the language as simply as possible. Born in a village in Telangana into a Toddy tappers’ community, Srinivas Burra comes from an underprivileged background and has benefitted from public education at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is acutely aware of the need for public education for upward social mobility. He has always been supportive and available for students in crisis, be it economic, socio-cultural or otherwise. To draw an example, a female classmate from Afghanistan who belongs to a persecuted Community had fled to a neighbouring country under dire circumstances, because of which she could not attend her exams and was disqualified from the LLM program at SAU. In his administrative capacity, Srinivas Burra took the matter before the Board of Studies. While “zero semester” is generally granted only to students with medical issues, he drew from the provision referring to “under exceptional circumstances” in the SAU bye-laws to grant her “zero semester”. The Board of Studies agreed, despite which the SAU administration declined to consider her case due to a lack of proof of her fleeing from Afghanistan which was impossible for a refugee. Over the last few months, this is only one of several instances when the SAU administration has acted ruthlessly, showing no respect or emotions towards students in precarious conditions. In another incident, my classmate developed a condition that caused the thinning of heart valves due to rheumatic fever and was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit. Srinivas Burra was at the hospital whenever he could be available. Upon being shifted to the General ward, my classmate suffered a brain stroke, urgently requiring a thrombectomy procedure. Without a second thought, Srinivas Burra paid the bills (a few lakh rupees in total) for conducting the procedure (the money was crowdfunded later).

Srinivas Burra’s contribution to international law scholarship, particularly the third world approaches to international law (TWAIL), is widely recognised. Among others, his writings on caste and international law, as well as teaching critical international law, is a testament to his insightful attentiveness to the experiences rooted in the third world and thinking with those who remain at the margins of the discourse, both within mainstream and critical international law scholarship. In a brilliant piece offering a caste critique of TWAILers, he writes: “while emphasizing the dominance of European and North American voices and the scholarship, certain third world voices and issues are pushed into oblivion. Non recognition of these third world voices and issues leads to the suspicion of emancipatory potential of the TWAIL scholarship despite its well-intentioned challenge to the European and North American voices.” In making a caste critique, he called on TWAILers to be self-critical and chart an alternative international law that does not reproduce similar forms of hegemony. He used insights like these in his lectures to draw attention to third world experiences and realities. International law, critical or otherwise, makes much more sense when we are able to locate ourselves within it. His lectures were revelatory in this regard. Those who have studied at SAU would be acutely aware that by suspending Srinivas Burra, the SAU administration has attacked the heart of critical thinking within the Legal Studies Department at SAU.

Not all academic battles are fought in academic journals and books. Academics and students, especially in third world countries like South Asia, are under persistent attack. Perhaps, it may be easy for many in the first world to engage in radical theories in their classroom as course requirements. However, for many in South Asia, it is an act for which they are threatened, jailed and often shamed. This repressive attitude has seeped into the conduct and practice of public university administrators, and the suspension of professors at SAU is reflective of the contemporary political reality in South Asia.

Due to privatisation and neo-liberalisation, higher education is increasingly becoming inaccessible to the marginalised, and this current system is only equipped to produce compliant workers who wouldn’t question the state of affairs, let alone resist it. Contrary to this, Srinivas Burra’s classroom was a space that provided us with radical hope and new ways of imagining the world. Unfortunately, he is paying the price for his optimism and belief in the possibility of radical change.

This article is written by Kathir Tharsini Parameswaran, An Alumna from the batch of 2023, Master of legal studies from South Asian University

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