A year since the demise of Prof Samarveer Singh, former Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, at Delhi University’s (DU) Hindu College, students and professors of the varsity came together to observe a remembrance gathering of the professor and his work last Friday, April 26, 2024.
Samarveer Singh, who was working at Hindu College on an ad-hoc basis for over eight years, was displaced and dismissed from his position last year – despite hoping to have his position regularised and be hired permanently. Days after his displacement, he allegedly took his own life.
His sudden death came across as a shock to his students, colleagues, and family, who have all decried his suicide as an “institutional murder”.
An organiser of the remembrance meeting, on the condition of anonymity, said that their biggest reason for organising this remembrance meeting was so that the larger DU community does not forget his life and struggle.
“There was a state of amnesia across DU, and everyone has accepted the circumstances that compelled Prof Samarveer to die by suicide as the norm. I wanted to remind people that things can be better, and remember the professor through his work, poetry, and songs. As a result, we organised this event, and invited his students, colleagues and other professors in the university to talk about him,” he said.
The organisers hoped that there would be a gathering organised in remembrance of the professor, but were disappointed to realise that no such event had been announced. As a result, on April 25, they decided to do it themselves and called for an online gathering.
In the remembrance meeting, students and colleagues of Singh shared their experiences with and anecdotes of him, his thoughts and aspirations, his struggle as an ad-hoc teaching faculty, and ultimately, his suspension that led to his untimely demise, according to the organisers. They add that the attendees of the meeting also shed light on the condition of ad-hoc faculty at DU, their arbitrary suspensions, and their struggle as a result.
More than a “bright mind”
When the news of Singh’s death broke out, most of his grief-stricken colleagues and students lamented the “loss of a bright mind”, and even compared him to Jean-Paul Sartre.
His students attest to this and remember him as being a passionate thinker and teacher who loved both his job and his subject. In addition, his students also recollect his classes as being interactive and intellectually stimulating.
“Prof Samarveer loved to discuss thoughts and ideas with us and was himself a naturally curious person. He loved learning as much as teaching, and this was reflected in his classes. As undergraduate students, we were seekers of knowledge — and so was Prof Samarveer, despite being a teacher for eight years,” says Krrish Kunal, a second-year student at the Department of Philosophy, Hindu College and a former student of Singh. He adds that Singh’s curiosity and intellectual thirst made him more relatable to his students, as they saw him as a “fellow seeker”.
What made Singh so beloved, however, was how he built connections with his students beyond the ambit of the classroom. Krrish says, “He was passionate about cinema, and used to discuss movies with us regularly. He even showed us some of the short films made by him during his student days at JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University).”
Students also say that Singh was extremely approachable, and was always available to them. “No matter what problem we faced, be it in our academics or personal lives, he was always willing to listen to us and counsel us, no matter what time of the day it was,” says Keshavi Sethi, a third-year student at the Department of Philosophy, Hindu College and another student of Singh.
Further, the professor even used to talk about his dreams and aspirations with his students. “He used to talk about wanting to go to Paris and explore French cafés like Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and other philosophers from the country. He used to talk at great lengths and with passion about philosophy and existentialism,” Keshavi recalls.
Humiliating suspension
However, despite his passion for teaching and intellectual fervour, Singh’s students recollect him being constantly stressed and preoccupied. They say that he was assigned so much administrative work, that he barely had the time to pursue a PhD. “He hadn’t seen his family for a year,” they add.
These additional responsibilities even affected the teaching side of his job — he was supposed to teach a film and art appreciation course (his areas of interest) in January 2023, but could not come to classes because he was busy with administrative work.
“Faculty members of other departments and the administration used to make fun of him behind his back because he had longer hair, and dressed casually. He was also subject to humiliation for not holding a PhD,” Keshavi says, and adds, “But he persisted despite it all because he loved teaching, and was hopeful about being appointed permanently.”
However, in February 2023, Singh was removed from his position on arbitrary grounds during a recruitment drive, as the university chose not to renew his contract. This came as a shock to the professor, who had been teaching at Hindu College for close to eight years and attended interviews for permanent positions in various colleges.
Two months later, in April 2023, Singh was allegedly asked to rejoin DU on an ad-hoc basis — which he accepted, due to his passion for teaching, according to his students. However, this engagement was also subsequently terminated.
Talking about how this ordeal affected the professor, Keshavi says that he felt as if he was deliberately humiliated by the administration. “He knew that he was not dismissed because of any demerits he had, but rather, an unfair hiring process. To add to that, he was asked to teach after his dismissal – just to be removed again,” they say.
To add insult to injury, the replacement faculty hired in place of Singh had no prior experience of teaching and was not from a philosophy background. “Prof Samarveer told us that he would’ve made peace with his termination if he were replaced by a more competent lecturer,” Keshavi says.
On April 26, 2023, Samarveer Singh was found dead in his apartment.
DU’s response – or lack thereof?
Students of Singh say that didn’t receive official news of his death from the Department of Philosophy, Hindu College, or DU – rather, they came to know about it from a social media post of a teacher from another DU College.
On the same day, Hindu College was having its annual fest, Mecca. When a few students of Singh wanted to organise a condolence meeting for their teacher, they were met with pushback from students, who requested them not to “disrupt the fest”.
“It was very sad and infuriating to see the fest went ahead and the principal, faculty, and students acted as if nothing happened. It felt as if Prof Samarveer’s life or death didn’t matter,” says Keshavi.
They add that the students got in touch with Singh’s cousin and roommate, and subsequently, his family. “His sisters told us that Prod Samarveer supported their family financially, and he was the youngest member of the library of his district in Rajasthan. We were also told that not only did he teach himself English, but also encouraged his sisters to study, and hoped that they attended DU,” they reveal.
Further, Singh’s family also urged him to find employment in a private organisation, but he refused — as he believed that doing so would result in his “intellectual death”. “This is how committed and passionate he was about philosophy and teaching,” Keshavi says.
According to Keshavi, the college eventually held a memorial service for Singh in November 2023. However, they say that it was done in a very insensitive manner.
“The faculty who was speaking at the service were romanticising his death and called him a true philosopher. The administration also planned to include a dance performance in the service, with the rationale that Prof Samarveer was passionate about theatre and the performing arts. But these only diluted the seriousness of his demise, and the circumstances that led to it,” Keshavi alleges.
Worst of all, they claim, Singh’s family was not allowed to speak at the remembrance.
Even after a year of Singh’s demise, not a lot of students of DU are aware of it, says Krrish. “The administration is deliberately not addressing it,” he says and adds that it is deliberately trying to sweep the matter under the rug.
Prof Apoorvanand, a professor at the Hindi Department, Faculty of Arts, DU says, “It is a sorry state of affairs at DU, Samarveer’s suicide was ignored by his department, and students of his college,” adding that such apathy is unfortunately an institutional reality at DU.
Several Samarveer Singhs at DU
Singh’s demise sparked protests in DU, with student organisations such as the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) and All India Students’ Federation (AISA), as well as teachers’ groups like the Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) and the Academic for Action and Development Delhi Teachers' Association (AADDTA). Discussions on “mass displacements” of ad-hoc faculty in DU also came to the fore.
Meanwhile, DU continued to displace long-serving ad-hoc faculty across its colleges, particularly at Indraprastha College, Ramjas College and Motilal College, where entire departments were gutted off their faculty.
Further, the dismissal of Prof Laxman Yadav, an ad-hoc Assistant Professor in the Department of Hindi at DU, who is vocally critical of the current Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) government, and Dr Ritu Singh, a former ad-hoc assistant professor at Daulat Ram College who was allegedly subjected to caste discrimination, raised eyebrows about the ad-hoc faculty recruitment process at DU.
Apoorvanand says that scores of teachers go through a similar ordeal as Singh did, because of the ad-hoc teaching system.
“Teaching faculty who are hired on an ad-hoc basis spend anywhere between eight to ten years of their lives at DU, and enjoy no benefits. The administration also makes them perform labour-intensive administrative tasks, which we colloquially term dunki (Indianised word for donkey) work,” he explains. Due to this, they are unable to work on their PhDs or publications, which serve as an enriching experience for any academic, he says.
Moreover, these professors also do not enjoy the security of permanent employment, as they can retain their jobs only upon the renewal of their contracts, Apoorvanand states. He adds, “As we have seen in so many cases, the university can displace them overnight. Or if the administration is satisfied with you, you will be given a permanent position.”
While there is nothing wrong with this policy on paper, he alleges that permanent hiring is marred with sectarian and ideological biases, corruption and favouritism.
“These days, only those ad-hoc faculty members who are not ideologically or politically opposed to the administration, or are close to the administration are given permanent positions. These people do not even have to possess the required qualifications, subject expertise, or any teaching experience,” he explains.
According to a report by Youth ki Awaaz, the Sociology faculty at IP College, which was hired in place of the displaced ad-hoc faculty, was comprised of candidates who did not have a “single degree in sociology” and were “MA-pass candidates” with political connections to the current Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) government.
These appointments come at the cost of qualified, dedicated and competent ad-hoc faculty, who are then left with no employment prospects, says Prof Apoorvanand. “I have had parents of many such ad-hoc teachers removed by DU, who asked me how such a thing could even happen to their children. Some of these faculty members completed their higher education at prestigious institutions, and are excellent at their job,” he adds.
Commenting on the continual displacement of ad-hoc faculty at DU following Singh’s death, Prof Abha Dev Habib, Professor at the Department of Physics, Miranda House says, “The administration did not learn their lesson from Samarveer’s death. There has been no difference in its stance on permanent appointments.”
She adds that the situation of ad-hoc faculty remains as uncertain as ever.
This fear of displacement, along with the anxieties of being seen as ideologically opposing the administration, makes ad-hoc faculty afraid to speak up and thus, comply more with the ruling establishment, says Apoorvanand.
A death knell for education at DU?
Students of Singh and professors of DU claim that Singh’s death is a culmination of all that is going wrong with education at the varsity.
They argue that Singh was pushed to suicide by an unfair system that seeks to replace “bright minds” like him with inferior, more compliant ones and that this makes his death an "institutional murder".
According to them, this system could have a concerning impact on the pedagogy at DU.
“These teachers then go on to teach for 40 years. Imagine the number of batches they would teach throughout their careers. What quality of education would they impart? What is the quality of the class of students they nurture?” Apoorvanand asks.
He argues that this would also sour the relationship between the student and the teacher. “An inferior teacher would resort to blackmail and other assertions of their authority to make their students compliant. Under the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, lecturers have the power to control 40 per cent of the marks through internal assessments, and they can choose to withhold them,” he explains.
Further, students say that Singh’s death also symbolises the cessation of public spaces in the university. “Prof Samarveer represented a safe space for students to interact with their teachers outside the classroom, as he used to take students to have tea with him, and have discussions together on the campus. However, such spaces for students have only been reduced,” says one of the organisers of the online remembrance meeting for the late professor.
“Even the Arts Faculty of DU, which was once a site of protest at DU, is now out-of-bounds for any such gathering. We saw how Dr Ritu Singh’s protest was removed violently from the arts faculty. Unless you are from organisations close to the current government, you seldom get permission or access to spaces to conduct any sort of events,” the organiser explains, stating that this was one of the reasons behind keeping the remembrance meeting online.
“A university is a living organism, and its teachers are its cells,” says Abha Dev, speaking on the importance of ensuring that public universities enable their faculty and students to flourish. She goes on to say, “When a professor is allowed to grow professionally and intellectually, the universities grow. This is how universities like DU and JNU were built, and it is important to remember this.”
