NID holds convocation without chief guest Mallika Sarabhai

After putting off the 40th convocation last month, which was to be presided over by noted danseuse Mallika Sarabhai, a known critic of Narendra Modi, the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad is holding the controversial event on Saturday without her.

The institute has not disclosed names of invitees among other details. It remains unclear who will confer the more than 300 students who will be graduating. Sources said that invites have not been sent out to anyone except students, their parents and faculty members. "Preparations have been done just like the last occasion but there is sadness among the students who haven't been informed about the chief guest. We don't know who will be giving them degrees," said a student on the condition of anonymity.

The convocation had originally been planned on February 7 but days before that the students received emails informing them that event was postponed due to "unforeseen circumstance." It had saddened the students and parents who had already booked their travel tickets and stay. Sources said that many parents will not be able to make it on Saturday.

It was speculated that NID was forced to call off the event due to Sarabhai who is known as a critic of then chief minister Narendra Modi, now the prime minister. However, the NID officials remained incommunicado including its director Praveen Nahar, who took over the charge as a full-time director in March last year.

NID describes itself as a "grant-in-aid autonomous institution under the aegis of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Commerce and Industry".

Meanwhile, on Thursday late evening, Sarabhai released her speech prepared for the convocation on Facebook. She posted on her account that four days prior to her keynote address at the NID, "The convocation was unceremoniously cancelled with no reason given. The grapevine and media suggested that the powers that be did not want me to have access to 400 bright minds, as my views on the nation and most things are contrary to the ideologies that run India today." She shared the speech saying "here is the speech I was not allowed to give."

The speech points out how she would have been just the second woman in four decades to have addressed the convocation with Kapila Vatsyayan, an art scholar, being the first one. "We live in troubling times. Over the last few hundred years, humans have come to believe that we are the centre of the Universe and the Universe exists to serve us. This has led to our using nature and all non-human elements of the Universe greedily and exploitative. This system values the biggest as the best. It values brute force over compassion. It values the show of power more than humaneness. It values having and hoarding more than giving and sharing. It is a system that is patriarchal and muscular."

A point she has underlined in the speech reads, "India’s uniqueness in the world lies in one thing and one alone. Our culture. Our languages, our diversity, our crafts, foods, habitats, arts, beliefs and their manifestations. In all their contrariness, contradictions and chaos. If we believe that our splendour lies in bigger, faster, taller, we will always be also-rans, just another nation trying to catch up."