An almighty row unprecedented in the history of Bangalore aka Bengaluru, which prides itself for the high-quality English medium K-12 education it provides — despite the best efforts of local Kannada language chauvinists — in the garden city’s estimated 3,000 private schools, is threatening the reputation of two of its most famous secondaries. In a statement made to the Times of India on March 25, Col. (Retd.) John Ellis and Princess Franklyn, the principals of Bishop Cotton Boys (estb.1865) and Bishop Cotton Girls (1911), announced their intention to simultaneously resign their offices.
Their grievance? The common board of management of the two schools chaired by the Rt. Rev. S. Vasantha Kumar, moderator (archbishop) of the (Anglican) Church of South India (CSI), Bangalore has stripped them of all powers of administration and management, and vested them in the board. According to the aggrieved principals who have been serving the schools for almost a decade each, under the new rules drawn up by the board packed by the Rt. Rev. Vasantha Kumar, the principals have been denuded of all powers relating to admissions and even managing their faculties.
The declared intent of Ellis and Franklyn to resign their offices as principals of the Bishop Cotton schools has precipitated a major storm in the garden city, because over the past 150 years these institutions have built themselves excellent reputations as islands of academic and extra-curricular education. Despite both the schools having almost quintupled their enrolments, increasing their teacher-pupil ratios three times, they rank high in middle class esteem. In the EducationWorld-C fore Survey of Schools 2009, BCS Boys was ranked first among Bangalore’s day schools, second in south India, and sixth nationwide. And BCS Girls third, fifth and 14th respectively.
According to alumni associations and csi insiders, the ugly row between the principals and the board is centred around powers of admission and faculty recruitment. The general consensus is that the Rt. Rev, who was promoted over the heads of several seniors to the bishopric of Bangalore in 2001 and was elected moderator (archbishop) of CSI under controversial circumstances in January, is the villain of the morality play being enacted in Bangalore’s Bishop Cotton schools. Knowledgeable sources within the schools’ alumni associations are unanimous that Bishop Vasantha Kumar has transformed into a power hungry megalomaniac, intent upon concentrating all powers relating to management of the 2,000 schools administered by CSI, in his hands. Moreover it’s common knowledge that the bishop maintains a lifestyle which is lavish by all standards and staged a conspicuously extravagant wedding of his son last year. And with the annual scramble for admission into the Bishop Cotton schools intensifying with every passing year, control of admissions is a high-potential privilege. As is faculty recruitment and control of stores and supplies.
Meanwhile with the differences between Bishop Vasantha Kumar and the no-nonsense Col. Ellis now in the public domain, a wave of indignation about the unseemly terrestrial ambitions of the bishop is gathering momentum within the garden city’s bourgeoisie. In particular the powerful Old Cottonians Association (i.e. alumni) is all set to file a writ petition in the Karnataka high court praying for rationalisation of the powers of the board of management and its reconstitution. The bugles have sounded for a battle royale for control of Bangalore’s most respected K-12 day schools.
New fratricidal war
Somewhat like the wars of the roses which convulsed 15th century England over a period of 30 years, so the fratricidal wars of The Hindu (estb.1878) — the highly respected, indeed venerated, top-selling daily of Chennai (aka Madras) and peninsular India (which it covers with 11 editions and an aggregate daily circulation of 1.45 million copies) — break out every few years. And the main protagonist in the wars of The Hindu for the past three decades has been N.Ram, the doughty chairman of Kasturi & Sons Ltd — the holding company of The Hindu group of publications which also publishes The Hindu Business Line and the weekly Frontline. A quintessential cadillac communist cast in the Brezhnev mould, Ram is also editor-in-chief of all publications of the group, in which the top administrative and editorial positions are manned North Korea-style by brothers, sisters and nephews.
Now Ram has once again donned battle gear to fight an ill-advised war on two fronts — against the New Delhi/Mumbai-based Indian Express (separate and distinct from the Madurai-based New Indian Express) because of a report in the Express outing the news that in a boardroom coup, Ram has divested his younger brother N. Murali of many powers as managing director, for his temerity to press a resolution for retirement of all board members from executive positions when they attain age 65, which not coincidentally, Ram will do next month (May) — and inter se.
According to the report, Ram’s argument is that neither the memorandum nor articles of association of Kasturi & Sons stipulate a retirement age for executive directors, editor-in-chief or editors, and for this act of lese majeste, Murali has effectively been replaced by his nephew K. Balaji. For disclosing these and other family secrets — such as appointment of his nephew Narayan Lakshman and daughter Vidya Ram as Washington and European correspondents of The Hindu at vast salaries unprecedented by Kasturi & Sons standards — to the public, Ram has filed a criminal defamation suit against the Indian Express, while declaring a new war for the control of Kasturi & Sons, whose outcome is uncertain.
Nor is this the first fratricidal war that the mercurial Ram has waged within the well-furbished complex of The Hindu. In 1991 following another spat in the family, Ram went into voluntary exile and added Business Line and Frontline to the Kasturi & Sons stable before a rapproch-ement was negotiated, and he was recalled to take charge as editor-in-chief of all group publications in 2003. (Disclosure: following this he outrightly rejected a collaboration offer from EducationWorld). Now almost a decade later, he seems determined to hang in there as editor, fearing that his heir-apparent and conservative brother N. Ravi, is likely to overturn The Hindu’s left wing, pro-Beijing editorial bias which recently endorsed Chinese criticism of the Dalai Lama.
Preservation of ideological purity. That’s what the latest fratricidal war in The Hindu is all about.