After history, the arts. The latest victim in the drive to saffronise various institutions is the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) which has witnessed the unusual spectacle of a Union Minister appointing himself to a committee for running the  institution. Culture Minister Ananth Kumar apparently does not believe in half-measures. Not only did he sack the board of trustees and nominate his appointee as member secretary along with a group of new trustees, he must have also considered it safer to find a place for himself in the seven-member executive committee charged with running the Centre ...

Mr. Kumar has argued that the earlier board had to go because most of its members were politicians. So, he tried to make 'amends' by appointing several artistes to the new board. But that must have been part of a window-dressing exercise. For when it came to the executive committee, it turned out that it was nearly filled with names known to be close to the ruling party. That is where the real purpose of the takeover becomes clear. It also knocks the bottom out of the Minister's earlier justification for sacking the board.

Apparently, culture is too important a subject for those in power to be left just to persons engaged in cultural pursuits. But, unlike the other cultural institutions in the government sector, the IGNCA's charter had been so designed as to allow it the maximum immunity from official control and interference. That has now received a body blow ... Mr. Kumar ... seems to have highly original ideas about how an institution of this nature must be run. Judging from the initial reports, the new dispensation seems to favour a shift in the thrust ... from basic research

to cultural (saffron?) propagation and conducting familiarisation courses ... This would amount to ... a trivialisation of the IGNCA's original mandate.