On the death of dear Prof Dharam Vir and Prof GS Bhalla, I share with friends a paragraph from my article in a forthcoming edited book on human rights which acknowleges the key role of Prof Vir and Prof GS Bhalla at a critical moment in my political activist life during the student days :When I came back to the university at midnight with visible signs of torture on my arms; my friend Bhagwan Josh, my professors Dr G.S. Bhalla and Sheila Bhalla, and the Dean of Student Welfare, Professor Gurdev Singh Goshal were extremely disturbed to see me in that state. Professor Goshal later told me that he had to take sleeping pills that night. I must mention in this context the name of two university academics – Professor Dharam Vir and Professor R.P. Bambah. Professor Vir of the Department of Chemical Engineering in the university was hugely respected in the teaching community for his commitment to building the organisational strength of the teaching community, and Professor R.P. Bambah, a distinguished mathematician, was then the Dean of University Instructions, a post next to that of Vice-Chancellor. Both these academicians, in their own ways, stood up against the establishment in defence of my rights as a student of the university. Because of the crucial role all these individuals played at that time in my life, I have always felt a special bond with each one of them. Professor Bambah later on became the Vice-Chancellor of the university. Prof Vir and Prof Bhalla were life long friends. They both died one after the other recently (October 2013) when the last lines of this paper were being written. I will forever remember with gratitude and love the memory of their interventions to protect me at a moment of high risk to my life.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 21:42:49 +0000
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