The cabin at MSU head office was gutted after Srilamanthula Chandramohan set it on fire. (Express Photo: Bhupendra Rana)
On Friday, when Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU) of Vadodara received three awards from the government of Gujarat at the Education fair, a controversy from the past returned to haunt the university. Srilamanthula Chandramohan, a former Masters Student of the Faculty of Fine Arts, set afire a cabin at the head office of the MSU on Friday. Chandramohan, who arrived on campus armed with petrol and a toy gun around 5 pm, told the Sayajigunj police he was “frustrated” about not having received his Masters degree for the last 11 years. He has been booked for arson.
Around 5 pm on Friday, Chandramohan arrived at the MSU head office. Within minutes, flames erupted from the windows of the ground floor. As chaos ensued, security guards stationed within the campus responded to the alarm raised by the staff—mostly clerical and accounting staff— who tried to save important files and their own lives. The guards caught hold of Chandramohan, who seemed more than willing to be detained. By the time the fire tenders rushed to the spot to douse the flames, most of the University’s ground floor had been completed gutted. including the cabins of the Vice Chancellor, Manager and the Accountancy department. According to University officials, several computers, files and even cash in the drawers of the accounts department has been reduced to ashes.
The Sayajigunj police, which rushed to the spot, arrested Chandramohan, who claimed that his act was a result of his frustration about not having received his Masters degree since the last 11 years. An official of the Sayajigunj police aid, “He has told us that he passed the Masters course in 2007 but the University has not handed over his certificate. He claims that his career has been affected as he does not have a Masters certificate. He has claimed that he made over 25 petitions to the University office in the last 11 years to hand over his certificate, but it was not given to him. Today, as he approached the head office, he had decided to take an extreme step. We are trying to ascertain if he had planned any harm to self.”
Chandramohan was at the centre of a controversy in 2007, while he was pursuing his Master of Fine Arts degree in Graphics at MSU. At the time of the dispute, he was a final-year postgraduate student and faced the wrath of religious groups for “objectionable paintings” of Jesus Christ and Goddess Durga. While various Christian organisations in Vadodara took out a protest rally to voice their concern against Chandramohan’s art work that depicted Jesus on the holy cross in nude and a toilet commode placed under the cross.
Irate Hindu organisations, led by former VHP leader Niraj Jain, also protested against the public exhibition which was part of the annual exam. Hindu groups had filed a complaint against Chandramohan’s large painting that showed a woman in nude with a baby attempting to come out of the vagina. The painting depicted the woman trying to attack the baby with a Trishul and was signed off as “Durga Maate”. While Chandramohan had tried to explain his perspective about his artwork, religious groups were in no mood to relent. Chandramohan was arrested and later released on May 14, 2007.
Despite the 2007 controversy, Chandramohan has been recognised for his art work. A 2004 Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) in Hyderabad, Chandramohan has received numerous important national and international awards for his work, including the 49th Lalit Kala Akademi National Exhibition award in 2006, for his work, Remorse I. When contacted, MSU Registrar Neerja Jaiswal said that the damage was yet to be ascertained. Jaiswal also said that her office was checking about Chandramohan’s complaint of not having received his degree certificate for 11 years as the university “never holds back degrees for such a long period”.