CHRISTOPHER HURST, a long-time friend and trading partner of OUP India, comments on an internal conflict which threatens to disrupt that greatly respected institution and injure its reputation.
A DISTRESSING conflict is currently being played out in a place where one might naively expect sweetness and light to reign: the justly prestigious Academic Division of Oxford University Press (OUP) in New Delhi. It has not so far been publicised except by word of mouth, and some of the protagonists may argue that publicity will make it more difficult to resolve. But for other protagonists, the lack of publicity has increased their feeling of helplessness in the face of a relentlessly advancing juggernaut. What has happened is that the Academic Division's Senior Commissioning Editor, Anuradha Roy, has been asked to leave the Press no later than April 30th on somewhat ill-formulated grounds arising from her marriage to the Director of Academic Publishing, Rukun Advani.
Anuradha, now aged 32, joined OUP in 1994 and left to join the British Council after six months because the vacancy in the Academic Division which she sought was not available. She returned to OUP in April 1995 when a vacancy came up, and has been there ever since. These details are important because during her first stint at the Press she and Rukun Advani became life-partners. In September 1997 they married. Rukun, the father of a teenage daughter, had been divorced long before they met.
Anuradha initially "reported to" Angela Blackburn, then in charge of the Academic Division, but after Ms. Blackburn's departure at the end of 1995 she reported to Rukun. This was accepted by OUP, but when they married, the view was that it would be more appropriate if she reported direct to the managing director, Manzar Khan, to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest.
OUP India, alone among expatriate publishing houses, has no Indian shareholding. It is an integral part of the Press based in Oxford, England, which in turn is an integral part of Oxford University. Although for more than a generation it has been locally run by Indians and not by expatriates, it comes under the ultimate control of people sitting in Oxford: the chief executive - since 1998, Henry Reece - and the Delegates, chaired by Sir Keith Thomas, head of an Oxford college.
A senior executive in Oxford has day-to-day responsibility for liaison with the Press's overseas branches. Since 1999 it has been Susan Froud, former director of the Canadian branch, and it is to her that Manzar Khan reports. Previously it was Peter Mothersole, who at the time of Rukun and Anuradha's marriage, cited as a model for them the case of Ivon Asquith, managing director of the Academic Division in Oxford (and hence Rukun's counterpart on a larger stage), and his partner Kate Jury. The Oxford couple are not married, but have children. This situation has a bearing on the drama in New Delhi because the professional relationship between Ivon and Kate has not been called into question.
Rukun Advani, aged 44, is the son of Ram Advani, the nationally known bookseller in Lucknow, and joined OUP in 1982 after taking a Ph.D in Cambridge on E. M. Forster as an essayist. Rukun, in his persona, is every inch a liberal intellectual, but his record as an editor testifies also to businesslike efficiency. In the words of perhaps the most renowned of living Indian historians, he "has built up easily the best selection of academic books which have given the Indian OUP a reputation for intellectual and scholarly eminence... which it did not have earlier when its major effort went in publishing text books and standard works". Of Anuradha Roy, a senior British academic author who has been editing a book for publication by OUP India wrote recently that she had "been impressed by the efficiency and professional skill with which the whole process has been handled by the Senior Commissioning Editor [i.e. Anuradha]." This academic writes in the next sentence that she was "horrified to learn that she is being required to resign, and ashamed to learn of the reason - her marriage to the Academic Publishing Director".
Over this last element - the precise reason for Anuradha's dismissal - there is dispute. According to Manzar Khan, her relationship to Rukun Advani "is causing conflict and unhappiness within the academic division"; the conflict is "a long-standing problem and is getting worse". The division consists of some 20 people - who, according to Rukun and Anuradha, have expressed no such worries directly to them. One appreciates that this might have been difficult, but what has supervened is many times more difficult.
Manzar is in an unenviable dilemma. First, over whether these allegations are true or not, either the beleaguered couple are lying or they would appear to have false friends who, for whatever reason, wish to undermine their position. Second, there is the source of the ordinance requiring Anuradha's resignation. Manzar, who not surprisingly feels beleaguered himself, protests that the decision is his alone. Yet he is quoted by Rukun as having said that it came from Susan Froud in Oxford, adding: "In the end I will have to go along with it, so it will seem to be my decision, but in fact it came from Oxford."
Anuradha, in being given notice to leave by the end of April, has been told that she can lodge a final appeal with Henry Reece, chief executive in Oxford. This of course establishes Oxford's vital role in the affair. So we may soon have Reece saying he must support Manzar, and Manzar saying he is only carrying out Oxford's diktat - a double exercise in hand-washing.
After the evidence, the summing-up.
1. If Anuradha is forced out, Rukun will do what any decent man would feel compelled to do in similar circumstances and resign as well. Manzar Khan appears not to understand this. Both Rukun and Anuradha question why, since it is the relationship between them that is causing such problems, it was not he who was asked to go - much sooner. They can be excused for thinking that Anuradha was perceived as the softer target.
2. If Rukun leaves as well as Anuradha, the loss to OUP will be severe, and much of the work of building up the Academic Division to its present excellence, which Ravi Dayal began in the 1970s, may be undone. Sixty-two of its academic authors - a staggering roll of honour - have written a letter to Manzar saying that if the dismissal is not withdrawn, they will "have no option but to reconsider seriously" their association with OUP.
3. If either or both leave, OUP will be criticised for heavy-handedness and inhumanity. Some argue that the employment practice invoked is common to many organisations, but to apply it to a creative environment could result in the baby being thrown out with the bathwater, as seems likely to happen here. OUP will also be unable to escape the imputation of something closely akin to racial discrimination in that what is permitted in Oxford (Ivon Asquith and Kate Jury) is apparently not permitted to the Press's Indian servants. It will also suffer the imputation of imperialistic behaviour. OUP India's unique status in being wholly owned by foreigners is being used in a way that harks back to before 1947.
4. I was taught when very young by my parents "never to come between husband and wife". Old-fashioned perhaps, but one marvels at the corporate attitude which is prepared to do just this, even for the apparent greater good of the organisation. And this when same-sex life partnerships and blood relationships in the same office are tolerated.
5. Anuradha and Rukun both say that they want to stay on at the Press if Anuradha's dismissal is withdrawn, and "let bygones be bygones" though some others will have to do the same if harmony is to be maintained in future. But if the dismissal is not withdrawn, their talents, which would have continued to be used for the Press's advantage, will be used instead, through no wish of theirs, in competition with it. The Press cannot welcome such a prospect, but equally it cannot complain should it happen.
6. Each side has accused the other of arrogance and intransigence, but this is typical when letters begin to fly to and fro between members of the same organisation and they are no longer capable of speaking to each other without fresh misunderstandings arising. E. M. Forster called it "anger and telegrams" - so very British.
To quote Forster again, "Only connect". It cannot be beyond the ability of people of goodwill, which all the protagonists within the Delhi office undoubtedly are, to get out of the present predicament by discussion, broad consultation (involving impartial outsiders who are friends of both sides), and compromise. Let them begin before any more damage is done to the Press and hurt to the parties - and let them go on until they can agree.