The Idea of a University: Possibilities and Contestations 9780367542887, 9781032043395, 9781003132035

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of contributors
Preface
Dedication
Introduction
A glance at the chapters in the volume
References
Chapter 1: Some thoughts on university education
References
Chapter 2: On the political economy of educational “reforms”
I Education under the dirigiste regime
II The neoliberal state and education
III The commoditization of education
Notes
References
Chapter 3: Beyond instrumentality: Restoring the spirit of higher education
I Trajectory of a vision
II Fragments, hierarchies and beyond
III Teaching and research: towards a symmetry
IV Praxis of learning
V The crisis and myth of marketization
VI Modes of creative intervention
Restructuring the curriculum
Choosing motivated students
In search of creative teachers
VII Merit as a quality of being
Notes
References
Chapter 4: The idea of a university and its leader: A Gadamerian perspective
Notes
Chapter 5: The challenges that a university confronts in India
Three challenges
Note
References
Chapter 6: UGC and JNU: A tale of exceptions told in two acts
“Inspired by love and guided by knowledge”: parliament imagines a new kind of university
The UGC Act debates and what they taught parliamentarians
UGC in action
Not JNU exceptionalism but an exception
Notes
References
Chapter 7: Higher education and the social sciences in a “smart India”
The global, the cultural national and the neoliberal vision
The global marketplace, communication, and the managerial discourse
The social sciences, public good and democracy
Indian social science, sociology and the spirit of critique
Notes
References
Chapter 8: The idea of university in a princely state: Reflections on the century-old Osmania University, Hyderabad 1
Osmania University – the idea
Expansion of the university
Post-Independence phase
Regional populism
Challenge of privatization
Post-Telangana state formation
Notes
References
Chapter 9: Spaces of contested nationalism
Nation and its principles
Universities as a concept
Implant of the Western university system
Epilogue
Notes
Chapter 10: Universities as gendered institutions
Gender constructs in Gauhati University
Gender in Manipur University
Gender and class discriminations in Manipur University
Bibliography
Chapter 11: The social contract of a public university: Equality, social justice and democracy
Curator of social justice
Education as a public good
Democratization of public universities and knowledge
Public university and critical pedagogy
Demeaning of the social contract
The pervasive state intervention
Destruction of critical thinking
Converting to a banking model of education
Depriving institutional excellence and wellbeing
Neoliberal rationality on public university
Reversing the public good
Marketization and economizing disciplines
Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

The Idea of a University

This volume engages with the idea of a university, the importance of intellectual inquiry and research, and the articulation of diverse political views and dissent. It discusses the prominent ideas and debates around universities and their nature and contributions, within the historical and social context of India. The chapters reflect on the importance of critical thinking and the rigorous research process, the engagement of students with socio-political discourse, and academic freedom. They also examine issues around the instrumentalisation of knowledge production, commodification of education, the clash between political forces and universities, intellectual freedom in research and teaching, inclusivity and accessibility of higher education, as well as the autonomy and identity of universities. With insightful contributions from prominent scholars and thinkers in India, this volume will be of interest to academics and students of sociology, political science, education, public policy and governance, philosophy of education and South Asian studies. It will also be useful for readers interested in the debates on universities and their relationship with politics and society. D. V. Kumar is Professor at the Department of Sociology, School of Social Sciences, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong.

The Idea of a University Possibilities and Contestations

Edited by D. V. Kumar

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter, D. V. Kumar; individual chapters, the contributors The right of D. V. Kumar to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-54288-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-04339-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-13203-5 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by SPi Global, India

Contents

List of contributors vii Preface viii Introduction

1

1 Some thoughts on university education

7

ROMILA THAPAR

2 On the political economy of educational “reforms”

19

PRABHAT PATNAIK

3 Beyond instrumentality: Restoring the spirit of higher education

28

AVIJIT PATHAK

4 The idea of a university and its leader: A Gadamerian perspective

66

BINOD KUMAR AGARWALA

5 The challenges that a university confronts in India

86

D. V. KUMAR

6 UGC and JNU: A tale of exceptions told in two acts

95

AYESHA KIDWAI

7 Higher education and the social sciences in a “smart India”

104

MAITRAYEE CHAUDHURI

8 The idea of university in a princely state: Reflections on the century-old Osmania University, Hyderabad K. SRINIVASULU

127

vi  Contents 9 Spaces of contested nationalism

140

SAJAL NAG

10 Universities as gendered institutions

158

VIJAYLAKSHMI BRARA

11 The social contract of a public university: Equality, social justice and democracy

169

V. BIJUKUMAR

Index 185

Contributors

Binod Kumar Agarwala was formerly with the Department of Philosophy, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong. V. Bijukumar is Associate Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Vijaylakshmi Brara is Associate Professor at the Centre for Manipur Studies, Manipur University, Imphal, Manipur. Maitrayee Chaudhuri is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Ayesha Kidwai is Professor at the Centre of Linguistics, School of Languages, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. D. V. Kumar is Professor at the Department of Sociology, School of Social Sciences, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong. Sajal Nag is Professor at the Department of History, Assam University, Silchar, Assam. Avijit Pathak is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Prabhat Patnaik is Professor Emeritus at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. K. Srinivasulu was Professor at the Department of Political Science, Osmania University, Hyderabad. Romila Thapar is Professor Emeritus at the Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Preface

The present volume is a collection of essays which seek to interrogate the very idea of a university. Universities are spaces where contending viewpoints should be advanced and allowed to contest with one another. Also, they are spaces where dissenting voices should be fearlessly articulated. If universities are to merely conform to the existing dominant paradigms and viewpoints prevalent in society and not challenge them, they lose legitimacy. A university where critical thinking and diverse voices and perspectives are not nurtured or encouraged cannot be called a university. Universities are the spaces where critical imagination is promoted and where education is not turned into a mere commodity to be bought and sold on the market like any other commodity. It therefore becomes important that the growing commoditization and instrumentalization of education is critiqued. Universities as the premier institutions of learning and research are also expected to reflect on and critique society and its structures and institutions, so that corrective steps can be initiated. Universities, in this regard, have an enormously important role to play in modern society. It was with the purpose of critically exploring ideas mentioned above that I requested some eminent scholars to reflect on these and contribute essays to the present volume. I am very grateful to them for acceding to my request for essays, though, I must admit, that I do not necessarily agree to some of the formulations in some essays. Some of the essays in this volume have already appeared in journals and/or as chapters in books. I am grateful to the authors and editors and publishers for having granted me permission to reproduce them here in the present volume. I wish to thank David Davidar (Aleph Publishing House) for giving permission to reproduce Romila Thapar’s essay on ‘Some Thoughts on University Education’ (which is an extract from Indian Cultures as Heritage: Contemporary Pasts). Prabhat Patnaik’s essay ‘On the Political Economy of Educational “Reforms”’ was earlier published in Social Scientist. Ayesha Kidwai’s piece on ‘UGC and JNU – A Tale of Exceptions Told in Two Acts’ earlier appeared in Economic and Political Weekly; I am extremely thankful to EPW. Avijit Pathak’s essay on ‘Beyond Instrumentality: Restoring the Spirit of Higher Education’ appeared as a chapter in the book Education and Moral Quest (Aakar Books).

Preface  ix I am extremely thankful to my contributors who readily agreed to write for this volume when I requested it of them. I am thankful to research scholars Sarita Chetri, Manabendra Sarma and Corrine War for rendering their valuable help whenever I requested it. I am deeply grateful to Antara, Shloka Chauhan, and Saritha Srinivasan from Routledge for patiently responding to my innumerable queries and doubts during the publication process of this volume. I wish to record my deep sense of appreciation for my children Lahari and Pranay who keep me constantly engaged by asking creative and meaningful questions about our polity, culture and society in general, though I know I am not always able to give satisfactory answers. I wish to thank my son-in-law Satish who came to my rescue when I had a problem resolving some technical issues with the computer.

Dedicated to all those who wish to see a University as a site of possibilities and contestations

Introduction

When one speaks in terms of an idea of a university, it is quite possible that one could be mistaken for essentialising the role of a university as if the university is meant to be doing only one thing. To pre‑empt that possibility, it needs to be made clear that we are using the ‘idea’ of a university in the sense of an ‘ideal’, what a university is expected to be doing to justify itself. As Newman argued, a university is the place where a certain type of valu‑ able activity is supposed to be happening (1996). It is the place where the creative and critical exploration of ideas is expected to take place, where truth is sought and where imagination is deployed to engage with issues that confront the society (which can be taken as a valuable activity). At a fundamental level, the essential duty of a university is to search for the ‘truth’, however unpalatable it may be. If a university is simply busy trying to achieve objectives set by others, it would necessarily lose sight of what is supposed to look for, i.e. truth. For example, as Prabhat Patnaik argued (2017), if universities are to simply promote ‘development’ or ‘nationalism’ the way they are conceptualised or understood by the dominant and the powerful, then they are not doing their job seriously. One of the most fundamental things a university is supposed to promote is critical imagination, an ability to raise questions however unpalatable they may be to the powerful and hegemonic sections of society. This would involve resisting the ‘banking concept of education’ (Freire 1970). What this means is that a university is not like a bank where people simply go and deposit money and the banks uncritically and unreflexively accept it. A university is the place where every idea or perspective is questioned, inter‑ rogated and accepted only when it stands the test of reason and critical‑ ity. Critical engagement with ideas is the basis of a healthy education. The question which comes to mind is whether universities are really encourag‑ ing their students and teachers to express themselves freely and without hindrance and whether critical thinking is actively promoted or not. In the absence of an enabling environment, it would be difficult to pursue critical engagement with ideas. Increasing commodification of education is not helping matters either. Higher education is seen as a commodity to be bought and sold on the mar‑ ket, like toothpaste or soap. What this means is that education is no longer

2  Introduction pursued for its own sake, for a playful and meaningful engagement with ideas. What is happening on an increasing scale is that the use value of edu‑ cation, i.e. knowledge for the sake of greater understanding of the reality around us, is being replaced by the exchange value, i.e. how much income I can generate from my qualification. Clearly, the market has become a great determinant of which degree is desirable and which is not. A degree in engineering or management is much more sought after these days because it can be sold in the market much more easily than a degree in history or phi‑ losophy or political science. The degree does not itself constitute a source of satisfaction for the possessor. Rather what gives pleasure to him/her is the money which is made when the degree is sold, i.e. when a job is obtained. A serious implication of this is that it has made education an unreflective and unreflexive activity. Critical engagement with ideas is discouraged and in fact is considered irrelevant. One of the offshoots of increasing com‑ modification of education is the growing clamour to figure at the top in any system of ranking of universities. This ignores the fact that any system of ranking only contributes further to the commodification of education (a degree from a certain university or institute is a must for getting a good job) and tends to adopt homogenising (one size fits all) and hegemonising (publications in journals located within the West almost become manda‑ tory) criteria. An important issue which is being widely debated on university cam‑ puses these days is whether students should stay away from ‘politics’, especially by those who wish to control the free spaces such as uni‑ versities. They argue that students are supposed to be coming to uni‑ versities only for ‘study’ and nothing else. More importantly, students should refrain from indulging in ‘politics’. This extraordinarily ignorant statement diminishes and negates the relevance of politics in the lives of people. One should not forget that it has been only through a massive political mobilization by the subjugated castes that the hegemony of the dominant castes has to some extent been broken in India. It has been only by organizing radical political struggles at different times in history that the industrial working classes and peasants have been able to wrest some concessions from the political establishment. Feminist movements cannot go far if they do not wage ideological and political battles against the entrenched structure of patriarchy. When one goes to JNU, one sees graffiti on the walls of buildings which says, ‘When politics decides your future, you decide what your politics will be’. When everything – what I eat, what I study, what kind of job I get, and much more – is decided by the politics of the day, I need to decide what kind of politics I do. Doing politics requires a certain amount of imagination and thinking (Azad et al. 2016). And if the students, who are supposed to be thinking, and critical individuals are prevented from participating in or talking about politics, who will benefit from that? Obviously those who are engaged in self-­ aggrandisement by using politics as a tool and who do not wish others

Introduction  3 to get in their way. Universities are also supposed to promote gender sensitivity. Whether this is actually happening or not is a moot question. It is with the purpose of interrogating some of the issues mentioned above that I have requested some of the finest minds in the country today to reflect on these issues. What brings them together despite their ideological differences on so many other issues is their deep common concern for the health of Universities and higher education in India. I sent the request only once and they all agreed to contribute their articles (some of which have appeared elsewhere before).

A glance at the chapters in the volume Romila Thapar emphasizes the importance of critical enquiry, which is sadly lacking in universities today. Critical enquiry implies being in a posi‑ tion to reflexively engage with knowledge production. It means not the mere acceptance of knowledge, as it were, but being able to ask questions, such as what is the context in which knowledge is produced, who produced it and what methods are employed to gather such knowledge. Knowledge production happens in a certain ideological context and one should be deeply aware of it. Otherwise certain knowledge systems gain acceptability as they are supported by the prevailing dominant ideologies. Therefore, it is important to subject ideas to a critical interrogation. Universities are the first places where this is supposed to take place. Prabhat Patnaik in his usual incisive style dwells at length on the growing commoditization of education dictated by the logic of big corporate finance. In the process, what is happening is the privileging of the exchange value of education (a degree in technology or management commands a higher price in the market) over its use value (acquiring knowledge for its own sake). As a consequence, there is a systematic and organized destruction of critical thought and questioning spirit which would pose a serious challenge to the corporate financial elites. There is an attempt to change the nature and character of higher education with a view to ensuring that it serves the needs of finance capital. If education is to perform an empowering role, the process of turning education into a commodity needs to be thwarted. Avijit Pathak makes a passionate plea for evolving an educational system which seeks to strike a balance between the creative and critical pursuit of knowledge and the acquisition of necessary skills which would make learners useful members of society. But what is happening is the systematic neglect of critical aspects of education that would enhance our ability to think and the reduction of education to a mere skill-acquiring enterprise. Unless the empowering and emancipatory potential of education is prop‑ erly recognized, education will lose its relevance. The very spirit of higher education will be lost. One needs to be alert to attempts which seek to sabotage the higher principles of education. The growth of the consumer industry has only succeeded in commodifying education.

4  Introduction Binod Kumar Agarwala begins by situating the idea of a university in its historical context. Universities were originally supposed to be places for research leading to the generation of knowledge for its own sake and not necessarily reduced to being instruments of policy-formulation. The new-found obsession with empirical knowledge and policy-formulation has changed the character of the university completely. There has been an instrumentalization of knowledge production, i.e. knowledge not for its own sake but to serve the powerful and the dominant interest groups. In the process, authentic autonomy is being eroded. Furthermore, there is an unfortunate breakdown of communication among different streams of thought in the name of specialization. This is where the importance of a leader comes in. She should be the one who can balance the conflicts and contradictions with which the universities confront themselves and enable the universities to pursue critical and creative engagement with ideas, which is the basic logic of having a university. D. V. Kumar, in an attempt to theoretically situate the University, draws from the writings of some of the most critical and creative minds which have engaged with the role of education in a society. Then he refers to some of the powerful challenges that universities are facing today, apart from the many other challenges which have been extensively commented upon. The three challenges that he wants us to pay attention to are the inability of universities to provide an enabling environment in which critical thinking can be promoted, the increasing commodification of education which effec‑ tively converts students into commodities to be bought on the market, and the enormous difficulties in striking a balance between attempts to make universities more inclusive by drawing students from different sections of society through affirmative programmes, and attempts to enhance academic excellence in universities. Dealing at length with the debates that surrounded the birth of JNU and UGC, Ayesh Kidwai says that the debate about JNU was essentially in the context of what kind of university was to be established and what would be its main characteristic – affiliating university or purely residential uni‑ versity? Those who favoured the establishment of a university named after the first Prime Minister of the country wanted to create a university which would promote the ideals of secularism, social justice and democracy. Uni‑ versities are spaces where critical thinking is expected to bloom. The debate around UGC was in the context of whether a central body like the UGC would be meaningful, given the social diversity in the country. She revisits those debates in her article. Maitrayee Chaudhuri draws our attention to the fact that higher edu‑ cation is being reduced to a mere provider of skills so that those acquir‑ ing them will find employment. She argues that while the acquisition of skills and jobs is important, it need not be at the cost of the higher goal of education, which is acquiring a certain critical understanding of issues. These need not, and in fact should not, be seen as dichotomous. She pro‑ ceeds to examine the continued relevance of the social sciences, especially

Introduction  5 sociology, which promote critical consciousness. Consciousness, as Peter Berger argues, is a fundamental condition of freedom. K. Srinivasulu traces the growth trajectory of Osmania University. What started as an Urdu-medium university during the Nizam rule became a well-known university, with English being the medium of instruction. However, what showed great promise turned into an illusion, with the university subjected to systematic neglect and discrimination. Successive governments have failed to appoint competent, committed and efficient academicians as leaders of this university and it has paid the price in terms of losing its past glory. The socio-economic processes of privatiza‑ tion and globalization have dealt severe blows to public universities and especially their social science departments. Srinivasulu calls for sustained effort on the part of everybody to protect and sustain universities such as Osmania which have contributed greatly to the understanding of society, culture and polity. Sajal Nag deals at length with the very idea of nationalism and discusses how universities can become the spaces where multiple ideas of nationalism can be interrogated. Then he discusses the different trajectory that nation‑ alism has taken in Europe and the rest of the world. He makes a valid point that universities are products of Enlightenment in the West, whereas in India they are expected to contribute to rationality and science. Vijayalakshmi Brara deals with how universities have become deeply gendered institutions in terms of the different standards which they adopt when it is a matter of the recruitment and promotion of women, and even the daily allocation of duties and responsibilities to women. She contends that ‘informal visibility’ (gaining visibility in an informal context, e.g. visit‑ ing a professor’s house etc.) is something that women do not often acquire as it is considered an ‘unsafe’ activity for women. But ‘informal visibility’ often becomes a critical deciding factor in promotions. Women suffer in more ways than one, even in the so-called enlightened and intellectual spaces such as universities. V. Bijukumar refers to what is increasingly expected of public universities. They are expected to promote reason and deepen the idea of social justice. But of late in the context of a neoliberal environment, universities are find‑ ing it difficult to develop critical questioning and are being converted into producers of ‘commodities’. The demeaning of the social contract on the basis of which public universities function is due to multiple factors, such as pervasive state intervention in its everyday functioning and the impact of the unleashing of neoliberal market reforms in higher education. When the old social contract is demeaned, a new contract is concluded between public universities and market forces, which has a severe consequence on education as a public good and its larger project of nation-building and democratic consolidation. This volume will have served its purpose if it can provoke serious critical interrogation of the very idea of a university, leading to a more creative and satisfactory understanding of the role of the university in society.

6  Introduction

References Azad, R. et al. (ed.). 2016. What the Nation Really Needs to Know: The JNU Nationalism Lectures. HarperCollins: Noida. Freire, P. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Penguin: Harmondsworth, Middlesex. Newman, John Henry. 1996. The Idea of a University. Yale University Press: London. Patnaik, Prabhat. 2017. ‘The Start of a Cultural Revolution: Promise of a Rare Unity’. The Telegraph. 27 April.

1 Some thoughts on university education Romila Thapar

Universities were started in India virtually as clones of a single model, namely the nineteenth-century universities of the United Kingdom, rather than institutions to explore new knowledge, and not just pass on what was already known. After independence, the institution of the university remained as it was and became a colonial inheritance. The changes made were largely to accommodate the institutional problems of running a university. Little attempt was made to change the basic philosophy of education and reformulate the syllabuses. If this could not be done on a large scale then at least a few should have been more experimental. When one such university was established and began functioning in late 1970 – the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi – the result was quite spectacular in terms of what was taught and how, the quality of students that went into a range of professions, and the reputation that the university acquired for quality among international universities (Batabayal 2015). That it is now being systematically dismantled by those appointed to administer it, is of course a problem of recent vintage that has struck the better universities in the country – more particularly those with strong social sciences schools. Those with authoritarian views on education always attempt to control the social sciences, since these are the subjects that give form to a society. If authoritarianism is combined with a particular ideology then the form becomes predetermined and allows little scope for changing its contours. This is a significant danger that we face in our times. We need to be aware of what can result from such determined control, and in order to be aware of this we must know what the alternative could be. I would like to spell out some features of an alternative way of understanding university education in our present circumstances. Let me start with the basic facts of students and student numbers. The initial pressure of larger numbers of students is now spiralling out of control, with little support given to qualified faculty. That the hub of a university is a well-equipped library and up-to-date laboratories is often not seen as fundamental when priority is given to administration buildings. Hostels are also crucial and make another kind of difference. Where such approaches are not clarified, then, with a few exceptions, there is inevitably a fall in standards, as is now frequently lamented.

8  Romila Thapar Nevertheless, there are, almost in defiance, pockets of excellence. A tiny percentage of bright teachers and students become prized professionals. Given their natural potential, the percentage could be much higher. Most students these days are expected to grapple with grades rather than ideas. Relatively less is done to peg schooling to decent, let alone high, standards (Krishna Kumar 1992). If that could be done, then students admitted to colleges would be more prepared for the tertiary level of education. We could move well beyond a colonial inheritance and reformulate our educational needs in accordance with our aspirations for social improvement. Many are concerned but little effective change is made. It seems to me that no government to date has seriously committed to a systematic agenda of establishing and improving education. Are we caught between what we have inherited, which requires re-examination, and the current populist ideological drives that are pushing us away from quality education? Quoting the increase in the number of schools, colleges and universities doesn’t tell us much about the criteria that go into the making of education. Improvement would lie in providing every Indian with some degree of comprehension of the world that he or she lives in. Part of the problem lies also in an increasing interference from non-professionals in the content and institutions of education. Institutions can be easily undermined by diluting the content of what is taught, and by appointing incompetent administrators at universities who unravel that which has been carefully built up. Political and religious organizations have demanded deletions in syllabus content, reading lists and textbooks, and at another level they intervene in appointments. This started four decades ago but has accelerated to a far greater extent in recent times. Unfortunately, many academics, even if they are aware of it, are reluctant to resist it. A violent agitation by a group of ABVP students in Delhi University, claiming that an item in a syllabus offended their sentiments, resulted in the Academic Council removing the item despite its importance to teaching the subject. The university recognizes the threat from groups with political backing but does it also recognize the intellectual damage of conceding to such demands? This is precisely where decision through debate is called for. In much earlier times, the better Vice-Chancellors tackled these problems, and found ways of disallowing such interference. But in recent years many more Vice-Chancellors and administrative heads are themselves a part of this problem. Universities have four components – teachers, students, the administration and the financier. In the best universities across the world, the financier – whether the state or a private organization – is disallowed from intervening in academic matters. But since the roots of our university system lie in colonial governance, we have become accustomed to allowing interference by those who claim to be in authority. This was warned against by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who stated, “Higher education is undoubtedly an obligation of the state, but state aid is not to be confused with state control over academic policies and practices.” University administration should ideally be the function of keeping the machinery working, but not claiming primacy in academic matters, irrespective of who in the administration tries to assert this primacy.

Some thoughts on university education  9 The crucial core of the university then, should be those who teach and those who learn. This core is meant to be concerned with what is taught as required information, and with learning how to explore knowledge through new ideas and methods. At the broadest level the intention was, and is, to produce an educated public and therefore responsible citizens; and at a more specific level to support the advancement of knowledge. To provoke new thinking and where necessary to dissent from conventional thinking, is axiomatic to this process. It is foundational to a university that it be the required space that nurtures freedom of thought. This has been the essential condition of the best universities anywhere, resulting in research that has advanced our understanding and knowledge of the world, and in every field. Autonomy is of the essence in the functioning of universities, and they have to protect their right as places where there is freedom to think, to speak and to debate. This is not the spirit that guides our universities, even less so now than before. Whether in the primary and secondary schools that lay the foundations of education, or in tertiary education, planning and funding could have been more adequate and more focused. State universities struggle with paucity of funds and facilities. It is thought that the alternative could be private colleges and universities. But for some private investors education has become an industry. Colleges and universities are sometimes run more as factories than faculties, and the central issue is investment and profit. Financial ambition takes over and many such places are seldom open to the most meritorious unless they can rustle up the enormous fees required. They advertise their goal not as acquiring knowledge, but as success – and success when undefined can mean many unsavoury activities. Are these alternatives giving us qualified specialists and responsible citizens? Educational institutions are not static. They change when societies change. The minimum is that the educated should be trained to understand the world they live in through the knowledge they receive; to have the confidence to question the system where this is needed; and to work towards claiming their rights as citizens of a reasonably well-ordered society. Democracy is meant to enable people to change from being subjects of the state, to becoming citizens of the state, with rights and obligations. Citizenship of a democracy should mean equal access to social justice and to human rights, given unanimously and universally. No one category of citizen has priority over another. What we have today is a citizenry of which almost fifty percent, through no fault of their own, remain effectively without education. This lack and its general acceptability is a reflection on how poorly we define our democracy. Perhaps we need to return to two themes that have cropped up in recent times. They remain undecided and therefore prevent the shaping up of the education programme. One is the question of relating the content of education to its purpose and function; the other is the tangled question of the language of instruction at various levels. We treat the purpose and function of education rather casually. Its budget is paltry to begin with, nevertheless it meets with constant cuts, and education is treated as dispensable. Of the population barely half can claim

10  Romila Thapar to be educated and many of these minimally so. In most schools where science is taught without conducting experiments, or geography is taught without maps, such teaching has little value other than providing cursory information. Yet if quality education were to be available to larger numbers it would result in many more competent people facilitating economic development and social change, hopefully towards the society we aspire to. In order to discover this potential from hitherto uneducated sections of society, obviously there has to be universal education that goes beyond the lowest common denominator. That this is not happening makes one wonder whether political parties feel threatened by the possibility of an educated electorate. Education is not just for the market. It is central to understanding the world in which we live, and our relation to it, as well as to inculcating the values that benefit human interaction. For all our talk of having inherited a great civilization, we are the least concerned with giving priority to quality education, which was what had contributed to making it a great civilization in the past. Yet the irony these days, is that half the population that has been kept barely literate or not at all, is now called upon to digitize its way of life, and behave like highly educated citizens. Aren’t we missing something in not admitting that education and the guarantee of a livelihood needs to precede the promise of a “smart” future? After all these years we remain among the countries with the lowest literacy rates. Yet even literacy is not the test of an educated population, as it is only the initial step. There are other components of education, two of which I shall discuss as being essential. To put it simply, one is access to knowledge and the other is the communication of that knowledge. Access to knowledge requires up-to-date information on the subject taught, requiring the questioning of existing knowledge that is outdated. This could begin with knowing about the world we live in and how we relate to the cultures of our neighbours. Creating curiosity is a major step. But we show scant interest even in what is being discussed by our neighbours. To take the simplest example, when did we last make a serious study of curricula in schools and universities in neighbouring countries? Yet what is taught in these countries would tell us about their self-perception, and their attitudes to neighbours, of which we are one. Our neighbours also experience controversies on what should be included in textbooks and why: controversies that should be of great interest to us since they parallel ours. A study of educational programmes would tell us much about how we see ourselves and how others see us. The quality of education is not determined only by the amount of information acquired by students. More important is whether they have been taught to think critically. Are students familiar with the process of critical inquiry so essential to every form of education? This applies to each subject of study and to virtually every human activity. It begins with asking questions, the answers to which are statements on the subject being enquired into, and these in turn can be questioned and analysed. A simple

Some thoughts on university education  11 explanation of what is a logical statement and what is not, can be a start. This does mean of course that teachers themselves must understand what is meant by critical inquiry. A more purposive beginning may be made by first teaching the teachers. And who better than knowledgeable teachers to do this training. This does not require an extensive financial outlay, which is the usual excuse. Teachers have in any case to be trained and textbooks must be written for teaching. The teacher can be trained to ask questions, to think critically, and be familiar with methods of enquiry instead of stopping atmerely having information; textbooks should both inform and encourage students to ask questions about what they are learning. Textbooks are amongst the most difficult pedagogic tools to write and yet it is amazing how we allow all kinds of nonsense to pass as textbooks. This would require an extensive and transparent commitment to conveying knowledge and also to explaining its social value for those advancing an education. Better-trained teachers may result in their receiving more respect than they are currently given by Indian society in general. Let me try and explain what I mean by critical inquiry and why I think that it is the essence of education. Learning and the acquisition of knowledge are incomplete unless there is an awareness of the method of inquiry that is used to acquire knowledge. This has to be taught as a process of thinking and one that is relevant to all subjects. It assumes the freedom to ask questions, and to direct questions that enhance the inquiry. Such training helps in another way. Every inquiry involves assessing the validity of suggested explanations. But all explanations do not have equal validity. Giving priority to some involves a selection and an explanation of why some are selected and others rejected. This involves critical inquiry (Freire 1970). The method draws on common sense. It starts with collecting data and ascertaining its reliability. Some fantasy may intervene in this process but fantasy has to be differentiated from evidence. Causal connections necessary to theories of explanation draw largely on logical argument and rational thought, but perhaps the occasional leap of imagination may be permitted if it illuminates the argument. New discoveries both of information and of new methods of analysing it are taking place continuously. Consequently, the range of knowledge sources is expanding. As a result, existing information has to contend with the new and be changed. Let me try and demonstrate this from my own specialization in ancient history. There was a time when a source consisted of what was said in a text. Herodotus, popularly described as the father of history, was accused by a few of his contemporaries of incorporating gossip into his history. They accused him of using hearsay as evidence, and hearsay – as we all know – is not evidence. The same accusation was made of some of the chronicles of Indian royal courts. Nevertheless, until a century ago narratives from these sources were retold and described as history. Today’s historians have to investigate these texts and their contents for reliability before treating them as sources of history. This means checking the text with other sources. If

12  Romila Thapar these are limited, we resort to the technique of detectives, and, like Agatha Christie, we try and piece together a hypothesis, but without always finding a proven solution. The historian therefore has to cross-question the text and in retrospect, the author. What was the social and intellectual background of the author – caste, occupation, family, religion, location and so on? Did their background influence what they wrote, as happens so often with many of us? What was their intellectual predisposition? What was the historical context of the text? Who read it and why? What was the intention of the text – both covert and overt? In the past it was enough just to know the language of a text. Now we have to know more than the language. Specialists in linguistics tell us about the various dimensions of a language, for example, does one language carry the imprint of another that may have been used in its proximity? Some may argue that Vedic Sanskrit has elements of Dravidian. This leads to new questions. Another knowledge source is archaeology, which can involve the comparison of objects described in the text with those excavated from sites of a similar date. Roman wine jars found at sites such as Pattanam in Kerala can be compared with descriptions of them in Greek and Tamil sources referring to the trade. Archaeological finds are now examined by various scientific techniques, so the archaeologist is forced to be familiar with the relevant science. For example, the archaeologist tracking settlements on the banks of the River Satlej has to consult hydrologists, since the river has changed its course more than once (Thapar 2013). Where population migrations in history are being studied, DNA analyses and genetics have become part of the argument. Maritime trade cannot be explained in detail without technical information on historical shipping and navigation. Apart from such methods of obtaining information, history is now interpreted with the aid of theories explaining the organization and functioning of societies. Historians therefore are in dialogue with other social scientists. The public perception of history has yet to be made aware of the fact that there is a divide between historians trained in inter-disciplinary research and investigation techniques and, distinct from them, an array of amateurs, quite untrained, who claim to be historians. Education based on critical inquiry would enable the non-specialist to differentiate reasoned arguments from myth. Methods of critically examining texts can sometimes lead to new departures in disciplines. This is how over the years the importance of oral history has emerged as a sub-discipline of history and literature, adding another dimension to our understanding of the past. For example, the oral records of the Bantu, once dismissed as fiction, are now meticulously analysed and, where plausible, used to reconstruct African history. But in the same way as texts cannot be used at face value, so too oral records must be minutely examined from various perspectives to determine their reliability. Inevitably when new theories are proposed, controversies abound. They can only be resolved by fresh evidence or academic debates. Controversy between scholars and polemicists are more frequent in the public space

Some thoughts on university education  13 and some are linked to political ideologies. In India some controversy has hinged on historical interpretation and is tied to issues of national identity. In the former USSR the claim to alter genes by Lysenko was linked to genetics as a way of approximating an ideal society. In the USA, the Scopes “monkey trial” involved attacks on Darwin’s theory of evolution, which was seen as opposing what was said in the Bible about God creating man. In such situations textbooks are the victim. Ideally, they should be left to the professionals. But instead, all kinds of people intervene in determining the contents of textbooks, both at the school level and at graduate level in colleges and universities. Most of the people who have strong views about what should go into a textbook are often ignorant of new knowledge in the discipline. Their only purpose is to push an ideological agenda. This happens frequently in India. Different political parties with dissimilar ideologies form a government. Some advocate interference in deciding the content of education, where the aim is not the search for knowledge but ideological reasons to control what people think. So when the political party governing India changes, the history textbooks used in central state schools also change. An array of non-historians among whom are politicians, bureaucrats and their hangers-on, as well as diverse religious enterprises that have nothing to do with historical research, demand the inclusion of their views in the textbooks. One wishes that they would stay within their own jurisdiction of marketing religions and garnering votes, and leave the control over educational content to those professionally qualified to do so. This is why many of us argued ten years ago that the National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) that produces textbooks, or the Councils of Research in various disciplines, should be autonomous organizations under the control of academics specializing in the specific subject. But no-one in authority responded to this suggestion. Research councils remain centres of patronage and do little for the discipline. In a seemingly contradictory manner, the past as we envision it is often used to give shape to the present. Political ideologies seeking to establish particular identities resort to interpreting knowledge to support their identity. This is then linked to their reading of nation and nationalism, of democracy and of a secular society – all of which are central to our public life. We have therefore to understand these concepts by analysing and debating them and not treating them as slogans. Fundamental to such discussion is the right to information and the right to question. Rights are what nurture citizenship. The right to information is crucial to public life. Questions have to be asked to obtain information. Raising questions therefore is not anti-national, as is claimed by some of those now in authority. Questioning is at the root of the thinking process. It was the questions of Socrates that initiated Greek philosophical discourse. It was the questions of the Buddha, the Charvaka thinkers and the rishis in the Upanishads, and all the many others who asked questions, that led to the enriching of Indian thought, and that is the thought that we acclaim today.

14  Romila Thapar It is often said that there is a distinction between pre-modern and modern education and that questioning what is written in the texts was alien to pre-modern education. This is a generalization stemming only from the orthodox traditions that discouraged new questions. Established institutions propagating a particular religion moulded the young in that religion. They did not always encourage the questioning of existing knowledge. Their preferred form of teaching was one where pre-determined questions were given pre-determined answers and both were memorized. Questions were confined to the learned few. The appropriate religious body of each religion – Hindu, Buddhist, Jaina, Muslim, Sikh, Christian – controlled the content of education in its institutions. Deviations or alternative enquiries were not encouraged. Yet critical inquiry can suggest new ways of exploring ideas, even those relating to religion and society, and they may be more apposite to our times. However, despite the authoritative conventional beliefs of the upper castes and elite, there was no shortage of break-away sects and persons that questioned beliefs. They were interested in new aspects of knowledge and proclaimed alternative avenues of social organization. Various Shramanic groups – of Buddhists, Jainas, Ajivikas, Charvakas and such like – questioned Brahmanical beliefs. They were therefore dismissed by the more orthodox as nastika or non-believers. This duality of the Brahmana and Shramana dharmas continued for fifteen hundred years. It is referred to in many texts until the early second millennium AD and regarded as characteristic of Indian religion and thought. The grammarian Patanjali refers to the two dharmas as being hostile to each other. He compares their relationship to that of the snake and the mongoose. The last thousand years have been particularly rich in the growth of religious and philosophical sects, especially in Hinduism and Islam. The founders of these sects ranged across a social and religious spectrum and included women, Dalits and other lower castes, earlier excluded from Vedic Brahmanism. Some sects were dedicated to a particular deity. Most others broke the boundaries of the formal religions and illuminated the overlapping areas between them and in the interstices, thus questioning earlier conventional knowledge. The questioning was not necessarily a critical inquiry as we understand it today, but more of a probing into conventional knowledge and suggesting alternatives. We tend to project these sects merely as manifestations of a single religion. We ignore the fact that as late as the fourteenth century, a major and much quoted compendium of Indian philosophical schools – the Sarva-darshana-samgraha – begins with a chapter on the Charvaka or Lokayata school. This was an earlier school of free thought drawing on arguments based on reason, which, despite the opposition from conventional sources, continued into much later times. Histories of philosophy written in the last century tend to give it short shrift. Yet the author of the compendium, Madhavacharya, states that although he personally did not subscribe to the Lokayata philosophy, others did, and so it had to be given

Some thoughts on university education  15 recognition. So six hundred years ago, ideas of rationalism and materialism were normal to intellectual discussion in India. Scholars have pointed to the existence of a long tradition of rational thinking and inquiry in India. This was to be expected, as such traditions are always present in cultures with a strong focus on philosophical thought. We need to see this tradition in a historical context and use it in educational curricula. It is a heritage that points to thought-provoking perspectives challenging those that we constantly quote. This tradition also illustrates what I mean by the content of education having to be defined by professionals and scholars in respective fields. Few non-professionals are aware of this philosophical tradition of logic and rationality in the early Indian past. Even if they are, they hesitate to make it a part of an intellectual stream. We have been imprinted with the idea that traditional Indian thought was largely resistant to the rational. Therefore now there will be those who would oppose incorporating logic, rationality and inquiry into the educational curriculum, describing it as not part of the Indian tradition of thought, although there are some others who are keen to pursue it. And above all, bringing in a stream of rational thought would be pertinent to interpreting the world around us. A concern with educational content also means giving serious consideration to communicating through the language of instruction and using it for this purpose, a language that is conducive to the discussion of knowledge. Whatever the policy, the practice is that in most parts of the country the regional language is increasingly being used as the medium of instruction. The more ambitious, however, wish to learn English primarily because it is a valuable qualification for employment, and for a few it also provides an opening onto new knowledge. We end up using the regional language in the main. English is generally used in such a way that it hardly provides any intellectual appetite, except of course in elite schools. This situation could be changed, given that we have always used more than one language, and each in different ways. Looked at historically, the variation is interesting. The Harappan language is so far unknown but it would have been used in north-western India. A few centuries later, there were three languages concurrently in use. Two were from the Indo-Aryan group, one was Vedic Sanskrit, which Panini differentiates from the Sanskrit used in non-Vedic texts such as the Mahabharata. Grammatical and linguistic works and etymologies of great brilliance were written in Sanskrit from the first millennium BC onwards. The need for such specialized texts points to the fact that languages other than Sanskrit were being used in the first millennium BC; the writing of such detailed grammars suggests that Sanskrit was diversifying, probably due to the presence of other languages, and needed rules to embed its structure, and that it had to be taught to non-Sanskrit speakers. The other Indo-Aryan language was the far more widely spoken Prakrit. Buddhist and Jaina texts were composed in Pali and Prakrit, both languages of the Indo-Aryan family but different from Sanskrit. Prakrit was used

16  Romila Thapar extensively in inscriptions, as in those of Ashoka and other rulers. It was the language used by women and shudras, who together formed the majority of the population. Sanskrit became the language of governance in later times, particularly with the coming of dynasties from Central Asia around the Christian era, who issued inscriptions in Sanskrit rather than Prakrit, such as the Kshatrapas and the Kushanas. Subsequent to this it became the court language, the language of administration, and the language of upper caste males. It remained so for a millennium. Inevitably it was the main language of learning. Texts on secular subjects were written in Sanskrit, ranging from mathematics, astronomy and medicine to philosophy, aesthetics, literature, and an array of commentaries on social codes, epics and other subjects. Buddhist and Jaina authors also began writing their texts in Sanskrit from the first millennium CE onwards. Parallel to Indo-Aryan was Dravidian, the second language group and current in peninsular India. That there were languages other than Sanskrit even in northern India is clear from references in Sanskrit texts to people who speak their own language, such as the incomprehensible Chandala-bhasha, and others, the mlecchas, who cannot speak Sanskrit correctly. Tamil was important in south India from the latter part of the first millennium BC, and some Prakrit was known. Sanskrit was a later arrival there. If the Adivasi presence went back to this period then languages such as Munda would also have been spoken, and would have formed the third group of languages. What has recently been described as the Sanskrit cosmopolis, other languages notwithstanding, was established in the mid-first millennium CE. The other languages were the associated Prakrit, and still later the evolving Apabrahmsha, not to mention the Dravidian languages of the peninsula. The primacy of Tamil in the south, and the emergence of Telugu and Kannada took form in the Dravidian language areas. In north India the derivatives of Indo-Aryan were also diversifying into a variety of languages by the early second millennium AD, which we now refer to as regional languages. Much-cited Sanskrit texts, such as the versions of the narratives from the Ramayana story were adapted into new forms in Tamil, Hindi and Bengali. The Sufis of north India and the Mughals wrote in Hindi, apart from other languages such as Persian, which was the language of the learned and of the court. At the Mughal court there was active collaboration between brahmana and Jaina Sanskrit scholars supervising the translation of major Sanskrit texts into Persian. Braj-bhasha was common to some northern courts such as that of the Nawabs of Avadh, and to popular culture in the region. Then came European trading companies bringing Portuguese, French and English. English as the language of governance and power became common to the emergent middle classes, used together with the regional languages. If occupation was one factor in the segregation of castes, English education had a similar role in segregating classes. As the language of communication it reached out to larger numbers than had Sanskrit, since shudras and women were not excluded from learning English. Specialized knowledge in the sciences, philosophy and the early social sciences was taught in English.

Some thoughts on university education  17 Soon the literary articulation of the middle class both in poetry and prose was to include English, in addition to the regional language. The language of knowledge, therefore, changed from Prakrit to Sanskrit, to Persian, and then to English. What then is the future of English or what some call Indian-English, and its relationship to the regional languages? If English is linked to the advancement of knowledge then it has to be known and known well. The correct and precise use of a language is crucial to research in all branches of learning. Knowledge of the language in which a particular subject was being researched was necessary to research, even in the past. Advances in mathematics and astronomy for instance, were possible because scholars in these fields were familiar with works in Arabic and Sanskrit. Arab scholars had translated Greek texts and they also acknowledged the expertise of Indian scholars in mathematics. They were doubtless familiar with Sanskrit texts apart from the symbols used in mathematics. Working with contemporary knowledge means knowing its language. This applies to the social sciences as much as to the other sciences. In the Indian sub-continent, no language had the monopoly of being the only one used at any time for all purposes. There was always diffusion in the function of various languages. With any language left to itself, that is what is likely to happen. But a language can be made more effective if a properly worked out system is adopted. So what should be the language of instruction? To know three languages sufficiently to make even basic conversation is not a problem. To know each well enough to use it in fundamental research is problematic. Generally, only one is the preferred language. I would argue that a student should know two languages really well. Initially it has to be the language of his/her socialization into family and society. Subsequently they learn the language of knowledge. One language may not fit all requirements, however. It might therefore make some sense if we were to opt for a slightly modified bilingual formula: we begin with the language of socialization at primary school – the mother tongue or regional language: the language of childhood, imagination, poetry and much else that comes later. Just prior to secondary school, English could be introduced as the additional medium together with the first language. If some subjects are taught bilingually they might be better understood by the student. That would certainly enrich both languages. By the end of secondary school a student should be able to use both languages with relative ease. Education today is increasingly given in the regional language with little emphasis on training in English, even if required just as an additional language. Knowledge is being reduced to what is available in only one local language. Translation seldom keeps up with new knowledge. The danger is that communication between Indians may also decrease. In recent years we have had market forces edging out the humanities in favour of disciplines linked to the market economy and its technologies. This is a problem facing the best universities the world over. Giving priority

18  Romila Thapar to such disciplines is understandable but utilitarian value should not be the sole criterion of education. If the Indian genius expressed itself in grammatical works, this was partly because language was not an obstacle but was used creatively. Many languages co-existed, emanating from different social strata and regions. They were used for different activities, and were communicated through osmosis in the proximity of two or more languages. I can recollect the ease with which my grand-parents and parents moved between Panjabi, Hindi, Urdu and English. Each language seemed to be attuned to a specific function. The advantage of a bilingual education is that both languages borrow concepts from each other and thereby take on extended functions. I would like to conclude by reiterating what I have been arguing for: that the content of education has to give priority to critical inquiry. By this I mean teaching students to feel liberated enough to ask questions about the world they live in, and to question knowledge in a systematic, logical reasoned manner that might well give them new insights into their world. This may release the potential of not only those that are first-generation learners, but also of others having to learn out-of-date knowledge that they in any case are not permitted to question. A different kind of education may well lead to the discovery of new knowledge. It is only then that education can help in changing mind-sets for the better. Values have to be experienced and nurtured. Where values are imposed, they tend to wither away. And if a bilingual education can also be implemented – the language of socialization and the language of knowledge – then there can be a greater comprehension of the participation of all of us in the world. The world will open up to many more than just the few. And that surely is what education is all about.

References Batabayal, R. 2015. JNU: The Making of a University. Harper Collins: New Delhi Freire, P. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Penguin: Harmondsworth Kumar, Krishna. 1992. What is Worth Teaching?. Orient Blackswan: New Delhi Thapar, Romila. 2013. The Past Before Us: Historical Traditions of Early North India. Permanent Black: Ranikhet

2 On the political economy of educational “reforms” Prabhat Patnaik

The educational “reforms” we are witnessing today in India are usually attributed to the changing requirements of the economic system. This is no doubt true, but in addition they are also meant to serve the needs of the new “Ideological State Apparatus”, to use Louis Althusser’s (1971) term, that must come into being to correspond to the change in the economic regime. The direction of the current education “reforms” is such that they serve both purposes, i.e. they are in conformity with a changed totality. The nature of the “Ideological State Apparatus”, in whose formation the education system plays a major role, is determined by the nature of the State itself. The education “reforms” therefore are integrally linked to the transition in the nature of the Indian State, from being a dirigiste to a neoliberal State,1 a transition associated with the change that has taken place in the economic regime, and correspondingly in the nature of class relations in Indian society.

I Education under the dirigiste regime The Indian State that came into being after independence was a product of the anti-colonial struggle, which had taken off in a big way in the 1930s when the peasantry, reeling under the impact of the Great Depression in the capitalist world, had thrown its weight behind it. This widening of the support base of the anti-colonial struggle had been made possible by the formulation of a vision of what post-independence India was to look like, seen for the first time at the Karachi Congress in 1931. The Karachi Resolution may be seen therefore as the first draft of the implicit social contract that underlay the formation of the post-independence Indian State, and that ultimately found expression in the Indian Constitution. In accordance with this vision, the post-independence Indian State inter alia extended protection to the petty production economy, in particular to peasant agriculture, against the vicissitudes of world market price fluctuations, and against encroachments by big Indian capital; it also developed a public sector, as a bulwark against Multinational Corporations, and metropolitan capital generally, and for facilitating, through an expansion of

20  Prabhat Patnaik the home market and through plugging gaps in the production structure, a relatively autonomous capitalist development. The State that presided over the adoption of this path of capitalist development, in relative autonomy from metropolitan capital, taking the help of the then-existing socialist countries and pursuing a foreign policy of non-alignment, had a complex character: it was a bourgeois State in so far as it was ushering in capitalism, but it was not a State that exclusively promoted the interests of the bourgeoisie; rather it appeared to be, and not without justification, a State placed above classes, looking after the interests also of classes other than the bourgeoisie. To be sure, inequalities in wealth and income were not only allowed to persist (the absence of radical land redistribution being an instance of this), but became accentuated as a consequence of the development that was taking place. They were however neither accepted nor justified ideologically; and the widening inequalities were not as glaring as in today’s India. In short, the dirigiste regime, of State intervention, planning, and controls designed to realize plan priorities, gave rise to a State that appeared to stand above classes, that mediated between them and had a relative autonomy of its own both vis-a-vis domestic big business, and also, above all, vis-à-vis metropolitan capital. This is the State, the Nehruvian State if you like, that was referred to above as the dirigiste State. The role of education in this context was seen in terms of “nation-building”. Since the dirigiste economic strategy meant above all a “national” economic strategy, albeit through the pursuit of a capitalist trajectory of development, but in relative autonomy from metropolitan capital, the education system too never sought to copy the curricula or course contents of metropolitan centres. This had, to my mind, four basic consequences: first, by not merely reproducing what is taught in the West, the education system under dirigisme also eschewed the propagation of the patent ideological “untruths” (I am talking here primarily of the social sciences) that get ossified into syllabi in the heartland of capitalism. Its very heterodoxy also allowed scope for a diversity of views and the taking up of critical positions. Secondly, there was an anti-imperialist content to what was taught which meant that students were exposed not only to the historical experience of their own country that had been subject to long colonial rule but also to the ideas of a range of independent thinkers, from Naoroji to Gandhi to the Left. Thirdly, there was a prominent place within the content of education, for the idea of egalitarianism and a progressive social order unmarked by caste and other forms of oppression. And finally it was taken for granted that education was meant to serve a social purpose. Even when the products of the education system, the students who passed out of it, having “embodied” the education that was provided, did nothing palpable for society, this fact was often admitted by them with a degree of sheepishness. At any rate, the criterion for the “success” of a product of the education system was not seen to lie in the exchange value commanded by him or her in the “market”, and certainly not in the “international market”. The

On the political economy of educational “reforms”  21 products of the education system no doubt joined the workforce and sought to be absorbed into the labour market. But education was not exclusively meant to prepare one for the labour market. Education as a “thing” in other words had not become dissociated from education as a source of pleasure, “utility” or enlightenment. One should not of course glorify this period, and exaggerate the positive role played by the education system in this period, in terms of both effecting a progressive social outlook and inculcating a degree of personal non-conformism. But the fact remains that when I look back on my own student days at Delhi University I cannot help being struck by the heterodoxy, the diversity, and the non-ossification that I was exposed to within my own discipline, and there were countless others like me.

II The neoliberal state and education The change in the economic regime in India from dirigisme to neoliberalism has brought about a change in the nature of the State and is now ushering in a change in the education system that corresponds to the need to create an alternative Ideological State Apparatus in conformity with the changed nature of the State. The reasons for the change in the economic regime need not detain us here. The emergence of vast amounts of concentrated finance, nourished initially in the fifties and the sixties by persistent and growing US fiscal deficits, and subsequently in the seventies, in the wake of the oil-shocks, by the petro-dollars deposited in metropolitan banks by the OPEC countries; the successful pressure mounted by this concentrated finance capital to remove barriers to its global movement; the emergence on account of this removal of barriers of the phenomenon of “globalization”, under which free movement of capital and commodities across countries was institutionalized; and the formation on this basis of an international finance capital of which the corporate-financial elites of the different countries constitute “aliquot parts”; these make up the totality of the process that brought about a radical change in the post-war global conjuncture. This changed global conjuncture also underlay the shift away from thirdworld dirigiste regimes. The collapse of the Soviet Union (itself not unrelated to the emergence of international finance capital); the abandonment by the third-world bourgeoisie, including India’s, of the project of building a relatively autonomous national capitalism; the pursuit of neoliberal policies in place of the earlier “planning”; the incorporation of big domestic capital into the ranks of globalized capital; the rupturing of the broad class alliance formed during the anti-colonial struggle and carried over subsequently into the phase of relatively autonomous capitalist development; and the corresponding creation of a hiatus within societies like ours between the big bourgeoisie (the corporate-financial elite) on the one hand and the vast masses of peasants, petty producers, and working people on the other (with the professional upper middle class, beneficiaries of the new

22  Prabhat Patnaik growth trajectory, siding with the big bourgeoisie as long as the benefits accruing to them last); these are all well-known features of this transition. What concerns us here however is its implication for the nature of the State. A hallmark of this new conjuncture is that while the State remains a nation-State, capital is international; it can freely move around globally. Hence willy-nilly the nation-State must pursue such policies as catering to the whims and caprices of international finance capital, for otherwise capital would simply leave its shores and move elsewhere, precipitating acute economic difficulties. This necessarily entails a change in the nature of the State. From being an entity supposedly standing above classes, mediating between them, without appearing to be tied exclusively to the interests of any one particular class, it becomes exclusively engaged in promoting the interests of the big bourgeoisie, of the corporate-financial elite, whose interests, in the absence of any “national” capitalist project, become indistinguishable from those of international finance capital in general.2 An ideological justification is sought to account for the fact that State policies are being exclusively dictated by the interests of the corporate-financial elite, claiming that what is good for finance is good for the country as a whole. This justification however is palpably negated by an obvious fall-out of the neoliberal regime, namely the unleashing of a rampant process of what Marx had called the“primitive accumulation of capital”, that is, the imposition of distress, and eventually dispossession, upon vast masses of petty producers, including the peasantry. If property merely changes hands through purchase and sale at some price determined by the market, then there is no primitive accumulation of capital involved. Primitive accumulation takes place when property is acquired by big capital from petty producers (or from the State) either gratis or, what is in effect the same thing, at throwaway prices, i.e. at prices below what the market would determine. Primitive accumulation moreover must be seen not only in “stock” terms, i.e. in terms of a change of possession of assets, but also in “flow” terms, i.e. in terms of a levy on petty producers’ incomes (or on the State’s revenue) by big capitalists. When diesel prices are raised to increase the profits of the Ambanis, but the Kerala fisherman who uses diesel experiences a decline in his income as a consequence, we have an instance of primitive accumulation in “flow” terms (though such “flow” transfers may eventually lead to asset transfers as well, i.e. to primitive accumulation in “stock” terms). Such primitive accumulation of capital becomes a pronounced feature under neoliberalism. The fact of State policy being exclusively concerned with the promotion of the interests of the corporate-financial elite expresses itself in a withdrawal of support and protection by the State from the petty production sector, including especially from peasant agriculture. It now becomes exposed to world market fluctuations; subsidies (including subsidized institutional credit) are withdrawn from it; it is brought into direct contact with international agri-business; and it suffers an income deflation, culminating in eventual outright dispossession (and in many instances

On the political economy of educational “reforms”  23 peasant suicides in anticipation of such an event). Such dispossession also occurs frequently, as we know, in the name of industrial or “infrastructure” projects. The process of primitive accumulation of capital entails the takeover by the corporate-financial elite not only of petty property but also of State property, through the process of “disinvestment”, and privatization at throwaway prices of public sector assets. Acquiescence of the political leadership to such primitive accumulation at the expense of the public sector is often obtained through “corruption”, that is, by giving them a share of the proceeds of primitive accumulation. The corruption cases highlighted of late in the public discourse constitute instances of political (and public) personnel taking a “cut” from primitive accumulation; and yet ironically no fingers have ever been pointed in discussions of corruptioneither at the main beneficiaries of primitive accumulation, the corporate-financial elite, or at the economic regime, of neoliberalism, that promotes it. Primitive accumulation at the expense of the petty producers, especially the peasantry, which manifests itself inter alia through the economic unviability of peasant agriculture, affects not only the peasantry, in particular the small peasantry, but also agricultural labourers and other workers in the countryside. It leads to greater impoverishment in the countryside and swells the ranks of those seeking employment outside. Since “decent” employment outside hardly shows any increase, notwithstanding high GDP growth, rural migrants end up as part-time workers, casual workers, or informal sector workers, earning a pittance. The incidence of absolute poverty increases as a result, both in the countryside and in urban areas, even in the midst of high GDP growth (Patnaik 2019). The neoliberal State that presides over this entire process thus is faced with a glaring contradiction: on the one hand it becomes pre-occupied with promoting almost exclusively the interests of the corporate-financial elite, and of international finance capital generally, to the detriment of vast segments of the population; on the other hand it is founded upon a Constitution that enjoins universal adult franchise and hence gives these victims of neoliberal growth the power to change governments. This contradiction is managed normally by the fact that the insertion of a country into the vortex of globalized financial flows ensures that every political formation within it mustbow willy-nilly before the dictates of finance capital in order not to precipitate capital flight and cause an acute economic crisis. As long as the country remains tied to a neoliberal regime, no matter who gets elected makes little difference, since all have to pursue more or less the same policies, namely those approved by international finance capital, and hence, by implication serving the interests of the domestic corporate-financial elite. Nonetheless a danger remains: someday some political formation may take it into its head to put before the people an agenda of de-linking from the vortex of global financial flows; and such a formation, though not significant to start with, may suddenly catch their imagination. This may

24  Prabhat Patnaik happen especially during a period (such as now) when the economy becomescaught in an acute crisis. There are two ways in which one can seek to tackle this “danger”. One is through the promotion of fascism, which seeks to establish a State that is under the direct control of an alliance between big capital and “fascist upstarts” (as the renowned economist Michal Kalecki (1943, reprinted 1971) had called it); and the other is by so constituting the Ideological State Apparatus, through education “reforms”, that no “organic intellectuals” (to borrow Gramsci’s term) are produced who can be potentially associated with an alternative order. At present in India we are seeing both types of attempts being made. The formation of the present government with the substantial backing of the corporate-financial elite of the country constitutes the first type of attempt. It is based on the supposition that if the State is to promote the exclusive interests of the corporate-financial elite, then the best way of ensuring this is by the corporate-financial elite directly controlling the State political leadership. Since attempts are being made to promote unreason anyway and destroy universities as the locations for the practice of critical thought, the corporate-financial elite is perfectly happy with what is happening to higher education. (An indication of this is provided by the way the corporate-controlled media has joined in the chorus that sees centres of learning in the country as harbouring “anti-national” elements by the sheer fact of their tolerating a diversity of opinions). The general tendency among many observers has been to extreme closeness of the present government to the corporate-financial elite. This is not to suggest that many of the leaders of the earlier UPA government were not pliable instruments of the corporate-financial elite; but the “disadvantage” of the UPA from the corporate point of view lay in the fact that, even though such leaders themselves might have lacked any political base to which they were answerable or accountable, they functioned within a traditional political party that could not afford to be oblivious of the mood of the people. The present government by contrast has the “advantage” from their point of view that it has even subverted its own Party, pushing it into tailing the “leader”, and through him the corporate-financial elite. And the “leader”, projected by the corporate-controlled media as a “messiah”, believes that he can directly appeal to the masses to win their support, come what may. But further analysis of the political implications of this particular kind of attempt is beyond our scope here. Our concern is with the second type of attempt, via education “reforms” which were being introduced by the UPA and which are now being pushed with even greater vigour by the present government.3 These “reforms” are meant, in exact opposition to what the dirigiste education system had visualized, to institutionalize the hegemony of the metropolitan curricula and syllabi in centres of learning in India; to obliterate the memory of colonialism and the anti-colonial struggle, by de-emphasizing economic history altogether; to incorporate into the

On the political economy of educational “reforms”  25 Indian education system the patent ideological “untruths” that metropolitan capitalism propagates (which in my discipline include even a rejection of the proposition put forward by John Maynard Keynes, that capitalism can experience involuntary unemployment); to beat down all diversity; to privilege “technocratic” disciplines over the humanities and social sciences which might still offer some scope for critical stances on social issues; to be obsessed about the “world ranking” of our educational institutions, which means ignoring the need for sui generis educational institutions in India and accepting instead the criteria prevalent in metropolitan capitalist countries (and hence the concept of homogeneity of criteria irrespective of the national context); and, by implication, accepting the hegemony of the ideology of metropolitan capital. In a word, instead of being imbued with the task of “nation-building”, the educational system now gets charged with the responsibility of producing commodities for the international “market”; instead of being cognized as having a social role, education is now seen as producing self-obsessed individuals, its worth assessed in terms of the exchange value commanded by these individuals in the market. This phenomenon is what I subsume under the term “commoditization of education”. “Commoditization” has the “advantage” that it meets the economic needs of international finance capital, while at the same time creatingthe Ideological State Apparatus of a neoliberal State that meets the needs of the corporate-financial elite. Let us look at this phenomenon of “commoditization” a little more closely.

III The commoditization of education We have lived for long under capitalism in this country, and during this period every educated person has always offered himself or herself on the job market. Since education has gone into the formation of the labour-power offered for sale by an educated person on the market, i.e. into the formation of the commodity that the educated person becomes, why should the fact of education, which constitutes the input for this commodity, becoming a commodity itself, make any difference? Why in other words should the commoditization of education be a cause for concern? If the input into a commodity itself becomes a commodity what difference does that make? The answer lies in the fact that the notion of a “commodity” entails something more than the mere fact of being bought and sold on the market. The logic of “commodity production” does not apply to everything that is merely bought and sold on the market. After all, in India things have been bought and sold on the market for centuries; but this has not meant the enactment of the coercive logic of commodity production, with its tendency towards differentiation among producers. Something more is therefore involved in commodity production. While every commodity represents a combination of use value and exchange value, the hallmark of commodity production is that for the commodity seller it is pure exchange value (Kautsky 1903). Commodity production comes into

26  Prabhat Patnaik its own when the use-value aspect of the commodity holds no interest for the producer. Education becomestruly commoditized therefore when both in the imparting of education and in the offering for sale of the product of education, the joy of learning, the excitement of thought, and the grandeur of ideas, play no role whatsoever. If they do, then neither education itself, nor the product of education, can be called fully formed commodities. The commoditization of education, and by implication the commoditization of the product of education, requires therefore that the thing called education should be completely detached from notions of joy of learning and excitement of ideas, and should be seen by its sellers, and in this instance by the buyers too, exclusively as exchange value (just as for the steel producer the pig iron used as input is not a source of joy but only a value-sum that is transferred to the value of steel). I am not suggesting that this has fully occurred in India, but this is the direction of our movement, and the current education “reforms” not only aim at it but constitute a big step towards it. Commoditization of education and commoditization of the products of education proceed apace. The products of education become commodities in a way they never were before. Since commodities have no social sensitivity, the education system becomes exclusively oriented towards producing conformists concerned solely with the exchange value they command on the market. Since commodities are a packaged, complete thing, the notion of education, once it becomes a commodity, precludes any questioning; the emphasis, on the contrary, is for the seller to sell and the buyer to buy a complete package called education. The more complete it is, the less open to doubt, the less surrounded by questions, the better. As a result, creativity, concern for the people around one, excitement with ideas, and the questioning of received wisdom, all these traits which are associated with true education, recede to the background. What we have instead is a destruction of thought. What is happening in India today is not just specific to India. International finance capital is imposing similar changes in the education system elsewhere in the world as well. This effort however will not succeed, in the sense that, even if universities are destroyed in this manner as centres for promoting knowledge and nurturing ideas, the necessity for resistance, especially in the context of the current capitalist crisis, will give rise to other sources of education. Sources of education outside of universities will spring up, as they did (sporadically no doubt) in the colonial period, based on the experience of life itself, where ideas anathema to international finance capital will flourish. But instead of waiting for this to happen, which will necessarily be a long, drawn-out process, it would be much better if the attempt to destroy universities is itself thwarted right now, which is why it has become crucial to struggle against the current education “reforms”.

Notes 1 Both these terms are defined below. 2 This change in the nature of the State is discussed in Patnaik (2007)

On the political economy of educational “reforms”  27 3 The latest among the many documents brought out by the present government on education policy is the New Education Policy (2020).

References Althusser L. (1971) “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, New Left Books, London. Government of India (2020) New Education Policy, New Delhi. Kautsky Karl (1903) Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx, available on www.marxists.org Kalecki M. (1943) “Political Aspects of Full Employment” reprinted in Selected Essays on the Dynamics of the Capitalist Economy1933–1970, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1971. Patnaik P. (2007) “The State Under Neo-liberalism” reprinted in Re-Envisioning Socialism, Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2011, pp. 125–135. Patnaik U. (2019) Exploring the Poverty Question: Inequality and Poverty in India 1973–74 to 2009–10, Report Submitted to the ICSSR.

3 Beyond instrumentality Restoring the spirit of higher education Avijit Pathak

It is interesting to look at the state of higher learning: the way universities generate and disseminate knowledge, raise new questions, and arouse human sensitivity. Even though as a learner one enters university at a relatively mature stage, the process of socialization and internalization of ethical and cultural values does not stop. It would, therefore, not be wrong to say that there is continuity in one’s journey from school to university: one keeps learning, growing and evolving. In fact, it is not impossible to find people amongst us who would confess that university life, for them, has acted like a turning point, a catalyst making them rethink the world – its politics, values and ideals. Yes, we are familiar with its grand ideals, its humanism and its creative possibilities which have often been celebrated by great thinkers, educationists and visionaries. But then, a university, it has to be admitted, cannot exist as an island; the flow of larger politico-economic forces and socio-historical trends are bound to influence its ethos, its culture, and its orientation towards knowledge and research. Not surprisingly, a university often becomes a site of contradictions: idealism vs. pragmatism; fundamental knowledge vs. market-driven instrumental research; egalitarian humanism vs. elitist exclusion. Furthermore, in a country like ours, characterized by uneven development, scarcity of resources, and excessive pressure of ever-growing aspirants from diverse sections of society, our universities, barring exceptions, face yet another kind of crisis emanating from an irrelevant curriculum, demotivated teachers and students, an absence of a meaningful research and teaching agenda, and above all, widespread campus violence. Under these circumstances, what can we do to restore the humanistic ideal of the university, and make it contribute to the cultural and ethical development of the individual and the larger society? In this chapter I wish to throw light on these complex issues, and further reflect on the possibilities of emancipator education.

I Trajectory of a vision To begin with, let me refer to the three ideals of the university which, I believe, are absolutely crucial for enabling it to contribute to the enrichment of human sensitivity and culture. First, what ought to characterize a

Beyond instrumentality  29 university is its identity as a whole (not merely an aggregate of self-centred departments): the way it can become a confluence of diverse epistemologies and traditions of knowledge, and generate a truly dialogic space. Its promise, I would emphasize, is the cultivation of a mind characterized by perpetual alertness, a sense of humility, and willingness to learn and see beyond one’s limited horizon. Would it be an exaggeration to say that the fate of democracy lies in such a dialogic consciousness? Living in a university, let us hope, is like fighting all sorts of limitedness and exclusion, and thereby celebrating the ethos of openness, plurality and democracy. Second, the symmetry of teaching and research should be seen as yet another significant ideal. Exploring new frontiers of knowledge, and sharing these exciting ideas with students; nurturing an intimate bond between the teachers and the taught; and contributing to the creation of a generation of thinkers, researchers and concerned citizens: these practices – if followed with zeal and enthusiasm – are capable of having a deep-rooted impact on the development of the mind – its calmness, its patience and endurance, its commitment to fundamental questions relating to nature, life, culture and society. And third, the university as an embodiment of an alternative (or truly sane) culture filled with the principles of cosmopolitanism, gender equity and ecological sensitivity needs to be appreciated because only then is it possible to make an attempt to unite theory and practice, and arouse hope that utopias are not dead. All these three ideas merge, and take us to the vision of a university that keeps its intellectual and ethico-moral quest alive, and refuses to measure itself purely in terms of the rationality of the market. It is important to situate these ideals in the context of the ongoing debate on the very purpose of a university – its higher objectives, its social functions and its economic utility. At this juncture, it would, therefore, not be wrong to recall John Henry Newman, who indeed contributed immensely to the idea of a liberal university (Newman 1959). Newman was articulating his ideas in the mid-nineteenth century. In fact, in the Discourses he gave in Dublin at the inception of the Catholic university in 1852, the idea of a liberal university became more obvious. Knowledge, he insisted, should be seen as an end in itself. ‘That alone is liberal knowledge’, argued Newman, ‘which stands in its own pretensions, is independent of sequel, expects no complement, refuses to be informed (as it is called) by any end, or absorbed into any art, in order to present itself to our contemplation’. In our times it is, however, easy to dismiss him as an ‘elitist’ thinker who, as his opponents would allege, was not willing to give importance to man’s practical needs, and instead, pleaded for knowledge for its own sake, even making a case for theology as a fundamental branch of knowledge in a university. It is also possible to argue that such an idea of liberal education would encourage only select aristocracy who alone can afford to forget ‘utility’ or the practical needs of professional education (and its relationship with job, industry and market. We know that the idea of a liberal university that Newman, Pattison and their disciples were pleading for was not accepted by all. As society

30  Avijit Pathak was changing because of a combination of science, free trade and democracy, hard questions were being asked, and the answers that they evoked were radically to alter the idea of a university. In England itself an effort was made to persuade the universities to establish links with professional training. Indeed, with this declaration of social need and utility, as Lyons argued in an exhaustive essay (1983:113–44), Playfair was drawing the outline of a very modern debate. And particularly in our times characterized by the expansion of the ‘knowledge economy’ and the resultant need for professional/technical education and skilled ‘human resources’, this debate has acquired added intensity. The idealistic vision of liberal education is in a crisis, and pragmatic interests are beginning to shape the agenda of higher learning. No wonder, as Clark Kerr (1963) would have argued, the American utilitarian idea of a ‘multiversity’ as a service-based enterprise specializing in training, research and advice for all major sectors of society is becoming popular throughout the world. The dominant argument is that there should be a closer connection between universities and emerging markets for educated labour. Yes, these arguments, a pragmatist might argue, have their relevance, because knowledge cannot be separated from practical interests, and it is also important to train a skilled generation capable of managing the ever-changing techno-economic enterprises. Moreover, one might also smell some sort of intellectual elitism in the classical tradition of liberal education. Yet, I would insist, an educationist like Newman was making a relevant point we should not lose sight of because of our recent enthusiasm for market-friendly education. A university, Newman believed, should cultivate our quest for truth, and a ‘cultivated intellect’ he was hopeful, would not only serve its own purpose, it would also fulfil a social function. After all, better men, as Newman hoped, make a better world! In other words, a university, no matter how utilitarian it becomes, ceases to be a university if it loses its idealism: its quest for fundamental truth, for beauty, and for the cultivation of the human mind. Not the negation of the practical, but the task of elevating it to a higher level of refinement is what should distinguish a university, and separate it from a polytechnic or a business school. I would, therefore, celebrate the idea of a university in which ‘useful’ branches of knowledge like biotechnology, computer science and financial economics are by no means allowed to devalue the significance of, say, a professor contemplating Tibetan Buddhism, or a scholar offering a course in Sanskrit literature! Let this confluence enrich our understanding, and make us realize that there is also a world beyond immediate practical needs. Otherwise, we are likely to find ourselves in a situation in which, as Ronald Barnett wrote with great concern, ‘skills develop; policies are shaped; techniques are refined; but wisdom as a form of deep reflection, collective exchange, and a recognition and even a critique of inner values is put in jeopardy (Barnett 1994:153). In India too we find a similar debate, a similar concern. If we look at the social context in which modern universities emerged in colonial India, it is not difficult to understand that a basic purpose behind the establishment of

Beyond instrumentality  31 these centres for higher learning, as Wood’s Despatch declared in no uncertain terms, was ‘the diffusion of European Knowledge’ (quoted in Ghosh 1995:74–75). But a nation that achieved independence after a prolonged struggle for decolonization was bound to rethink the purpose of higher learning. It was not so much a question of critiquing what Wood’s Despatch celebrated: ‘the improved arts, science, philosophy and literature of Europe’. Essentially, it was about an urgent need for consolidating the foundation of a newly independent nation strengthening its techno-industrial infrastructure, and thereby overcoming poverty and inequality. No wonder the recommendations of the Radhakrishnan Commission (1948–49) reflected rather sharply on the changing conceptions of ‘duties and responsibilities of our universities’. Universities, we were told, ‘must enable the country to attain, in short a time as possible, freedom from want, disease and ignorance, by the application and development of scientific and technological knowledge’ (Quoted in Bhatt and Agarwal 1969:98). Yet, these practical needs, as the commission repeatedly emphasized, would not make much sense without the quest for fundamental values. If in the name of practicality we forget ‘higher values of life’, the danger is that ‘we will have a number of scientists without conscience, technicians without taste who find a void within themselves, a moral vacuum and a desperate need to substitute something, anything, for their lost endeavour and purpose’ (Ibid:101). Indeed, it is refreshing to recall that ‘we are building a civilization, not a factory or a workshop; and the quality of a civilization depends not on the material equipment or the political machinery but on the character of men’ (Ibid:102–103). See the grandness of the ideal that the Radhakrishnan Commission placed before us: We cannot preserve real freedom unless we preserve the value of democracy, justice and liberty, equality and fraternity. It is the ideal towards which we should work though we may be modest in planning our hopes to the result which in the near future are likely to be achieved. ‘Utopias are sweet dreams’, wrote Kant, but to strive restlessly towards them is the duty of the citizen and of the statesmen as well. Universities must stand for these ideal causes which can never be lost so long as men seek wisdom and follow righteousness. (Ibid:100–101) Times are, however, changing fast. And the demand for ‘useful’ education is becoming more and more intense. The prevalent mood, it seems, is to facilitate knowledge application in sectors like health, agriculture and industry because the ability of a nation to use and create knowledge capital determines its capacity to empower and enable its citizens by increasing human capabilities. But then, it should never be forgotten that a university, even if it excels in the production of useful knowledge, ceases to be a university if it loses its fundamental queries – its finer ideals of freedom, creativity, and intellectual/moral/ spiritual enrichment. How important it is to retain these ideals, particularly at a time when global capitalism seeks to alter the very agenda of education.

32  Avijit Pathak

II Fragments, hierarchies and beyond The question is: are we actually capable of retaining these ideals? To begin with, let us reflect on the way our orientation towards knowledge is undergoing a transformation. It is indeed becoming increasingly difficult to retain a truly holistic or a dialogic culture in the university. An important reason is that with modernity, knowledge is becoming increasingly fragmented and specialized. Possibly reductionism as an epistemological principle is becoming dominant; it is thought that the whole can be reduced into parts, and what is, therefore, important is to study the part, or the fragment with all its details. No wonder, a sense of the whole, or a spirit of connectedness is often sacrificed because of this narrow and over-specialized interest. Modern medicine, to take a specific illustration, reveals rather strikingly the epistemology of reductionism and its implicit over-specialization. A general physician with an understanding of the body as a whole, we all realize, is becoming a rare species; instead, each fragment of the body is now seen as a discrete entity, and subject to the medical gaze of super-specialized doctors. Likewise, in a university we see professors and departments with a narrow specialization and rigid disciplinary boundaries. Seldom does one find a situation in which, say, a molecular biologist, a neoclassical economist and a feminist theorist interact, share ideas, and contribute to the understanding of the world in a more holistic and integrated fashion. Indeed, specialization has gone to such an extent that, as a professor of biotechnology once told me, ‘even among colleagues in the same department there is hardly any communication’. We all seem to be living in our islands of research. This over-specialization, I guess, has two negative consequences: (a) it leads to some sort of retreat into one’s narrow domain of expertise, and this fragmented view of the world further prevents one from developing a broader understanding of the reality; and (b) it promotes and exaggerates the cult of specialized experts, and as a result, the space for public intellectuals and educators tends to get reduced. This is unfortunate. To paraphrase Henry Giroux (1997), if we define an academic with the narrow language of professionalism, we fail to realize that teachers as cultural workers should also actively struggle as public intellectuals who can relate to and address wider issues that affect both the immediacy of their location and the wider global context. There is yet another reason for the lack of connectedness or holism in a university. In fact, apart from excessive specialization and its inherent limitations, these multiple disciplines, it seems, are often ranked in a hierarchy. There are two aspects to this hierarchy. First, some branches of knowledge are seen as more ‘objective’, more ‘universal’, and hence more ‘legitimate’ than others. Take, for instance, three main schools in an average university – school of natural sciences, school of social sciences, and school of arts and humanities. It is generally believed the natural sciences have solid foundations – discoveries, laws and theoretical postulates in these sciences are based on hard empirical facts, experimentations and the principle of

Beyond instrumentality  33 universal logic that transcend all sorts of socio-cultural barriers and biases – whereas liberal arts and humanities, to take another extreme, are seen as domains of creative imagination, subjectivity and cultural particularism, and hence not ‘true’ in a way that national sciences are. In fact, a distinction is being created between objective science and literary imagination, universalism and particularism, between fact and fiction. Even though contemporary philosophies of science and recent postmodern sensibilities seek to unsettle this distinction,1 in the actual practice of academic life the rule of positivist regime and its hierarchies do not wither away easily. Not surprisingly, there is a severe identity crisis or a methodological riddle that the social sciences experience. Are social sciences, as far as their methodologies are concerned, nearer to natural sciences – their objectivity, universality and value-neutrality? Or are these sciences more akin to arts and humanities? Yes, those who are still positivists of some sort, and striving for a legitimate scientific status in the domain of knowledge – say, economists or sociologists with a high degree of quantitative techniques – would never feel comfortable with the ‘subjectivity’ of arts and humanities. With their ‘scientificity’ they would rather retain a safe distance from literature, metaphysics, philosophy and aesthetics. But then, there are also social scientists who are more hermeneutic and, therefore, more sensitive to the domain of creativity, imagination, reflexivity and understanding. In other words, social sciences are impossible to imagine without this methodological anxiety. The point that I wish to argue is that these methodological hierarchies prevent the possibility of a respectable and equal relationship among different disciplines. Even if not always articulated explicitly, natural scientists, it may not be entirely wrong to say, see themselves as more legitimate seekers of truth doing something objective and universal. They see themselves as more intelligent, rigorous, specialized, and separated from the vagueness of ethno-knowledge. With this epistemological arrogance, it is not surprising if they look at humanities and social sciences with a sense of ridicule and scepticism. They may allege that people in humanities are making simple things complex; they are essentially esoteric and not really relevant as far as the practical needs of the world are concerned. Furthermore, their ideas are heavily opinionated without objective foundations! Likewise, scholars of humanities and social sciences become offended, and accuse natural scientists of their isolation, their ignorance of finer things of life, their conservatism, and overall their apolitical attitude. Right from school education one internalizes the hierarchy of knowledge; science, it is thought, is for bright people, whereas humanities are for the rest. A university is not an island. It reproduces the same hierarchy.2 I know of a professor of physics who refuses to see any relevance in what I do in the university: teaching Portuguese language and literature. It is sad. I feel it is important to break the isolation of science.

34  Avijit Pathak Scientists must know how to communicate with lay people, and how to understand others.3 Unfortunately, for a scientist, interest in larger issues is seen as a negative quality. It indicates that one is not sufficiently focused, and thereby becoming unnecessarily philistine.4 Their apprehensions indicate, if I use C.P. Snow’s much-talked-about idiom, ‘two cultures’, (Snow 1964) which continue to prevail in our universities, and cause mutual suspicion, hostility and rigid stereotypes. The second component of this hierarchy is related to differential prospects and privileges attached to these branches of knowledge. Natural sciences (possibly not ‘pure’ sciences, but applied, policy oriented, techno-economic sciences), it would not be wrong to say, have more money, more projectsand more opportunities, and hence students in these disciplines are more likely to be better placed, whereas social sciences and humanities have perpetual financial insecurity, and students live with terrible anxiety relating to their career prospects. Imagine, for instance, the contrasting self-identity of a student of computer science and, say, a student of Urdu literature. Anyone who has lived in an Indian university knows that these two students, even though belonging to the same institute, live in two different worlds. A budding computer scientist knows that a lucrative career is awaiting them, whereas a student of Urdu literature, even though bright, knows that the future is terribly uncertain, and difficulties are enormous. Look at the gravity of the crisis. A newspaper reports: Running a dhaba, a Photostat shop or a general store for a living is not what one would have in mind after spending 12 years in academics to get a Ph.D. But that is what a few of the Ph.D. holders from JNU, in Persian and Urdu, have been doing for a living.5 Even if these are extreme cases, the fact is that these contrasting worlds with asymmetrical opportunities and resources within the same university cause widespread anguish, and demoralization among students and teachers. ‘I experience a sense of void’, a research student of mine once told me. As he added, Many of my friends from economics and other lucrative disciplines are talking about their fat salaries, their new jobs on corporate sectors. But I do not know what would happen after my research, whether I would be fortunate enough to get a job in a college or in a university. Yes, my student’s lonely battle reveals the crisis: how the growing marketization of education does injustice to those who are equally good, bright and sincere, but pursuing a project that, instead of being instrumental, is more philosophical and fundamental. And not only that. This hierarchy leads the more ‘successful’ sciences (sciences which are economically beneficial) to

Beyond instrumentality  35 retreat into their own privileged world, and, as a result, the cohesiveness of the university as an integrated whole gets further eroded. ‘Most scientists in these fields’ argued Edward Shils, have tended not to interest themselves in the university as a whole. For them, the university has become an administrative convenience, a faculty club which is a place for departmental lunches. The central administration is a burden, a token of excessive overhead charges on grants which the individual scientist has acquired through his own exertions outside the university. (Shils 1992:262) Can we overcome this duality? Apart from resisting the marketization of education, we also need a more inclusive culture conducive to a meaningful and sustained cross-disciplinary dialogue and conversation in order to retain the grand ideal of higher learning. However, disciplinary boundaries which are retained through specialized journals, professional associations and peer pressure are not always easy to transcend. We all realize how our respective disciplines give us distinctive identities as knowledge seekers (I am a historian, I visit the archives; you are an anthropologist, you visit the field, and write ethnography; or I am a sociologist, and Durkheim and Weber are my icons; you are a philosopher, you speak more of Kant and Hegel), and therefore, an attempt to enter someone else’s territory is not easily appreciated. One begins to fear that it would cause identity confusion. Yet, as I wish to argue, it is not altogether impossible to overcome these difficulties. After all, disciplinary boundaries – if we think with an open mind – cannot be said to be very rigid; disciplines often merge and overlap in terms of shared concerns. For instance, I have often wondered whether it would be really feasible for any single discipline to monopolize a thinker like Karl Marx. In Marx’s writings and concerns, any careful reader would admit, we see sociology, politics, history, economics and philosophy merging. Or, for that matter, should Sigmund Freud only be taught in the psychology department? The fact is that Freud’s penetrating writings on civilizations and moral questions (ranging from Totem and Taboo to Civilization and its Discontents) have immense relevance to students of anthropology, sociology and literature. The point I am trying to plead for is that disciplinary boundaries are not made of iron; they can be transcended. See the way a professor of economics of education once narrated the story of this quest: It is absolutely important to have a cross-disciplinary dialogue. As an economist, I realize how important it is for economics to interact with sociology, psychology, and history to understand people’s choices. I know that in my own university there are at least fifteen professors across disciplines who are working on education. But seldom do they interact, and share their ideas. This must stop, and we should strive for a more cross-disciplinary interaction.6

36  Avijit Pathak Or, think of a professor of literature having a similar quest: I work on Latin American Literature. I wonder why no communication with scholars of international politics is taking place. After all, Latin American literature reveals the dynamics of polity, economy and culture which should be of interest to them.7 This quest, I believe, should be celebrated for both epistemological as well as ethical reasons. The more we learn from one another the more we enlarge our horizon, and overcome our insulation. This dialogic process breaks down stereotypes about others; it also generates a sense of humility, and makes one realize that there is a bigger world beyond one’s narrow specialization. That is why natural sciences, social sciences and humanities need to interact more frequently. Take a concrete example. In India we all have witnessed the debate on development which in recent times has gained new momentum because of diverse socio-political and environmental movements, like the Narmada BachaoAndolan. I have often felt that a university would be an ideal place for a truly meaningful cross-disciplinary dialogue on development – a dialogue in which, for example, cultural anthropologists working on adivasis and their mode of engagement with nature, environmental scientists studying the ecological implications on developmental projects, economists engaged with cost-benefit analysis, and sociologists reflecting on the social consequences of displacement and homelessness can sit together, share their perspectives, listen to one another, and enrich our understanding. The fact is that development has multiple layers and complex meanings, and a mature cross-disciplinary dialogue enables us to go deeper. It can also make each discipline rethink the kind of questions it raises, and the paradigm it takes for granted. In this context I wish to make yet another important point. Humanities and social sciences should have the capacity to unite the university as a whole, and give a distinctive character to it. After all, humanities and social sciences are concerned with our collective destiny, and because of their very nature, are capable of arousing the interests of diverse sections of society. Music or poetry, film or aesthetics, religion or politics – if addressed and communicated in an imaginative way – can attract almost everybody in the university. Edward Shils, it seems, captured this spirit when he reflected on ‘social science as public opinion’ (1977:273–285). Even quite technical social science, argued Shils, finds its way into broader pools of public opinion. No wonder, even those who study subjects other than social science cannot escape its influence. It is, therefore, necessary and desirable on the part of these departments – social sciences and humanities – to offer carefully designed courses for students of natural sciences, and to organize public lectures and workshops. Let these departments humanize the university, and contribute to the growth of its moral conscience. Ironically, however, this does not happen easily. There are two constraints. First, these departments too fall into the same trap of excessive specialization, and the

Beyond instrumentality  37 practitioners of these disciplines begin to fear that a wider dialogue with lay persons would somehow dilute their epistemological foundations, and trivialize their professional identities. Not surprisingly, the humanness of these disciplines gets lost. Because of a strange academic logic of production, dissemination and specialization of knowledge even a literary figure like Premchand, to take an example, gets confined to the ritualism of academics, and becomes merely a PhD topic for students of Hindu literature. Or, for that matter, women’s oppression becomes yet another exclusivist theme reserved for an over-specialized gender studies group! The diffusion of ideas, and their liberating potential get blocked as departments lose the thread of connectedness with people’s aspirations, and become utterly monopolistic. I am not pleading for populism. Instead, I am arguing that great ideas need not necessarily lose their depth if we start communicating with the larger audience. And it is this art of communication that distinguishes a public intellectual from a mere specialist. Public intellectuals are great educators. Isn’t it so revealing that Noam Chomsky is being read by all sorts of people – natural scientists, political activists and university professors; or a political theorist like Rajni Kothari does not remain limited to select departments? A university would lose its beauty if its humanities and social sciences departments fail to produce public intellectuals. Second, because of the hierarchy of knowledge I have already referred to, the practitioners of liberal arts and social sciences tend to develop acute anxiety regarding their own location, status and social functions. Possibly this epistemological insecurity further discourages them from living with zeal and enthusiasm. How is it then possible for them to emerge as charismatic leaders and conscience-makers in the university? As a matter of fact, even in our own university, which has a distinctively rich tradition in social sciences and humanities, there are students and researchers with a wounded consciousness. They experience a crisis of meaning in what they do; and this purposelessness causes helplessness and anguish. However, if we think deeply, we realize that there are deeper purposes that social sciences and humanities can fulfil. Take, for instance, a discipline like sociology which, as some technical experts of ‘useful’ sciences might allege, is too diffused, too vague and too generalized. But sociology, it has to be realized, has two important functions to fulfil. First, what comes to my mind is something called secular theology: an urge to create a better world, and provide new moral foundations of a modern society. In fact, when I look at the intellectual trajectory of some of the finest sociologists of the modern era, I find this common thread in their mission. Auguste Comte – the celebrated sociologist who gave immense momentum to the discipline in the first half of the nineteenth century – was witnessing anew French society born of the great revolution. It was indeed a world in transition: the old medieval/theological order was collapsing, and the new secular/industrial order emerging. And Comte’s sociology, we all know, sought to create a ‘positive religion of human kind’ – a religion uniting science and ethics, and modernity and community – to reconstruct

38  Avijit Pathak the new society. In a way, Emile Durkheim – yet another French sociologist – inherited the same tradition. He was secular, modern and scientific, yet deeply eager to restore collective order in an industrial society characterized by heightened differentiation, and specialization and division of labour. It was like reaffirming the transcendent power of the sacred in an otherwise secular world. And for that matter, even Karl Marx, despite his close affinity with the scientificity of historical materialism, was not merely a dispassionate/detached observer. He too was immensely romantic and spiritual, and guided by an intense passion to create a communist society free from exploitation, fragmentation and alienation. To put it otherwise, the inspiration that we derive from these classical thinkers makes us realize that it is this role of a visionary that gives a refreshingly new meaning to the vocation of sociology, or for that matter, to liberal arts and humanities. It is like finding a higher objective in what one does. It is like relating the quest for knowledge to a supreme goal, and living with self-dignity and higher purpose. Second, there is yet another important role – the role of a critic – that can be assigned to the practitioners of these disciplines. A critic does not get carried away by the dominant/official ideology; instead, it is the willingness to see alternative ways of looking at the world, and appreciate differences and voices of dissent that distinguishes her. But then, this criticality does not mean that one has to be cynical, and ‘deconstruct’ everything. A critic, it should not be forgotten, is also striving for something positive and humane. In fact, this role of a critic can be seen in the intellectual mission of some of our creative social scientists who are interrogating the status quo – say, a mode of ruthless techno-industrial development, or a consumptionist/patriarchical structure with gender stereotypes and inequalities, and at the same time, striving for an egalitarian, inclusive and ecologically sensitive society. In other words, humanities and social sciences can take us beyond ‘instrumental’ interests, and make us realize the significance of what Habermas would have regarded as ‘hermeneutic’ and ‘emancipatory’ interests in the quest for knowledge (Habermas 2004). That is why, as I am arguing, these branches of knowledge ought to play a leading role in restoring the holistic/ humanistic ideal of the university, and generating a higher purpose to bring sanity to an otherwise over-specialized academic arena with rigid boundaries, divisions and hierarchies.

III Teaching and research: towards a symmetry What about a symmetrical relationship between teaching and research – yet another important ideal that a university ought to uphold? Teaching is essentially about transmission of knowledge and ideas; it is an act of communion with a new generation of learners. And research is about one’s perpetual alertness: one’s eagerness to explore the ever-expanding frontiers of knowledge. In fact, the ideal of the university is that one is continually exploring new ideas through research, and also sharing and communicating

Beyond instrumentality  39 these discoveries and innovations with young minds. A university faculty ought to be a thinker as well as a communicator, a researcher as well as a teacher. As a teacher, I realize this truth every day. For example, I teach a course on Modern Indian Sociological Thought, and when I deliver a series of lectures on Gandhi, I realize how difficult the task is. I can’tjust come to the class and repeat the age-old stereotypes about Gandhi. I am required to go deeper; it is necessary on my part to see how social philosophers and activists of diverse ideological traditions – Ambedkarites, subalternists, eco-feminists and postcolonial theorists – have engaged with Gandhi. In other words, delivering a lecture on Gandhi is like doing research on a series of complex texts: from B.R.Ambedkar’s What Congress and Gandhi have done to the Untouchables to AshisNandy’sThe Intimate Enemy. Teaching and research are indeed difficult to separate. Research itself is the methodical acquisition of knowledge, hitherto unknown. Knowledge languishes and fades if it is not cultivated research. Teaching too languishes if it is not sustained by research. Even though a particular teacher himself does relatively little research, he has to be informed about the research which is being done on his subject. Knowledge is not self-sustaining; it does not grow of itself. It has tobe actively sought and brought into teaching to remain alive. These are among the first responsibilities of the academic (Shils 1982:113). Yes, it is indeed a great ideal. One is striving for new ideas, and one is also creating a new generation of learners. What else can be more demanding? Yet, as I wish to argue, it is not always easy to retain this symmetry. A major reason, I believe, lies in a hierarchy which, even though not always stated openly, implies that teaching is somehow less prestigious than research – at least, for the academic profile of a university faculty. Why is this so? Research, we all realize, has a distinctively higher ideal: to raise new questions and strive for appropriate answers, and moreover, to retain a higher degree of intellectual zeal, perseverance, and absolute dedication to the domain of knowledge. It is in this sense that research – or the quest for new knowledge – leads one to go beyond oneself and pursue an ideal that transcends what can be regarded as immediate/utilitarian aspects of university life: coming to the department, doing the routine work, retaining the job, and earning the salary! Great researchers with their dedication and path-breaking publications arouse immense dynamism, inspire students, and take the university to a higher level of excellence. In comparison to this noble ideal of research, teaching may be perceived – particularly by those who see it from outside – as relatively less stimulating and demanding. They may see it as just another everyday engagement – coming to the class, delivering the lecture, relying on already prescribed select texts, completing the syllabus, conducting the examination, and grading the students. It does not require extraordinary scholarship; it requires just moderate intelligence and some sort of communication skill. Teachers, unlike researchers, do not generate new ideas! I, however, wish to interrogate this perception. First, I would like to examine the negative consequences of this hierarchy – the way the special

40  Avijit Pathak emphasis which is put on research publications (‘publish or perish’) has led to the negation of the grand ideal of research, and also caused trivialization. Second, I would argue that meaningful teaching, unlike what outsiders think of it, is an immensely creative act which is also a kind of research in its own distinctive way, and without which a university becomes utterly dull and colourless – devoid of a stimulating exchange of ideas. It is indeed important to examine the way research itself is losing its purity, and is being projected as a kind of attractive package that sells in these pragmatic times. What becomes important is not necessarily the authenticity of one’s fundamental quest, but how one’s research gets instant visibility, how it brings money, consultancy and projects, and how it is concretized through widespread social networking. In a country like ours this problem has acquired yet another dimension. To put it without much pretence, it is almost an obsessive preoccupation with foreign connections and foreign publications. If you are ‘somebody’, you must visit abroad (I mean Euro-American universities) frequently; you must have somebody out there whom you can occasionally invite to your own department. And you must develop a particular idiom – your ‘subalternity’ must be sold in American universities; your ‘cultural studies’ must be ‘Sanskritized’ through select quotes from Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault; and amongst your Indian colleagues you must always remember with great nostalgia: ‘when I was at Oxford…’. This mindset has entered so deep into our consciousness that the other day a student of mine asked me without the slightest hesitation: ‘Sir, what are you doing here in this terrible summer when many of your colleagues are visiting Europe and delivering lectures?’ I do not blame my student. He is only revealing the trend. He knows that the research must sell and glamorize itself. And the irony is that this sort of research is often being privileged and awarded. A striking illustration of this unethical practice is the way some of the leading universities in India are appointing professors. Insiders know how, at times, one gets a direct professorship simply because one has visibility in terms of research with appropriate social/cultural capital, and ‘right’ publications in ‘right’ places. Even if one does not have adequate teaching experience it does not matter. In fact, a hierarchy has already been established in our leading universities: there are some who are supposedly great researchers, who are tremendously mobile, visit abroad frequently, write papers in international journals, bring projects, and place their research students in appropriate places; and there are others who are simply invisible, who just teach in silence and wait endlessly for their promotions. This hierarchical practice has not done the culture of the university any good. It is not difficult to come across college/university teachers expressing their utter anguish and discontent: Imagine my case. I have to teach fourteen hours a week. I have to supervise M.Phil/Ph.D. students. See the amount of work I do. It is, however, sad that for the selection committee, teaching has no worth, no significance.8

Beyond instrumentality  41 Essentially, it is a matter of one’s value and choice: whether one likes classroom interaction, feedback from students, and satisfaction in teaching; or whether one wants to become ‘big’ instantly by publishing as much as one can. But we all know that at the end of the day one’s ‘worth’ would be measured solely in terms of one’s publications.9 In this context it is also important to realize that the very logic of quantification (number of books, papers and conferences) is doing severe damage to the dignity of research and quality of publications. Apart from the terrible psychic stress one undergoes, it leads to the trivialization of publications. In natural sciences it resembles what Thomas Kuhn would have regarded as ‘puzzle solving’ exercises based on the dominant paradigm of one’s chosen discipline. These publications need not necessarily demonstrate one’s creativity. Publications, as a professor of biotechnology once shared with me, are often routinized. ‘The more you publish the more projects you get. The more projects you get the more you publish’. Likewise, in social sciences, a careful look at the accelerated growth of the industry of edited volumes (and even some of the prestigious publication houses are engaged in this business), and journals (even so-called ‘referred’ journals) does indicate that, with some exceptions, most of these publications are not really contributing to the domain of knowledge in any significant way. In fact, if one dares to see beyond the trap of words (often borrowed from the likes of Bourdieu and Foucault) with ornamental footnotes and references, or statistical details (further mystified through sophisticated quantitative techniques), one realizes how one publication leads to another, and at the end of the day we all are caught by this fetish: the mindless game of ceaselessly demonstrating our ‘academic productivity’. To quote a leading Indian academic: Creativity can be destroyed by boxing it into rigid compartments or by creating hierarchies or by pronouncing judgments prematurely or by imposing quantitative criteria. For instance, in the chase to publish (or perish), often a researcher has little time to work through his ideas completely. A system which imposes quantitative criterion of publications for evaluation dooms itself to mediocrity, to narrowness of linear ideas…So often in physics or economics, a publication is not a new idea but merely a change in some parameter or another way of generating a stable state etc…In economics very often papers are also divorced from any reality. Often enough it almost appears that a second rate mathematician or a physicist would have done a better job of building such an economic model, and yet an economist would do exceedingly well as an economist in today’s environment. (Kumar 1989:135–36) This is not to suggest that everyone has become a smart player of this game, and every piece of research is necessarily shallow or ornamental. There are scholars amongst us who do meaningful research and generate new

42  Avijit Pathak ideas. Their publications, far from being routinized, open up the window, and expand our horizon. For example, if we take the domain of social science research, Indian universities have indeed been enriched by historians like Bipin Chandra and Irfan Habib, or sociologists like M.N.Srinivas and A.R.Desai. In fact, similar illuminating stories, I am sure, would emerge from every discipline. This ideal of creative research has to be perpetually asserted. Not simply because there are inauthentic researchers amongst us, but also because an average Indian university is otherwise full of teachers who seldom publish research papers. We need an environment that encourages research. In this context I wish to make another important point. Teaching itself loses its creativity if it is not in constant touch with research. Well, it is always possible to find teachers who do not take their jobs seriously. It is true that they do not inspire, do not generate new ideas, and just dictate notes, and somehow complete the syllabus. And it is also possible that students are not interested in rigorous learning, and they expect nothing beyond what exams – yes, a faculty pattern of exams – demand from them. This vicious circle seems to have reduced the act of teaching into a dull/monotonous affair. No wonder, one often feels tempted to conclude that a researcher is inherently superior to a teacher. However, anyone who has taught – and taught with a lot of rigour, enthusiasm and intensity – in a college/university knows fairly well that teaching, contrary to the prevalent stereotypes, requires tremendous mental energy: working with students, arousing their curiosity, and inviting them to new ideas and challenges emerging in the discipline. It is in this sense that a good teacher is also a good researcher. Even if she is not a researcher in terms of visibility, she is perpetually exploring ideas, reading new books, and expanding her horizon. Even today, despite multiple constraints, there are many bright teachers working in silence. And I have always felt it is because of their dedication – the way they teach and disseminate new ideas – all celebrity researchers have acquired their legitimacy. Foucault is Foucault, or, for that matter, Andre Beteille is Andre Beteille precisely because their ideas are being taught, discussed and disseminated in the classroom. Indeed, the silent work of great teachers and the fame of creative researchers are inseparable. Moreover, one who loves teaching often realizes that some of the finest moments of creativity and intellectual stimulation emerge in the classroom itself, when students make observations and raise penetrating questions. It is this classroom dialogue that often gives one an idea to explore further, to write a paper or a book. Teaching, in other words, encourages research, and research makes teaching complete. ‘For every lecture I deliver’, a bright young professor of literature once told me, ‘there is a great deal of research; I have to read new books, acquaint myself with new ideas’. There is no exaggeration in this argument. Listening to an illuminating and inspiring lecture delivered by a professor, every good student would agree, is like reading a good book, and celebrating every part of it with great joy and enthusiasm. And not only that. Good teaching is endowed with immense moral potential. After all, it is democratic and

Beyond instrumentality  43 communicative. It begins with an urge to share, and interact with young minds. As a process, it is perpetually refreshing; it blooms every day. What else is a university without a vibrant community of teachers and students evolving an intimate bond?

IV Praxis of learning A university is also a place that ought to emerge as a model: a model inspiring an alternative culture, a new possibility. True, a university is not an island; students and teachers bring with them their cultural beliefs, practices and prejudices. Yet, it is legitimate to expect that a university precisely because it is a reflexive community of thinkers and researchers engaged with ideas, should interrogate many ugly and oppressive beliefs and practices which are otherwise prevalent in the larger society, and generate alternative possibilities. It is in this context that the relationship between theory and practice needs to be reflected on. A university may be known for its theoretical richness – say, the ideas it generates on class struggle, subaltern voices, women’s movements, and environmental consequences of massive developmental projects. However, the question is: does the knowledge one acquires in a university actually alter one’s mode of living? Or is it merely an intellectual exercise? I would rather argue that a university can exist as a model for the rest of society only when it seeks to evolve a symmetry between theory and practice, knowing and doing, and intellect and wisdom. Certainly, it is a difficult ideal. For example, it may not be particularly easy for a bright professor of politics to declass himself, and give up his bourgeois habits, even if he is inclined to Marxism. Or, for that matter, a professor of environmental sciences may not be willing to minimize the use of performance cars. Nor it is convenient for a feminist theoretician to give freedom to a modern dasi: a female domestic help who does ‘cooking, sweeping, cleaning’ – an activity that the agenda of women’s liberation would hardly approve of. Likewise, a typical university seminar on Gandhi might not hesitate to spend a huge amount of money on butter chicken and whisky. This gap should by no means negate the contributions that these scholars otherwise make to the understanding of politics, gender, environment and even Gandhi’s truth. After all, a university should also be known for its relatively autonomous theoretico-philosophical quest. Nevertheless, it is always desirable to try, to evolve sensitivity: to demonstrate a willingness to bring one’s life relatively closer to what one learns or teaches. Otherwise, the gap between theory and practice, I fear, would dishonour theory itself. Imagine a university in which professors choose to avoid cars, and instead, use bicycles or simply walk while moving around the campus; students refuse to engage in matrimonial alliances involving dowry, and the entire community pledges to free the campus from polythene and plastic. Possibly such a dream university would give birth to an altogether different notion of excellence: not just in terms of publications, academic honours and intellectual ranking, but

44  Avijit Pathak essentially in terms of the quality of life a university nurtures, or its ability to make a significant difference in people’s life-practices. Only then would theoretical discourses on global warming, environmental crisis and patriarchal violence acquire their legitimacy. There is yet another dimension to our quest for an alternative culture. Can universities decolonize our consciousness? The transaction of ideas and knowledge is not always symmetrical. It would not be wrong to say that Euro-American universities continue to exist as our reference points. The books we read, the journals we prefer, the theories we adhere to, the icons we worship – the West seems to be everywhere. It becomes exceedingly difficult to decolonize our consciousness, to have faith in ourselves, and to acquire the courage to find alternative sources of knowledge. How often have we seen our students reading everything about Habermas and his understanding of modernity, but remaining altogether ignorant of Sri Aurobindo’s The Human Cycle – the text that reflects on modernity or the ‘age of reason’ and its discontents. Likewise, we find students working on the specificity of Indian history/social reality, yet desperate to join any Euro-American university to complete their doctoral works. Decolonization of consciousness, let me assert once again, does not mean boycotting the West or its academic discourses. Its only meaning is openness: a creative/ reflexive attitude that gives us the strength – epistemological and cultural – to negotiate with the West as an equal partner. This means cultivating our own resources – our own centres, our own journals, our own traditions of inquiry, and our own vocabulary. We, however, fail because we are not making any sustained effort to alter the prevalent asymmetry. And, instead, we are planning to invite foreign universities. Even though we live in terribly hard/pragmatic times, and utopias disappear fast, there are flashes of truth that keep the search for a new culture alive. The other day while I was entering the university to take my class, I happened to meet a student of mine who had sat with Medha Patkar on a hunger strike to express his solidarity with the Narmada BachaoAndolan. I saw light in his face, and I immediately realized that this time when I delivered a lecture on Antonio Gramsci (an ‘organic intellectual’ said Gramsci, is not just a man of letters, but essentially an active participant in practical life as a constructor, organizer and permanent persuader), I would feel more confident because I would be able to convince my students of the real presence of organic intellectuals amongst us. Or, for that matter, when George W.Bush was visiting India, I was at a protest carnival at our university which, in fact, inspired the anti-imperialism campaign in the capital. These were indeed great moments of hope. How nice it is to recall that it is in the university that I have seen a living protest against patriarchy. I have seen a more healthy and egalitarian relationship between men and women; I have felt that fresh air of freedom: women moving around freely, articulating their world views, taking major decisions and choosing their life-projects. It is in the university that I have seen cross-cultural marriages, sensitivity to animal rights, and growing

Beyond instrumentality  45 environmental consciousness. I have also witnessed a history of resistance – students and teachers struggling, suffering and articulating their voices of dissent against the terror of the Emergency that Indira Gandhi imposed in 1975; their active participation in the relief work after the Bhopal gas tragedy; and their remarkable role in restoring communal harmony in the capital after the riots in 1984. It is in such a university that one day I was able to come to class, and instead of delivering a formal lecture on the prescribed syllabus, ask a student to read a passage from Dostoyevsky’s The Dream of a Ridiculous Man: a man who in his fantasy entered a new world, and described its people in such a vivid manner: They desired nothing and were content, they did not strive to know life the way we strive to probe its depth, because their life was consummate. Their knowledge was finer and more profound than our science, for our sincere attempts to explain the meaning of life. Science itself strives to fathom it in order to teach others how to live; while they know how to live without the help of science. I saw it but I could not understand this knowledge of theirs. They showed their trees to me, and I failed to appreciate the depth of the love with which they gazed at them; it was as if they were speaking to beings like themselves. And do you, I may not be wrong if I tell you that they did speak to them. Yes, they had found a common tongue and I am convinced the trees understood them. This was the way they treated all nature – the beasts who lived in peace with them, never attacking them and loving them, captivated by the peoples love for them. They pointed out the stars to me and spoke to me about them, saying things I could not understand, but I am positive they had some tie with those heavenly bodies, a living tie, not spiritual alone. (Dostoyevsky 1983:360–61) Yes, that day my students forgot formal/academic sociology, and got themselves involved with Dostoyevsky. As I saw their willingness to engage with the ‘ridiculous man’, I experienced the beauty of the university – its willingness to imagine alternatives, and respect utopias as future possibilities. But then, as my more worldly friends would caution me, there are limits to what I can expect from a university. After all, a university is an integral part of this world: a world characterized by the ethos of global capitalism and its market-driven culture. As students and teachers we are not free from our middle-class aspirations and anxieties. Is it, therefore, surprising that if, instead of striving for a counter-culture, these days we begin to think more of safe and secure careers, campus recruitment cells, close ties with the corporate world, and marketization of courses? Or is it surprising that at the end of the day even some of our ultra-leftist students choose to settle in the United States? Under these circumstances, where then is, as Nisblett expressed with great concern, ‘a widened and depended awareness, and a sense of direction for human life?’ Instead, the emerging trend is bound to alarm us:

46  Avijit Pathak Higher education has in fact tended to become more and more instrumental in character, and even if it includes training in interpersonal skills, more and more subtly so. If its only significant aim is to produce and equip professionals to run with smoothness a managerial, electronic and consumer oriented society, what reason is there to think that such a society will take us in the long run where we really want to be?… The more that men or women go on simply using technological devices as ends in themselves or go on being hung up by them, the more the motive for living a life that has scope or depth is weakened. Why should clever animals who can calculate how their appetites can most deliciously be satisfied want to stay human? (Niblett 1994:115–16) We should, however, try to resist it. Although philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways, the central task, as Karl Marx reminded us in one of his theses on Feuerbach, is to change it. Even if this Marxian slogan sounds too polemical, these days we have seen a new epistemological sensitivity emerging from the philosophy of science itself. We are told to break the wall that separates the knower from the known, and celebrate the principles of inter-connectedness, holism and compassion. Indeed, the challenge is to keep this quest alive. And herein lies the relevance of the praxis of learning.

V The crisis and myth of marketization At this juncture, another important question arises: where do we situate an average Indian university in this entire debate? In almost every domain of social life, India, we know, lives in two different worlds. Even in the field of higher education there is severe inequality. True, we have select universities and institutes gifted with extraordinarily reputed faculty, high quality research, and a vibrant culture of learning. However, there is a country which at the same time has been witnessing a sort of ‘diploma disease’: a proliferation of overcrowded colleges/universities whose only function, it seems, is to conduct examinations throughout the year, distribute degrees/ diplomas, and create an illusion of learning. Poor infrastructure, mass copying, irrelevant curriculum, lumpenization, campus violence, and widespread demotivation among students as well as teachers tend to characterize these universities. There is neither creative research, nor meaningful teaching: only absolute trivialization of university degrees. A leading Indian sociologist could not hide his despair while reflecting on the prevalent chaos: Institutions of higher learning today are symbols of indiscipline. Student indiscipline was followed by non-teaching staff discipline, and even the teachers have joined forces with these undisciplined sectors. Who should assume the responsibility for setting things right? It sounds harsh but is nonetheless true that a sizeable section of the teaching

Beyond instrumentality  47 community does not take its obligation to the students seriously. Teaching is often reduced to an uninspired routine. There is little evidence of renovation of and innovation in instructional methods at a time when first generation learners are entering the portals of higher education in increasing numbers. (Dubey 1989:171) How to overcome this depressing scenario? One opinion – which has gained immense momentum in our times – is that these state-funded universities are fast losing their significance and, therefore, private initiatives need to be encouraged to make higher learning more relevant and meaningful. In the era of economic liberalization, such a viewpoint acquires legitimacy because it is taken for granted that privatization would invariably lead to efficiency; students and teachers would be compelled to become accountable; and courses would, therefore, become truly relevant, and succeed in preparing university graduates for skilled jobs in the expanding market of global capitalism. In fact, a market-oriented competitive environment, it is often believed, is vital for our future. A perspective of this kind, needless to add, speaks the language of utility, and at a time when Indian universities are in a crisis, it has its appeal, particularly to the aspiring class willing to ‘invest for future’. What, however, it fails to take into account is a series of ethical and pedagogical issues relating to the marketization of higher learning. For example, if the state begins to retreat, and allows private enterprises to dictate the agenda of education, it is bound to become further commodified, and terribly costly. Even if there are provisions for a few scholarships, it would invariably favour the privileged sections of society, and further intensify the already existing inequality in our society. Is there any other possibility left when, to take a revealing example, a leading private university indicates the emerging trend by proudly declaring its course fees: MBBS – Rs.1,934,500; BDS – Rs.1,197,500; BE – Rs.603,500; B.Pharm – Rs.483,500; Biotechnology – Rs.377,500; Hotel Management – Rs.634,500; B.Sc. Animation – Rs.617,500?10 Furthermore, as the rationale of the market becomes predominant, it begins to cause severe damage to the quest for fundamental knowledge. It would not be an exaggeration to say that private universities and colleges are concentrating primarily on those courses which are saleable, and promise instant job opportunities to their clients. Information technology, biotechnology, tourism, fashion design, computer science and hotel management – these are courses that occupy the centre-stage, and the other branches of knowledge like theoretical sciences, liberal arts and humanities are becoming more and more marginalized.11 While this sort of education satisfies the expanding corporate world and aspiring middleclass, it devalues the depth of higher learning. I am not suggesting that there is something called ‘pure’ knowledge which is entirely free from all practical/mundane interests. Every branch of knowledge has practical implications for the concrete or tangible world we live in. Can physics be altogether separated from engineering, history from tourism industry,

48  Avijit Pathak and sociology from industrial management? Even some academics may feel that this linkage is productive, and, therefore, all over the world there is a pressure from within to marketize education. Derek Book has rightly captured this mindset: Individual faculty members, especially in the best universities, found new ways to supplement their incomes with lucrative activities on the side. As biotechnology boomed, life scientists not only started to seek patent on their discoveries and take attractive consulting assignments; they also began to receive stock from new firms eager for their help and even to found new companies based on their discoveries. Outside the sciences, business school professors travelled to corporations willing to pay substantial sums for days spent consulting or teaching their executives. Legal scholars began to collect large fees for advising law firms on their corporate clients. Economists, political scientists, psychologists, and many others discovered that their counsel was worth a tidy sum to companies, consulting firms, and other private organizations (Bok 2003:13). Yet, no matter how tempting this endeavour is, knowledge, it has to be realized, is not just what sells. Physics, history, sociology: all these fundamental disciplines have their inherent depth, and if a university loses this sense of depth and beauty in the name of utility, it becomes merely a marketplace which, as Bok cautioned, would eventually damage the academic community. Because it is quite natural that ‘professors who work hard at their traditional academic disciplines will resent the extra income earned by colleagues who start a new business or spend a lot of time consulting’; or, for that matter, ‘scientists may bridle at the secrecy imposed by a colleague in their department who is funded by a corporation’ (Ibid: 113). In other words, the university would begin to decline as a cohesive moral community. In this context it is also important to rethink the very notion of ‘relevance’. What is relevant for the market, let it be realized, need not necessarily be relevant for the larger society. Or, for that matter, what is relevant for people need not be useful for the market. Moreover, what is relevant for the market need not necessarily have the philosophical depth that the university ought to strive for. For example, Fashion Technology as a course is indeed relevant for the emerging market, particularly because there is an accelerated growth of consumerism, and the alliance of global capitalism and culture industry, we know, is engaged in manufacturing all sorts of mythical images of fashion and beauty to persuade its target audience. No wonder, Fashion Technology as a course has its adherents. It promises a job, money and glamour. But then, does a course of this kind truly enhance our sensitivity to art and aesthetics – the way, say, Jamini Roy’s paintings or Satyajit Ray’s films do? Or, does it generate some kind of liberating consciousness for people to come out of their suffering and servitude? In contrast, think of a rigorous course in art and aesthetics which is indeed capable of equipping

Beyond instrumentality  49 its learners with appropriate skills as well as critical sensibility: the ability to understand and appreciate how diverse forms of art articulate the changing trajectory of history, and its societal/cultural practices. For example, when a student of mine chooses to write his thesis on the folklore of Mithila, he conveys a message: even if his thesis does not assure him of a job with a fat salary, the university must give him adequate space to ahead with his project. I have always believed that it his creative madness that helps the university to retain a safe distance from the market and its aggression. Likewise, there are branches of knowledge – say, gender studies – which may not be market-friendly, but may have immense liberating potential. Unlike a course in fashion technology, it may give us penetrating insights into the construction of gender identities, and the power discourse of patriarchy; it can inspire young minds to alter their life-projects, and move towards a just society. A university, I repeat, must celebrate these courses (even if not particularly market friendly) which have immense philosophic depth and liberating potential. I am not saying that fashion technology or hotel management has to be treated like a pollutant; it has its uses and adherents. But then, if their logic – the logic of immediate utility – colonizes the sphere of learning, there is a danger. Imagine a situation in which our ‘bright products’ are trained to know only about computing, management and commerce, but not anything significant about physics, literature and social science. It is indeed terrifying, even though they might be earning fat salaries. Social illiteracy amidst technical literacy negates critical and reflexive imagination, and produces a generation which is utterly conformist to the status quo. Another consequence of commodification is that it is creating a mindset that is affecting the entire ethos of learning. Even state-funded reputable central universities are experiencing this change. For example, in a wellknown central university in the capital, one notices how youngsters – particularly after the board examination – get depressed, if they cannot get into commerce or economics! As a matter of fact, a sort of hierarchy of knowledge is deeply internalized, and anything that does not sell in the market, be it physics or literature, is seen as ‘irrelevant’. Not surprisingly, we are witnessing massive demoralization among students who feel that they are at ‘wrong’ places and situated in ‘wrong’ departments. This demotivation, every insider knows, manifests itself in empty classrooms because of poor attendance, in the popularity of ‘champion’ guide books,12 or in the restlessness students show in doing what they believe is more important than formal academics: joining a coaching centre for a medical/engineering/management entrance test, or for that matter, taking up a job in a call centre! This has also led to some sort of gendered orientation towards knowledge. My own experience suggests that even in a university such as ours, liberal arts, humanities, and social sciences are fast becoming predominantly women’s subjects. There has been a steady retreat of men from these courses. Is it because in a patriarchal society men feel the extra burden of earning, and thereby ‘non-profitable’ disciplines fail to attract them? Or is it because ‘hard’ techno-economic sciences are seen as more ‘rational’

50  Avijit Pathak and ‘masculinist’, whereas ‘emotive/irrational’ women are more inclined to ‘soft’ liberal arts, humanities and cultural studies? Whatever the reason, the fact is that we are experiencing asymmetry and imbalance in the entire culture of higher learning. It would not be wrong to say that there is immense pressure of marketization and commodification, and the entire curriculum, we are told, must alter its priorities. If we look at Table 3.1, we can understand, as Roland Barnett has demonstrated with great concern, how the agenda of higher education is shifting from the left-hand column to the right-hand column.

VI Modes of creative intervention The fact is that the market cannot save the domain of higher education. Instead, it further intensifies the crisis. It transforms us into consumers; it seeks to alter the very character of a university – its relatively autonomous domain of free enquiry. This critique by no means suggests that we should continue to give our consent to the way state-funded average Indian colleges/universities are functioning. As I have already stated, education is in a deep crisis in these centres, and we must intervene. It is in this context that I wish to make three concrete proposals, as follows. Restructuring the curriculum Academic depth, let it be realized, is by no means the negation of practical knowledge. In fact, what should distinguish it is precisely this confidence: an attempt to overcome all constructed dualities like theory and practice, contemplative knowledge and practical action, and philosophic maturity and vocational skill. It is integral/holistic orientation which, I believe, should give us the strength to restructure the curriculum, and create a generation

Table 3.1  knowing-that internal intellectual thought problem-making knowledge as process understanding concept-based pure disinterested intrinsic orientation

knowing-how external physical action problem-solving knowledge as product information task-based applied pragmatic instrumental orientation (Barnett 1994:48–49)

Beyond instrumentality  51 of learners for whom academic knowledge, far from remaining merely an ornament, gets concretized in the domain of vocational activities. In order to substantiate my arguments I wish to take three specific cases. First look at sociology – the discipline I am reasonably familiar with. It is not at all uncommon to find undergraduate/postgraduate students of sociology feeling the irrelevance of all that they are doing. It is often said that the existing courses are too theoretical and too bookish to enable them to make sense of the world they live in. See the way a former undergraduate student of sociology from St. Xavier’s college, Mumbai, expressed his anguish: What remains uncontested is the thorough lack of research and field experience imperative to the learning of social sciences. Not only does the textbook emerge as the fundamental reference point for exam evaluation, it remains the exclusive teaching/learning apparatus to the aid of educators/students. What is implied is a learned dependence on the textbook alone with the complete absence of any allied research work on the part of the individual student. Herein lies the fundamental drawback of undergraduate teaching – the teaching of a science devoid of imagination, an exercise in text memorization.13 Nor do these courses, as the argument goes, give them the practical skills which are useful for finding appropriate careers and vocations. That is why the question arises: is it possible to make a course in sociology which is relevant, in the sense that while retaining its philosophic/academic depth, it also equips students with meaningful skills and capabilities? This, I believe, is possible provided we are determined to innovate. Think of an undergraduate course in sociology. Yes, it is absolutely for the students to become familiar with the discipline itself, its origin and evolution, and its diverse methodologies and theoretical perspectives. With this sound sociological imagination, let them enter the domain of sociology: its engagement with caste, community and religion; modernization and development; social movements and social transformation. This theoretical/substantial literature – ranging from the classics written by Durkheim, Weber, and Marx to the sociologies of Ghurye, Srinivas and A.R. Desai – ought to be seen as the critical minimum (or core material) that every student must be familiar with. Once this background is developed, it becomes absolutely important to make students learn how this sociological sensibility can be operationalized in practical domains of work – say, how to make a documentary film on female infanticide, or how to write an extensive report on development and displacement; or how to engage in a communicative interaction with slum dwellers, and initiate an awareness programme on the abuses of alcoholism. This is possible if a significant component of college life (say, at least one year) is devoted to truly substantial field training: working with a media house, or the ministry of rural development, or even a school. I would argue that such a pedagogy of learning through doing would give a

52  Avijit Pathak refreshingly new meaning to academic knowledge. Foucault or Habermas would then no longer appear as distant/esoteric names for enhancing one’s cultural capital; students would, in fact, begin to learn how to use their critical and creative insights in practical domains of work. Furthermore, with such a renovated course structure and pedagogy, they would also find a meaning and relevance in their studies, and above all, gain much-needed self-confidence: the ability to relate education to the sphere of work. How wonderful it would be to find fresh sociology graduates working as media professionals, or research workers in the planning commission, or even documentary film makers. And not only that: it would also give them necessary wisdom – how to contextualize the acquired skill, and use it creatively and productively for the benefit of the larger society. Sociology as a discipline would overcome its stigmatized identity (how often it is perceived as a ‘soft’ option – a mix of common sense and newspaper editorials – that can fetch one a degree without much hard work), and appeal to young learners. Second, take Hindi literature – yet another course which, any college student would tell us, is often degraded, condemned and stigmatized. And even those who do opt for this course are almost compelled to feel that what they are doing has no relevance, no prospect. This is really sad. Even though English literature has its glamour, Hindi is not regarded as prestigious. Possibly even in a postcolonial society like ours, English continues to retain its aura; or possibly as the market expands, English is seen as some sort of ‘cultural capital’ for entering the world of trade, commerce and professions. But then, Hindi is our language; it has its distinctive tradition; and no society can excel if it devalues its language and literature. Hindi literature ought to be seen as an important component of the body of knowledge that the university should uphold. It is, however, possible to redesign the entire curriculum. Well, I would argue – and argue strongly – that literature with its great poetry, short stories, novels and dramas is worth studying in its own right. How can we elevate our consciousness and humanize our civilization without literature? Nirala’s poetry, Premchand’s novels and Hazari Prasad Diwedi’s essays require no utility certificate. But then, while enriching this literary sensibility, it is also possible for a course of this kind to make students familiar with contemporary concerns in which language/ communicative skills are in great demand. While making such an effort, I am aware, a delicate balance has to be maintained. It is certainly not the task of a literature course to make students learn, say, how to communicate as a radio jockey on an FM channel, or how to impress the audience as a television anchor, or how to write a script for a formula Bollywood film. Yet, at the same time it is not impossible for a student with great literary sensibility to make a difference in journalism, or to write a meaningful script for a film that has also immense mass appeal. It is, therefore, important that together with a theory of a literary criticism, grammar, linguistics and literary creations, students are also asked to study – and with equal seriousness – carefully designed papers on journalism, script writing, translation, editing and publishing. If they become editors/publishers, script writers, media

Beyond instrumentality  53 persons, translators and interpreters, these professions, I must add, would acquire a new depth. Let Hindi literature as a discipline revitalize itself, and contribute meaningfully to the functioning of the diverse vocations many of our students strive for. And finally, I wish to refer to a positive experiment that the university of Delhi has conducted in recent times while introducing an undergraduate course in education. Yes, the Bachelor of Elementary Education (B.El.Ed) Programme is a move towards the creation of a cadre of Elementary Education Professionals. In a way it promises the kind of integral holism I am talking about. It is a course that seeks to reconcile fairly developed theories of education and pedagogy with vocational skills that a schoolteacher is required to evolve and sharpen. A rigorous course of this kind that gives great importance to real experiences with the lived reality of school children, school texts and classroom transactions does indeed succeed in giving a sense of purpose to its students. Moreover, teaching as a vocation also requires a new meaning, and students begin to realize that it is my no means a ‘soft’ option; instead, like medicine and engineering, it too requires a sustained effort, philosophic maturity, exposure to child psychology, sociology of education and politics of curriculum, and above all, everyday engagement with school children. This course is indeed a mature effort to unite critical sensibility with vocationalism. All these three examples are related to humanities and social sciences. There is a conscious motive behind this choice. Pragmatists and utilitarians, we know, often allege that these disciplines are losing their relevance. I am, however, refuting their arguments, and instead, pleading for the art of new possibilities. These courses with a restructured curriculum and creative pedagogy can make a difference, generate a sense of purpose among students, and relate knowledge to professional experiences. It is obvious that similar experimentation can be done in other disciplines too, be it physics or mathematics, geography or history. Today all over the world, because of the growing needs of the corporate economy, its service sector and its expanding market, colleges/universities are experiencing severe pressure. Develop a relationship with the market, get sponsors, manage your own resources, introduce self-financing courses, and lure students by promising them immediate placements and fat salaries – no college/university in the world can escape the pressure of this dictum. How do we cope with it? One way is to accept our defeat easily, surrender the very ideals of higher learning, and go in for complete commodification of education. Another way is to pretend that our colleges/ universities can remain as they are: with the same old curriculum and the same mode of teaching. But it would invite only stagnation, and, therefore, further promote the cult of marketization as a remedy for all evils. Beyond these two options, as I am arguing, lies yet another possibility – difficult, but immensely meaningful. This is to acquire the courage to innovate and experiment without sacrificing the core ideals of higher education. Only then is it possible for us to create theoretical activists or activist theoreticians (not

54  Avijit Pathak anti-philosophical ‘skilled resources’), and creative human agents (not passive role-performers) who would eventually realize the need to integrate vocational and educational aims into a ‘liberal vocationalism’ which, as Barnett would have argued, aims at both self-enlightenment and societal enlightenment (Barnett 1994:81). Indian universities, as I am trying to argue, need such an innovative spirit. Unless we offer better alternatives, how can we succeed in fighting the evils of commodification of education? Choosing motivated students Whether or not one chooses to join a college/university should depend on one’s swadharma: one’s temperament, inclination and aptitude. That is why it is desirable that only those who are willing to bear and accept the demands of higher education – intellectual/moral eagerness to explore the ever-expanding frontiers of knowledge, and mental qualities such as perseverance, patience and willingness to see beyond the logic of immediate utility – should join colleges and universities as young learners. Quite often, schools fail to arouse this sense of freedom and choice. Instead, because of societal and peer pressure, students find themselves obsessed with the diploma disease. Is it because we continue to privilege the mental/intellectual over the physical/manual, and some sort of prestige is still associated with a college/university degree, despite its devaluation in recent times? Or is it because we have not yet been able to create sufficient centres and institutes to attract those who have the aptitude for diverse occupations, ranging from tailoring to horticulture? Whatever the reason, the fact is that Indian colleges/universities are terribly overcrowded. I do admit that the spirit of democratization demands more and aspirants join the domain of higher learning. I also admit we need more colleges/universities to fulfil these growing aspirations. However, as I am arguing, democratization does not mean trivialization of higher education; instead, it means creating situations that enable the truly motivated ones to get to our colleges/universities. Otherwise, the result would be disastrous, and we would find amidst ourselves only demotivated students. Anyone who has taught in a college/ university knows how depressing it is to teach Plato and Marx, or Milton and Tagore to a group of students who are by no means inclined to a deeper and fundamental philosophical quest, and instead, demand something else, something more tangible and more worldly. As a result, young minds and their possibilities get destroyed. One who could have become an extraordinarily creative farmer destroys three valuable years while attending classes on Karl Popper’s Conjectures and Refutations. Or imagine what happens when one who is potentially a good tailor is sent to a lecture hall in which the professor delivers a lecture on quantum mechanics! I have no problem with weak students. What, however, shocks me is the presence of indifferent ones. They simply refuse to respond… it was a class of 200 students. One day I was teaching the relevance of

Beyond instrumentality  55 ‘biographical’ approach in sociology. Could you believe that none knew the meaning of biography?14 As a young teacher of a reputable undergraduate college in Darjeeling narrated his anguish, I could feel the sense of crisis. Demotivation destroys the very rhythm of learning. A solution can emerge only if a thousand flowers are allowed to bloom, and people get an opportunity to find the vocations they are inclined to. Let, as visionaries like Ruskin and Gandhi wanted, a society evolve in which there is dignity of labour, and a professor and a tailor occupy their legitimate space without any sense of extra pride or undue stigmatization. Only then is it possible for our universities to find students who are truly inclined to the ideals of higher education, and pursue it for its joy, and the challenges it provides, but not for a faulty notion of social recognition, or for the passing of time. Once we find truly motivated students it becomes easier to overcome the much talked about pathology: discontent and meaninglessness among students leading to widespread campus violence. It is really sad that this violence has crossed all limits. It is, therefore, not surprising that a distinguished educationist has to plead for a ‘separate police cadre to deal with students’ (Singh 1989:227). And that is not all. This violence often acquires a political character and, as a result, the very idea of students’ politics has begun to repel vice chancellors and policy makers. At this juncture, an ethical question confronts us. None can deny that campus politics is becoming terribly ugly. Money and muscle power, lumpenism and absence of ideals and values tend to characterize this politics. Seldom is it possible to come across a registrar or a vice chancellor who has not been gheraoed, and against whom slogans (and quite often nasty slogans) have not been raised. The sanctity of the teacher–taught relationship seems to be disappearing. Instead, what prevails is an environment filled with fear, mistrust and suspicion. But then, it has to be realized, there is no instant administrative/bureaucratic solution. Essentially, it requires deeper changes in the very culture of learning. Without a meaningful curriculum and motivated students, it would not be possible to come forward with enduring solutions. It is in this sense that I would argue politics as such need not be feared and perceived as some sort of taboo (in fact, as history has taught us, our universities, since the early days of decolonization, have been generating radical ideas and voices of dissent leading to socio-political movements). It should not be forgotten that when a creative/critical culture of learning prevails, politics itself becomes a great source of learning. Training in politics is, after all, a mode of understanding the dynamics of power in human society: how we manage our affairs, distribute our resources, define development and progress, and make comprehensive plans for the nation. These are issues involving conflicting interests and diverse ideological perspectives. And politics – if practised meaningfully – gives us the much required sensitivity to make our presence felt in such a grand project. When it is such an important component of human life, how can we deprive students of having an engagement with it?

56  Avijit Pathak In fact, the idea of an apolitical campus in which students are concerned only with their grades and careers is terrifying. It is like promising selfishness, and nurturing a mindset that dissociates itself from all sorts of collective concerns. And this indifference becomes further legitimized because politics itself, as any careful observer of Indian social reality would admit, has become terribly dirty so that one can barely recall what Gramsci or Gandhi visualized. Yet the answer to immoral/violent politics is not depoliticization, but an alternative politics which itself is an exercise in critical pedagogy. I feel tempted to cite the example of Jawaharlal Nehru University: the way its students have created and protected a culture of alternative politics. It is not that JNU politics is free from all aberrations; it is possible to find traces of casteism, regionalism, crude Machiavellianism and even occasional violence. Yet, what distinguishes its politics is its creativity: the way students themselves conduct their elections, call public meetings, organize debates and seminars, write posters and theoretically enriched pamphlets, relate the local to the global, and discuss issues ranging from development and displacement to American imperialism and the Gulf War. It is indeed difficult to distinguish the critical pedagogy prevalent in the university from this politics which, I believe, can become a model for other universities to follow. In order to follow the intensity of ideological debate in which JNU students participate, let me quote from a pamphlet written by a radical group on the phenomenon called Nandigram: At Delhi, one could see a visibly angry, shivering CPM secretary Prakash Karat, insisting that it is the Maoists who are responsible for the spiraling of violence in Nandigram. Had it not been for the Maoist, things could have been settled in an amicable manner. What was the issue actually was never of his concern.So for the CPM secretary and his Chief Minister it was justified to do whatever was at one’s disposable – be it shooting with SLR and AK-47s at peaceful demonstrations by trained CPM goons, burning down houses of the people of Nandigram, mass rape of women, maiming the people – when you are pitted against the Maoists. The people cannot and should stand with the Maoists. Nor can the Maoists talk about or support the genuine causes of the toiling masses. Any issue becomes a non issue when the Maoists raise it. Nandigram. Special Economic Zone, Displacement, Destitution, Destruction, Death – everything becomes a non issue because the Maoists are raising it.15 It is an illustration. There are voices and counter voices. The debate goes on. What else is a university if its students do not become, to use Amartya Sen’s words, sufficiently ‘argumentative’? In search of creative teachers No centre for higher learning can unfold its potential without dedicated and energetic teachers. It is, however, unfortunate that not many teachers can be said to have very high self-esteem. An important reason for this

Beyond instrumentality  57 wounded consciousness is that as a society we have not yet been able to learn to respect the vocation of teaching, and keep its spirit alive. We live amidst the hierarchy of profession, and in terms of all that matters, be it social recognition or material reward, teachers earn nothing like as much as, say, management executives, media professionals, doctors, engineers and civil servants. Moreover, as every insider knows, there are many in the vocation itself who are not truly inclined to its calling. The very purpose of teaching – exploring new ideas, communicating with the younger generation, and being willing to remain perpetually fresh and alert – does not seem to have much appeal for them. Teaching, for them, becomes merely routine. This further degrades the vocation. This must change. We must try to find creative and motivated teachers. Yes, it goes without saying, teachers – if we want to give them their best – must be given their due. Their material conditions (in terms of salary, research/field trip grants, contingency expenses, medical and housing facilities) must improve substantially. It is also important to appoint more teachers, and reduce the heavy workload which often goes against creativity. Imagine a situation in which a teacher delivers a lecture in front of 150 graduate students. Or think of a teacher who has to deliver five lectures every day! Where, then, is the possibility of a meaningful teacher–taught relationship? Yes, a reasonably improved infrastructure is conducive to good teaching. But then, it must be realized that there is no substitute for inner calling. Unless one loves the very ethos of teaching and celebrates its creative restlessness, no amount of material reward can alter the situation. The question is: how do we find and recruit such motivated teachers? Let us look at the prevalent process of recruitment of college/university teachers. After seeing an advertisement for aspecified position, candidates apply. And then the shortlisted candidates (shortlisting is often done mechanically, and on the basis of the necessary qualification alone) are called for interview. A selection committee consisting of the head of the institute and a couple of subject experts is brought togetherto interview the candidates. It all depends on the number of candidates and the mood of the selection committee – an interview can last for only five minutes or even forty minutes. And eventually the selection committee gives its final judgment. This process of elimination and selectionis inherently problematic. Anyone who has experienced it (either as a candidate or as a member of the selection committee) knows that it has two major shortcomings. First, the interview as an exercise of asymmetrical power relations (experts ask and interrogate; there is no possibility of a dialogue in which candidates can open up, and raise counter-questions) often causes excessive psychological pressure, and makes it difficult for a candidate to give her best. Habermas would have characterized it as a ‘broken/distorted communication’. Second, experts often seem to celebrate this power; they do not mind reducing the entire exercise to a quiz contest. Not much space is given to the candidate to elaborate, explain, argue and present a complex phenomenon with all

58  Avijit Pathak its ambiguities. Instead, to take a real example from sociology, a candidate may be asked to provide readymade answers to the following: 1. In which year did Malinowski conduct his field study among Tobriand islanders? 2. Define society. Is it a process? Or is it a structure? 3. Mention the ‘pattern variables’ Talcott Parsons talked about. If at that unnatural moment one cannot remember the exact date of Malinowski’s field work, or if one’s perception of society does not coincide with the way that a standard textbook or the Oxford Dictionary of Sociology defines it, or if one does not feel very comfortable with Talcott Parsons, one is declared ‘bad’, and not fit for teaching! That is the irony. No attempt is made to understand what the candidate knows, her depth of knowledge, and overall sociological imagination. It is quite possible that the candidate who has been eliminated knows pretty well how Malinowski’s Sex and Repression in a Savage Society refuted Sigmund Freud’s universal theories of the Oedipus complex, or how Durkheim, Weber and Marx enriched our understanding of the creative and dialectical interplay of structure and agency in human society, or how Talcott Parsons’ functionalist preoccupation with ‘order’ and ‘system’ was criticized by many critical sociologists. But then, where is the time or, for that matter, inclination for engaging in a meaningful dialogue with the candidate? One way of overcoming this limitation, I believe, is to make the process of recruitment more transparent, democratic and effective. Let the shortlisted candidates (and shortlisting should not be done mechanically; apart from the necessary qualifications, emphasis should also be put on other desirable qualities) be invited to the relevant department to deliver a lecture on any theme of their choice. Let students, teachers and selection committee members participate in the discussion, and take an active part in making the second round of shortlisting on the basis of their performance: their communicative skills, their ability to persuade the audience, their analytical capacity and their depth of knowledge. And finally, let the selection committee engage in extensive conversation with them, and give its final judgment. Even though it is a time-consuming process, it would lead to better results. Moreover, once teachers are appointed, we need to evolve a system of feedback and evaluation by students which would further enable them to keep their creative zeal alive. Good teachers create a good university, and consolidate its moral foundation.

VII Merit as a quality of being This discussion however remains incomplete unless we look at yet another ethical question confronting us: does excellence in higher education necessarily mean promotion of meritocracy and thereby negation of social justice

Beyond instrumentality  59 and equality? None would dispute the fact that excellence is what a university should strive for – excellence in research, in teaching, and in academic performance of students. At the same time, it is equally important for a university to remain inclusive and accommodating, and take a leading role in reducing social disparities. Is it possible to reconcile these two ideals – excellence and equality? Indian universities, needless to add, are experiencing this challenge rather sharply, and it has generated a series of complex issues relating to the very purpose of higher education. To begin with, let us historicize the problem. We live in a society that continues to retain the legacy of caste hierarchy and social exclusion. But then, it is also a society that passed through a profound struggle for decolonization, and embraced an egalitarian project of nation making. From diverse forms of social reform projects to the holistic struggle that luminaries like Gandhi and Ambedkar launched in their own respective styles, it was becoming increasingly clear that as a new nation we would be required to abolish a system based on hierarchy, ascribed status, purity and pollution, and social and cultural exclusion. Furthermore, with the process of democratization and growing assertion of hitherto marginalized groups, a new consciousness has begun to emerge that strives for equity and justice. As a matter of fact, the demand for equality of opportunity and access to education has become an integral component of this new assertion. It is in this historic context that the constitutional provision of protective discrimination begins to make sense. Its basic philosophy is simple and clear. In order to create a truly equal society, we need to give extra benefit to those who, without any fault of their own, have been lagging behind; this encouragement would enable them to overcome the historic burden of marginalization, and become truly equal citizens of a regenerated nation. Against this background, let us look at the state of our universities. As I have already discussed, our universities, barring exceptions, are not really centres of excellence in teaching and research. But at the same time, our universities, it must be acknowledged, have not escaped from their societal role: to satisfy the aspirations of the marginalized and oppressed sections of society. None can deny that, because of the policy of protective discrimination, students from the hitherto marginalized communities are joining the domain of higher education and altering their life-projects. Even though an absolutely egalitarian society remains a distant dream, some significant changes are taking place in the culture of the university. Let me speak of some of these positive changes. First, we see the emergence of heterogeneity which, I believe, has immense pedagogic significance. For example, each time I come to class, I realize that I have to communicate with a wide spectrum of students with diverse socio-economic backgrounds and different levels of oral/written skills. This poses a serious challenge, and inspires me to continually reflect on my pedagogy – that way I deliver my lecture, the examples I cite, the jokes I crack, the assignments I prepare – so that neither English-speaking/metropolitan students, nor those coming from the peripheries of Jharkhand and Orissa become alienated and marginalized in the class. In this process an attempt is

60  Avijit Pathak being made to create an open/dialogic/inclusive culture in the classroom. Possibly stereotypes are broken, and students from diverse backgrounds begin to interact. This leads to the fusion of horizons. I am not suggesting that this is an easy and smooth process. Social prejudices and stereotypes do not die easily. Quite often, students belonging to a similar socio-economic background constitute their own subgroups, and seek to maintain a distance from others. Nevertheless, it is only in a heterogeneous setting that emancipatory possibilities of cross-cultural interaction can arise. For example, a Dalit boy and a forward caste/metropolitan girl can be asked to be part of the same team, work together, and complete a project. Without providing such challenges, as I have learned from my own experience, I could not have reflected on the implications of my pedagogy, and then possibly I could have remained connected only with the academic charm of ‘meritocracy’, and its implicit elitism. Second, in this very process I witness and experience our new role, our contributions to the process of transformation that students, particularly from the margins and peripheries, are undergoing. Yes, universities give them hope, enable them to unfold their potential, and make a difference. Let me narrate the experience of one such student: I am from Champaran – from a remote village. I joined Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2003. I could not express myself in the class. Nor could I write well. But I didn’t give up. I tried. And eventually things began to change. I am now relatively more comfortable. I am learning continuously. … Indeed, I am fortunate to be part of this university. It has changed me a lot. It has given me a new direction of thinking: a spirit of understanding, and above all a ray of hope.16 Indeed, as a teacher it fills my mind with joy when I see this process of transformation closely and intimately: the way students overcome their initial hesitation, conquer obstacles, acquire confidence, become media professionals and innovative social activists. Third, this entire process, I believe, has a positive impact on the production of knowledge. For example, these days it is difficult to think of a university in which Dalit Studies are not gaining legitimacy; new questions are raised – questions relating to the curriculum, and methods of teaching and research. Moreover, a new sensitivity is emerging that leads to a creative research in sociology, politics and literature. For example, today we are told how even some of the finest pieces of literature (even the creations of a literary giant like Premchand) have not been able to capture the Dalit mind; how the dominant/mainstream sociology has been written from the perspectives of the forward caste intelligentsia (a leading political sociologist is now asserting why he is not a ‘Hindu’); and how even Marxists are not qualitatively different from a ‘bunch of Brahmins’! Although as a teacher/ researcher, I need not necessarily agree with all these findings, the fact is that the plurality of perspectives, viewpoints and ideologies has indeed contributed to the intellectual and moral growth of the university. Possibly it

Beyond instrumentality  61 democratizes our university when we find scholars and researchers seeing beyond Gandhi, Tagore and Nehru, and, instead, engaging with Phule, Periyar and Ambedkar. These positive consequences notwithstanding, there are serious questions regarding the entire issue which, I believe, needs to be responded to with an open mind. For example, it is often debated whether the principle of protective discrimination/reservation can really be reconciled with the ideal of higher education, i.e. promoting excellence in teaching and research. Beteille, for example, has expressed this anxiety rather sharply: Every time a candidate of superior academic merit is passed over to make place for one who is less than his academic equal, some damage is done to the foundations on which the university stands. It is not clear that the damage becomes smaller when justification for such action is sought in the need for creating parity between castes … It cannot distribute its rewards – whether examination grades, or scholarships or faculty appointments – on the basis of quotas determined by political bargains. Above all, universities should not allow themselves to become hunting grounds for leaders of castes and communities negotiating for shares in their rewards for their own constituencies, irrespective of merit. (Beteille 1988:141–42) This is a serious point which deserves attention. And that is why at this juncture it is important to reflect on the notion of academic merit itself, or the qualities which are thought to be valuable and necessary for excelling in the domain of higher education. There are primary components of this much-desired merit. First, what one needs is a spirit of learning: intellectual zeal and enthusiasm, an analytical mind, familiarity with basics foundations, and a willingness to explore the new horizon of knowledge. Second, one needs a specific mental state: patience, perseverance, and above all, the ability to appreciate a mode of life that involves continual engagement with new ideas, even non-utilitarian ideas. And third, one also needs some sort of cultural capital – say, reasonable knowledge in English, exposure to cultural/intellectual debates, and a style of writing (possibly this is more important in the liberal arts, humanities and social sciences) – that enables one to move from the concrete to the abstract. Anyone who has lived in a university – I mean a university that seeks to promote serious teaching and research – knows that those who are endowed with these qualities are generally called ‘meritorious’, and they perform reasonably well. No caste/class, we all realize, is inherently superior, and gifted with these qualities. Essentially, life-chances, social experiences and cultural environment play an important role in shaping the evolution of these attributes in one’s biography. It is, of course, true that because of the historic burden of marginalization it becomes exceedingly difficult for the children of the oppressed castes to get an opportunity to acquire these qualities. Likewise, poverty, regional deprivation and gender discrimination further add to these obstacles.

62  Avijit Pathak This, however, does not mean that the children from the relatively privileged classes are naturally endowed with these qualities. It is, of course, true that because of their family traditions (particularly if the parents are ‘culturally sensitive’) they may acquire the necessary cultural capital quite early – say, developing a distinctive taste for good books, classical music, abstract painting and radical theatre. However, these qualities wither away if they are not sustained and developed through constant practice. That is why, if given an opportunity, even the children of the marginalized sections of society can overcome their initial difficulties and acquire and retain these attributes. Essentially, what we regard as ‘merit’ has to be perpetually nurtured and cultivated, and schools have to play an important role in sharpening these qualities. That is why, in a hierarchical society like ours, special measures have to be taken (by the welfare state as well as the larger society) so that all children, irrespective of caste, class and gender, can receive a good quality school education, and find an opportunity to excel in life. It is sad that as a nation we have not yet been able to implement what the Kothari Commission called a common school system: a system which wanted to overcome all sorts of hierarchy and dualities like ‘the minority of private, free charging, better schools meeting the needs of upper classes’, vs. ‘the bulk of free, publicly maintained, poor schools being utilized by the rest’, and to give quality education to all. If we sincerely strive for equality, there is, in fact, no other way. Moreover, as has been repeatedly asserted by the radical left, it is important to initiate structural changes to bring about economic opportunities for the downtrodden. It is also important to retain the spirit of cultural transformation so that all that is associated with the caste-based patriarchal social order withers away. In the absence of these sustained efforts at the level of school education as well as on the economic and cultural fronts, protective discrimination or reservation alone is not adequate. Instead, it is bound to have its moments of tension, anxiety and apprehension. Anyone who has taught in a university, wrote Beteille, ‘knows how little he can do to alter the mental habits of students who have passed their teens, and how hard it is at that age to raise the ill-equipped student to even the level of the average’ (Ibid:14). I see a point in Beteille’s concern. As teachers we all have found students who refuse to grow, who find themselves strangers in an academic environment. They tend to develop all sorts of complexes. And it becomes exceedingly difficult for a teacher to alter this asymmetry in the classroom. Yet, I would argue that even under these unfavourable circumstances, universities have to play an active role, include those who are not as ‘meritorious’ as we would otherwise want our students to be, and initiate special measures (extra classes/remedial programmes) so that they can gain confidence, rise up, and realize their potential. This is possible if students show willingness and sincerity. It is sad that, at times, some of them begin to see it only as a ‘right’; they forget that this right can become truly enabling only if it is endowed with responsibilities. As a result, they refuse to grow. Reservation has become a vested interest. And in a political culture that refuses to

Beyond instrumentality  63 see beyond reservation, how often we hear only of ‘rights’, not motivation, inner calling, responsibility and hard work. Yet, as I have learned from my own experiences, there are students who intend to evolve and grow. As teachers we must engage with them in the process of their transformation. This is a difficult but not an impossible task. In my own teaching career I have often witnessed this process of wonderful transformation: how students who at one time did not have much confidence in English, and were not at all aware of publications like Economic and Political Weekly and Contributions to Indian Sociology would eventually overcome their hesitation, begin to articulate, speak, write, and even debate with their privileged contemporaries. And that is not all. Quite often, these students have another kind of capital which we must learn to value, particularly in the sphere of the social sciences and humanities. This capital stems from the experiences they have gained through their sufferings, the knowledge they have acquired through their everyday engagement with caste hierarchy, village politics and agrarian conflict. They may not have the academic language to articulate it. But then, if in a dialogic environment they are listened to with care and concern, it benefits the professor, and more particularly those privileged students who may have read Marx, but may not have ever lived in a village, or who may have mastered the art of using appropriate sociological idioms and concepts, but may not be able to initiate a simple conversation with a landless peasant! I would, therefore, argue that in the name of ‘meritocracy’ a university should not take up an elitist position, because a university needs to engage itself – and do so with absolute concern and empathy – with the struggles taking place in the larger society. What else is merit if it does not inspire one to share the suffering of others, and relate to collective welfare? Merit is not just about publications, books and academic awards. Merit is also a quality of being: an experience of oneness, and willingness to share. There is yet another problem. Those who benefit from reservation often acquire stigmatized identities. It is like marking them perpetually, and generating a stereotype: ‘Here is a group not adequately meritorious and hence destroying the quality of higher education’. This stigma is a sort of existential anguish, and students from the oppressed castes continue to experience this marginalization, even when they are attending classes, writing exams, and doing reasonably well (whereas it is possible to come across students from the privileged classes escaping their responsibilities as students/researchers). This stigma has acquired added intensity in recent times because in almost every Indian university we find a significant proportion of students – primarily from the privileged classes and forward castes – who oppose, and oppose vehemently, the policy of reservation. Yes, it is possible to see the traces of casteism and elitism in their gestures – in the very symbolism of the recent upsurge of ‘anti-quota movements’. But then, it should not be forgotten, they are also making a point which deserves attention. After all, they too are anxious, and their insecurity is not unreal; it is rooted in a ruthlessly aggressive competitive culture in which, because of scarcity of

64  Avijit Pathak opportunities, everyone – not excluding forward caste students – lives with terrible survival anxiety. Moreover, they are not entirely wrong in arguing that we have to seriously rethink the policy of giving reservation to those who, despite their lower caste origin, are privileged: economically, politically or otherwise. Likewise, even some forward caste students, because of poverty or other forms of deprivation, may require reservation. Can a university remain altogether indifferent to these concerns? The fact is that our universities need to see beyond the paradigm of ‘identity politics’, and move towards a more unified struggle for collective welfare. Indeed, our universities are facing a dilemma: a sort of moral ambiguity. We must argue that reservation alone will not succeed in creating an egalitarian society. We must remind the political class that without substantial democratization of society, distribution of material resources, and availability of quality school education to all, reservation in universities will continue to cause acute tension and anxiety. Yet, as I have already suggested, this does not mean that by delegating the entire responsibility to the political class, we should retreat into our small world of excellence. We too need to open up, create consciousness, and work with those who, even if not ‘meritorious’, have hidden potential. What else is a university if it refuses to engage with these moral experiments?

Notes 1 In a way, the heroic notion of science (science is ‘objective’, ‘value-neutral’ and ‘apolitical’) has been interrogated by many philosophers of science. From Popper to Kuhn to Feyerabend – we now know the vulnerability of science. Furthermore, with the postmodern celebration of differences (against meta narratives Lyotard posits a discourse of multiple horizons, the play of language games, and the terrain of micro politics), the ideal of science as the most privileged truth gets debunked. 2 As told by a professor of education from JNU. 3 As told by a professor of Portuguese language and literature from JNU. 4 As told by a professor of biotechnology from JNU. 5 From a newspaper report: Ph.ds Run Dhaba published in the New Delhi edition of The Hindustan Times (December 4, 2001). 6 As told by a professor of economics of education from JNU. 7 As told by a professor of Portuguese language and literature from JNU. 8 As told by a professor of Arabic language and literature from JNU. 9 As told by a professor of economics from Delhi University. 10 From a newspaper report: Head to Manipal for Professional Courses published in the New Delhi Edition of The Hindustan Times (May 21, 2008). 11 Interestingly, Amity University – a leading private university – proudly declares ‘over 2000 Amity students have got on-campus placements this year. Also, over 500 students have been placed even one year before graduating’. And then, in its admission notice for Post-Graduate Programmes it declares the list of courses and programmes to be offered. Not surprisingly, the courses are heavily marketoriented. The following samples indicate the trend: M.Tech in Biotechnology; Mastersin Film and TV; Dip. in Insurance Management; PG Dip. in NGO Management; M.A.inTourism Administration. For further details, see the ad published in the New Delhi edition of The Hindustan Times (January 20, 2008).

Beyond instrumentality  65 12 Champion guide books are quite popular among undergraduate students of the University of Delhi. 13 From her written response to my enquiry. 14 As told by a young teacher of a reputable undergraduate college in Darjeeling. 15 From a pamphlet entitled Nandigram: The Brutal Force of Social Fascist CPM issued by the JNU Unit of DSU on November 22, 2007. 16 From his written response to my enquiry.

References Barnett, Ronald. 1994. The Limits of Competence: Knowledge, Higher Education and Society. Buckingham: The Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press. Beteille, Andre. 1988. ‘The Pursuit of Equality and the Indian University’, in Singh, Amrik and Sharm, G.D. (eds.). Higher Education in India: The Social Context, New Delhi: Konark Publishers. Bhatt, B.D. and Agarwal, J.C.1969 (eds.). Educational Documents in India (1831– 1968).New Delhi: Arya Book Depot. Bok, Derek. 2003. Universities in the Market Place: The Commercialisation of Higher Education. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Dostoyevsky, F.D.1983. Stories. Moscow: RadugaPublishers. Dubey, S.C.1989. ‘Professional Values’, in Singh, Amrik and Sharma, G.D. (eds.). Higher Education in India: The Institutional Context. New Delhi: Konark Publishers. Ghosh, Suresh Chandra. 1995. The History of Education in Modern India, 1757– 1986. New Delhi: Orient Longman. Giroux, Henry. 1997. ‘Crossing the Boundaries of Educational Discourse: Modernism, Postmodernism and Feminism’, in Hasley, A.H.; Lauder, Hugh; Brown, Philip; and Wells, Amy Stuart (eds.). Education: Culture, Economy and Society. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Habermas, Jurgen. 2004. Knowledge and Human Interests. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kerr, Clark. 1963. The Uses of the University. New York: Harper and Row. Kumar, Arun. 1989. ‘Teachers Today’, in Singh, Amrik and Sharma, G.D. (eds.). Higher Education in India: The Institutional Context. New Delhi: Konark Publishers. Lyons, F.S.L. 1983. ‘The Idea of a University: Newman to Robbins’, in Phillipson, Nicholas (ed). Universities, Society and the Future. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University. Newman, J.H.1959. The Idea of a University. New York: Image Books. Niblett, Roy. 1994 ‘Levels of Discord’, in Barnett, Ronald (ed.). Academic Community: Discourse and Discord. London and Bristol: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Shils, Edward. 1977. ‘Social Sciences as Public Opinion’, Minerva, Vol. 15, Nos. 3–4, 65–76. Shils, Edward. 1982. ‘The Academic Ethic’, Minerva, Vol. 20, Nos. 1–2. Shils, Edward. 1992. ‘The Service of Society and the Advancement of Learning in the Twenty-First Century’, Minerva, Vol. 30, No. 2. Singh, Amrik. 1989. ‘Managing Students’, in Singh, Amrik and Sharma, G.D. (eds.). Higher Education in India: The Institutional Context. New Delhi: Konark Publishers. Snow, C.P.1964. The Two Cultures and a Second Look. New York: Mentar.

4 The idea of a university and its leader A Gadamerian perspective Binod Kumar Agarwala

We need to reflect philosophically on the university in terms of its idea and actuality. But how does one reflect on the university? Not as an active individual keeping in view any interest however lofty or mundane coming from any pressure group, but as a disinterested spectator, keeping a distance from all interests and interest groups. For “the universal concern of the philosopher is to seek distance, to preserve this as a basic value and, yes, even to recognize this as a fundamental human responsibility.”1 Everyone as a spectator must come to terms with the actuality in his own way, recognizing that idea and actuality always belong together and yet they are always divergent. No actuality can ever fully match the idea, and in converse no idea is a mirror image of actuality.2 The actuality of the university began with the idea of the university as an institution for indoctrination, i.e. to inculcate specific doctrines. Because of the Enlightenment, the idea of the university during the previous two centuries was concerned with the transition from doctrina to research.3 The idea of the university then was connected to participation in research. Taking part in research was not thought to be a preparation for a profession in which gains of research were to be applied. Rather, taking part in research meant education, which is better captured in the idea of Bildung. Education as Bildung was not concerned with teaching to students the achievements of research done by the professors in the university, to turn students into experts. Education as Bildung signified distancing oneself from everything profitable and useful. It stands for progress away from immediacy and particularity towards universality.4 It is a continuous endless process, as Bildung has no goals outside itself. Participation in research meant living with ideas. This was the rallying point for the youth at the university and it was intended to disclose through findings of research the horizon of all actuality and thereby also to open the possibility of surpassing this actuality. For this, two conditions were needed: solitude and autonomy. The autonomy to structure one’s studies and the solitude of research were the most important values of the idea of the university.5 The actuality of the university during the previous two centuries is a struggle to incorporate these two values. It used to be common for philosophers in earlier times to philosophize about the nature of the university, and yet philosophy was never central to the life

The idea of a university and its leader  67 of the university, philosophy was always marginalized. It is not the actuality but the idea of philosophy that is central to the university.6 After all, the idea of the university emerges from the philosophical reflection on it. But now due to the counter movement of empirical knowledge this idea of the university for research and teaching is being abandoned. The idea of reformation of universities comes from empirical knowledge leading in the direction of the professionalization of the university and abandoning the traditional theoretical idea of the university. University is being reformed in the direction of teaching skills and doctrines and what gets emphasized is innovation in technology and innovation in skills, including skill in teaching doctrines, skill in developing successful business models etc. The idea of the university that is being advocated is that of an innovation hub, where innovation is understood as innovation of a technology or innovation of skill in teaching some doctrines or innovation of successful business models etc. The university is for research, and teaching research, which is possible only with tremendous immediacy in the contact between professor and student, and this immediacy, this intimacy, is the first casualty of mass enrolment in the university and is taken over by bureaucratization.7 When bureaucratic measures are introduced, the students and teachers find ways of bypassing them. A professor has to incorporate in his teaching activity the very idea of the university. It is not so easy to speak in the classroom in such a way that many ideas are awakened in a student without having to hammer it home.8 To express oneself clearly, distinctly, unambiguously and precisely, awakening only one idea, is the right way to teach a skill, but that is not the right approach to awaken multiple possibilities and ideas requiring further research as intended by the university. So-called clarity, distinctness, unambiguity and precision of idea comes from putting blinkers – like one puts on horses so that they see only the road directly ahead and not the vast expanse they are passing through – so that it blocks out all the multiple possibilities present in the idea and prevents the possibility of research. The level of learning and scholarship required to keep alive the multiple possibilities and to speak with learning and scholarship to awaken multiple possibilities for further exploration in the student is very high and not easily acquired. Yet it is not impossible to acquire a high level of learning and scholarship, provided one does not despise the scholarly life. The university today values a great specialist but not a great scholar. The social responsibility of the university is to preserve its autonomy relative to all the interest groups, the social pressures, and the requirement of publicity that exist in society at large.9 This, in fact, is the educational mission of the university geared towards research, that through even distant and remote contact with the spirit of genuine research, every student exposed to university education acquires a sense of what actual research involves, and, therefore, to some degree, is immune to the opinions that are so widely disseminated in the mass media.10 Contact with the spirit of front-line research is important in the formation of lawyers, engineers, doctors, schoolteachers and all professionals.11 Students at all levels are to

68  Binod Kumar Agarwala be educated so as to acquire respect for the work of the university, which is at the pinnacle of education in society. Respect, for the university and for research, is the formative element not only of the schoolteacher but also of all the learned professions. In fact this is the idea of the university, that every practitioner of a profession should be exposed to serious academic research and should preserve the research consciousness in the daily exercise of their profession. For this the university should be able to protect their professors from politicization. With politicization the spirit of research is killed and a falsity creeps into the relationship within the university. It is evident to all that in the midst of the tremendous changes – both political and technological – which are experienced by everyone in society, the task of grasping the idea of the university can no longer be to cling to the old and what has been sanctified through a venerable tradition, with the aim of protecting it from the storm winds of history. Neither the university nor the nation as a whole can wish it away.12 What constitutes the dreadful position of the people is exactly that the good and noble tradition of culture and humanity, which had emerged through the freedom struggle, whose finest blossoms were some of the universities, has now become questionable itself, apparent in its impotence and uncertain of its right to exist. But for this happening, it would not have been possible for the places of free rational research and education to have been taken over by the ravings of the uncontrolled irrational spirits of people within a short span of time. When we recognize this, we also come to know at the same time that we are facing a completely new task: to establish anew the reason for the university’s existence. We also come to know that this is not just an internal academic concern, and the solution can arise only when it comes from the fertile depth of our totality as a social being.13 Let us cling to the hope that the true order of things will be established, that the dignity of reason will no longer be defended only by the academicians, but will resound in everyone with an authentic tone and with respect and expectation. But this hope has to be backed by the responsibility of the scholars in the university, that through their effort in research and teaching the citizens would advance this maxim in their political rejuvenation. It is the responsibility of scholars, because the scholars in the university understand only too well the reason operative in the scholarship in the university, especially when the men and women participating in politics and other professions withhold their interest and active interference. The reason operative in the scholarship in the university – different from reasons operative in all other occupations: is quiet and secret in its work and incomparably confronted by misunderstanding, since its effects and success are often visible and always come to light long after and distanced from the creative activity. The professor in the laboratory, or even at his desk, is not by himself a

The idea of a university and its leader  69 communicative image of the intellectual working life. In fact, he cannot even want to solicit such an understanding – so strict and almost unapproachable is the law under which he works.14 It is a matter of appreciation that even though it is unexpected, scholars have been allowed to encounter so much attested and active understanding for their activity from the citizens. Let us understand the activity of the scholar in the university and the primordiality of reason as operative in his scholarship. It is generally agreed that reason is the essential foundation for modern culture, which emerged from the enlightenment motto: have courage to use your own reason.15 But the question is: what is this reason? Is this reason now correctly represented by the technological development and innovation that we are witnessing today? It is indubitable that modern technology is based on the scientific discoveries and inventions of the nineteenth century, fuelled by seventeenth-century enlightenment. This new technology has given to man in current times a successful mastery over nature, which was never known to mankind before. The powerful means of the modern mastery over nature are the logical consequences of modern scientific thought and the reason behind it. They have their roots in the new beginning, which the empirical knowledge of sciences of the seventeenth century represents within human development. The philosophical expression of this development occurs in the new methodological idea that Descartes developed and metaphysically justified. With this methodological idea, which has its exemplary fulfilment in the application of mathematical means to the understanding of nature, modern science gained its law of development and innovation of technology, and consequently a path of incessant expansion and specialization which has led to the highly differentiated and specialized state of the investigation of nature today.16 But this development and innovation of technology has an unavoidable reverse side to it. This development and innovation of technology has led the application of technology away from the primordial reason behind science. The application of this science for the innovation of newer and newer technologies and also the purposes and goals of application of this science for innovation of technology have outgrown more and more the men of research and have deformed the understanding of reason behind the sciences. The work of the researcher now follows an immanent necessity of scientific and technological innovation, and this work occurs with the complete consciousness of the freedom of research without being able to preserve the original relationship between this tremendous human means of power, which modern science and innovation in technology presents, and the highest goals of humanity, the goals of human development, with which the primordial reason of science was concerned. The increasing dependency of research on the expensive apparatus and the repercussions of its results on innovation of technology have created forms of unconscious dependency for science, which are opposed to its original essence or the primordial reason behind

70  Binod Kumar Agarwala science. This dependency of research in science for newer and newer technologies goes right up to the extreme of its orientation toward military scientific and military-economic, politico-economic and controlling-governmental application.17 Since natural sciences determine the image and method of sciences in modernity, what has been observed to be the case for natural sciences gets automatically applied to even greater extent to the sciences of state and society, the social sciences. Hegel has made us aware that these – and along with them especially philosophy from humanities – are children of their time, but nevertheless the consciousness of the freedom of research has inspired the representative scholars of these sciences. But Hegel’s observation was not meant for cultivation and justification of the opinion and interests of a dominant society by sciences, both natural and social, as their reason, but rather the truth should be stated and taught no matter how it reveals itself in nature and society. But in this domain too, scientific investigation, both in natural and social sciences, has been ruled by dependencies on powers political and economic in the name of the spirit of the time (Zeitgeist), which is taken to be the dominant opinion of the time. Hence, the ethos of free scientific investigation itself has finally become tarnished – in the accommodation of the dominant opinions, ideologies and teachings of the powers that be, by which even able researchers are allowing themselves to be misled. In the light of this experience, if we have to move away from the dependencies on political and economic powers, it is truly time to recall the primordial reason behind science in order to inform the coming generations of citizens, whose hard work is to create and preserve the external conditions for the existence of reason behind the sciences, which defines what science, both natural and social, is and must again become, as well as to inform the citizens what they are sustaining and actively supporting: the reason behind the sciences. We will most easily discover the primordial reason behind science if we seek out its origin that is attributed to the Greeks. It was the Greeks who created the forms of reason behind European sciences, whose horrendous consequences are manifesting in the present and the previous century. It was the Greeks – in their fateful confrontation with the spirit of the Near East – who first created the forms of reason behind European science. It was the assimilation and further development of Egyptian, Babylonian and Indian mathematics and understanding of nature by the Greeks that can be said to have led to the birth of European science. But it was only a birth, which was to be in its nonage permanently, but for its second encounter with the Far East, i.e. Indian mathematics via the Arabs. What the Europe of the medieval period around the tenth and eleventh centuries AD learnt was algebra from the Arabs, which was called ‘al-jabr’ in Arabic, meaning ‘the reunion of the broken parts’, and also the art of equation, which Arabs called ‘lim al-jabr wa’l-muqābala’, meaning ‘the art of restoring what is missing and equating like with like’ along with cipher (=zero), what Arabs called ṣifr,

The idea of a university and its leader  71 meaning ‘empty, nothing’, which they learnt from the Indian mathematics in which it was called śūnya. This idea was absent from Greek mathematics. Only with the borrowing of algebra from Arabs, which in turn came from India along with its numeral zero, did European science grow and start maturing. But when Europe refined the idea of algebra to be used in science, they lost the essential control, which was built in the Indian science based on their mathematics. The control was that algebra was ‘the reunion of the broken parts’, that means that there is the original undifferentiated unity (śūnya), which is differentiated into many parts, which were reunited to restore the original unity, but this time an understood differentiated unity of many parts (pūrṇa). The aspect of the reason that required that the parts were always the parts of an original undifferentiated whole called śūnya, which have to be united back into an understood but differentiated whole called pūrṇa was lost track of by the European sciences. They reinterpreted reason only in terms of ‘union’ that goes on indefinitely, without the controlling part of reason that it is merely a ‘reunion’ of the original undifferentiated unity. So, the reason of science, which the Europeans recovered and developed, was only the partial reason of science, which was without its control. This led to uncontrolled growth of European science, leading to the present condition of the world civilization. Today’s world culture bears the tremendous stamp of European science. The world civilization is trying to control science in vain, but science always serves its own uncontrolled growth by aligning itself in service of the powers that be, unmindful of its effect on the welfare of people, which is vitally dependent on their unity and not on their atomization. It was not the Greeks who succeeded in getting hold of the complete primordial reason behind science, but the genius of the classical Indian culture, which had got hold of the complete primordial reason behind science attested by their achievements in architecture, medicine, astronomy etc. It was not the Greeks but the Indians who had turned the primitive impulse for knowledge into the form of science. But the credit goes to the late medieval Europe, in that they removed the social control built by the Indians on the science and made science enter into a path of uncontrolled growth, which in turn has changed the course of humanity ever since, and has brought it to the brink of its destruction. What is this primordial reason of science? It is mathematical structure of knowledge. What kind of applicative success can be achieved by utilizing mathematics for the mastery of nature has been amply demonstrated by the modern sciences. However, at the beginning, mathematics, neither in Greece nor in India, was not related to any application, but arose as an independent realization of human being. What is it in the primordial reason that allows us to discern the mathematical structure in actuality, projected in the mathematical structure of knowledge? It is what Indians called dhyāna and what the Greeks called theoria, i.e. contemplation. But neither dhyāna nor theoria was opposed to practical activity but to its highest intensification and perfection. Just as a true craft master, who has eliminated all aspects of chance by previous planning and free control of the subject matter, is one

72  Binod Kumar Agarwala who oversees the whole process of work with true sovereignty, so too the true man of knowledge is one who, in the same way, stands above the pure cognition of actuality, as a theoros in Greece or sākṣin in India. For one who understands mathematics it is not surprising that the length of a side of a square, however small a square is chosen, can never be equal to the diagonal of the same square without remainder. It is not surprising to him, i.e. he knows this with complete certainty before any testing. Intellectually he stands above the amazement of the novice, who may continually try again, unsuccessfully to do so. Since he understands something of the mathematics, he stands above the subject matter. This standing over is what constitutes the position of knowledge. But what is one actually standing over? It is not, as in the activity of working, standing above the whims and pranks of the tool and materials. Then, what kind of chance or accident can be eliminated where it concerns only cognition of what is? The accidents of cognition are called mistakes, which lead to error. In the standing over involved in knowledge the mistake is what is eliminated and all that can lead to mistakes, therefore, all mere opinion into which one strays by error.18 Now we have encountered the original, human, and fundamental meaning of reason in knowledge. It is that place where opinions do not count but the only thing that counts is the immediacy of experience as witness, theoros or sākṣin. Reason puts an enormous demand on the weakness of humans, all of whom so very much love their own opinions and being right in discussions. It is quite understandable that knowledge began with Indians and Greeks. It is the power that speech and argumentation gave these fiery people, which led them to maintain their theoretical distance from what was thermalized. But the same power of speech also makes it possible that the prejudice of public opinion rules the argumentation as well, and we are bribed by the gleam of effectiveness that the appearance of truth in the form of public opinion gives. Knowledge, however, occupies a firm position opposing all changing glittering opinions; it stands above all these because it considers carefully the subject matter and its true foundations from the vantage point of the theoretical distance. That is the original idea of knowledge. This needs to be recollected, and we need to return to it from the far distance where modern empirical scientific enterprise of constant innovation in the service of powerful interests has strayed by error. It is true that our possibilities of cognition are continually influenced and limited by preconceptions and interests. But in us, in the university, knowledge changes the power of preconceptions over us into noisy impotence. In the silence of our investigating work, in the university, we are alone with our selves and our doubts. The actual, which no human mind has seen before, discloses itself to the investigator in the silence of this solitude, away from the noise of public opinion. It is this original power of knowledge, which constitutes the assignment that is given to us by the society in which we live. This is our assignment in the university. It creates the strength to act according to one’s own independent judgment and to master life. That is the reason why universities are dedicated to knowledge. That

The idea of a university and its leader  73 is the reason for the unique forms of our life and work in the university, which otherwise are difficult to explain. That is the reason for our wish to find understanding for knowledge in all citizens.19 Three traits are essential for a man of scholarship in the university in whom scholarship is a true power, which prevents him from being overwhelmed by public opinion. First, it must be possible for him to be absent-minded due to the deep concentration and absorption in the subject matter without being actually ignorant of the world. Every profession and every person suffers the weight of its virtues. The virtue that the scholar has to suffer in the university is the unconditional involvement in the subject matter, thereby forgetting every consideration due to others and even oneself, God, and the world. When the strength of this objectivity becomes strong enough in a scholar, the meek accommodation to the powers that be will not become a temptation for that scholar.20 Second, a scholar lives through doubting himself in the course of his work and this could grow into despair. It is difficult to do justice to the inner demands of truth and cognition instead of the demand of one’s environment of public opinion. What a scholar has to say are truths, which, if at all, will receive general recognition in the future. That is the tragedy a scholar has to suffer. Even though a scholar is a child of his times and the world, he is also always already beyond it in a new and burdensome solitude. Yet he brings back from that solitude what is the greatest strength of his character: his own judgment and unqualified determination for what has been recognized by him. Only when the strength of this determination is strong enough in a scholar, will the meek accommodation to the powers that be never become a temptation for that scholar.21 Third, a scholar must have true humility. The vexation, which he experiences in his work, makes him recognize the boundaries of his ability and the enormous size of his task. It is necessary for him to broadly acknowledge the judgments of other scholars and to get rid of all arrogance concerning his own judgment. It is naturally necessary for him to respect all honestly done work, whatever type it must be. It is also necessary for him to have an inner freedom from the prejudices of his social origin so that he can participate freely in the progress of society. Only when the strength of this humility is strong enough in a scholar, will the meek accommodation of the powers that be never become a temptation for that scholar.22 To possess power of scholarship having the three characteristics is a responsibility to be fulfilled. It is a task of the teachers as well as the students of scholarship in the university. But the question is: from where will the strength come to accomplish this task? Some believe it will come from the disbelief in present humanity and the belief in the ancient golden era. Others place their trust in present humanity, and disbelief in any kind of superiority of ancients.23 It is certain that this opposition will accompany us into the future of humanity, and carries the potential to disrupt the future of scholarship; but the danger can be averted provided the scholars are united by the awareness of the enormity of their task. The university makes it possible to unite at the same time the lives of a researcher and a teacher. The university’s demand for a unity of research

74  Binod Kumar Agarwala and teaching in an ever changing world piles one problem after another, which demands all of our attention for their solution. Historical reflection is continual self-correction of the present consciousness. Since it is preoccupied with its plans and interests and because of the pressing nature of the task to find a balance between opposing interests and conflicting world views, the present consciousness cannot know what it alone must know: the future and the truly correct, which would be able to serve it. Historical reflection is nothing other than a confrontation with the experience that all planning and thinking by those living in the present will be discovered to be biased, where each present becomes past. Such a historical reflection reveals the illusions which the presently living use, at any given time, to pursue their goals. But such historical reflection also reveals to us the true results of these pursuits, i.e. what has happened and can never be undone. If the philosopher is able to contribute something from his own specific problematic to what must be characterized in this manner as the universal task of self-reflection, then it is the willingness, which follows from the above insight, to stand back from the near and the nearest and to recall what is shared by all of us, since it is a shared past. The shared past belongs incontestably to us as no present and no future can. It guarantees our future will surpass our imprisonment in the present. We, in the university, desire to know what is. For what is, are not only goals which state leaders, who support the universities as educational institutions for their academic leaders, pursue. What is, are not only sentiments and conventions of the individuals, the learners and the teachers. What is, is also and especially the uniting force of science, which all of us in teaching and learning serve, whose changes throughout the centuries, the nations, and the zones, obeys a developmental law of its own, which is not limited by any conditions which the aims of the state or society wish to place upon it. In thinking about these things one must realize the superiority of endurance. Whoever has felt something of what scholarship is or has sought to experience it, that person will have a historically justified assurance of his strong ties to the university. A university is defined right from its foundation by the autonomy of its faculty. A university needs to maintain its autonomy against the growing sovereign power of the state and its interests. The ideal for education is the man who masters every situation in a proper manner, because he has the right sense of proportion, the correct tact, and the correct taste – an ideal, which helps to form a society which is held together not by political power, but by the powers of education. The ideal of university education is education through scholarly research. The ethos of the researcher, the model he sets in life and teaching, is to educate the students to a life in ideas, which could form the ruling elite of the nation without being influenced by the one-sided purposes of the state. We are entering a period in history in which a university is sought to be a place where the teaching and educational interests of the state are to be served, and not free research. No doubt a university is an institution

The idea of a university and its leader  75 supported by the state, nevertheless the services provided by this institution to the state should only be a result of the fact that it is a free research institution. The forces of research and teaching, which are still active within the university, have to resist the idea that the university is there to serve the interests of the state. For this would lead to academic education being completely controlled by the aims of the state, as interpreted by each current state leadership. To what extent will we ourselves be in the position to fulfil our own task – the task of realizing the idea of the university of research and teaching? All are aware of the enormous difficulty of this task. The special educational task of the university can be effectively realized by participation in research. The work of the university in educating the academic youth is, in any case, only a contribution to the process which will be determined by various other forces: by the home and the school, which from the youth during the actually pliable ages, by the living community, which surrounds the students, wherever they are. The contribution, which the university as the community of scholarly research and teaching can make to this educational process, can be to ensure that something of the educational enthusiasm of research crosses over to the youth. However, this can occur, as we must acknowledge, only in the smallest circles. The ideal of the university can be realized only in the community of research in small circles of students gathered around a teacher. Let us, therefore, seek together the means which will permit the educational powers of research to shine on the academic youth in the midst of the modern mass university. These means are not only financial; the sufficient guarantee of such means would rather be the result of public consciousness truly identifying with its universities. Now everything will depend on whether one can successfully transmit in a reasonable approximation and in contemporary style that unity of research and teaching. If we are successful in this, then one day it will be proved true that we can never know what we are, because the powers, with which we live, reach into a future, which we cannot foresee. We need to be aware that the actuality of the university finds itself in the critical situation of requiring guidance from the idea of the university. The university is now at a time when the society is becoming a technological society deeply influenced by rapidly expanding entrenched information technology. The university finds itself placed in an unusual and new relationship of tension with practical living and in this tension-filled situation it has to find its role. Nowadays research is not conducted exclusively at the university. Government and/or private funded institutes and the research wings of various business companies are now dominating the research scene. This is changing the very concept of research. Research is no longer for participation of students in the university in formative ideas. Research is now equated with innovation of technology for competitive advantage for profit in the economy or innovation in teaching the skills to use and adapt to innovation in technology to make trainees fit for employment in companies.

76  Binod Kumar Agarwala Technological society through its structuring of the whole way of life is directly and indirectly affecting the university. The university is required to adopt the research model, which is innovation in technology, requiring enormous growth in costs and investment. The growing demand for funds by the university is bringing in the pressure of the dominant interest in the economy to make a differentiation in research in the university, even though the differentiation does not exist. Universities are required to make a differentiation between applied or relevant research on the one hand and basic or fundamental research, whose relevance is not yet clear, on the other, and to encourage the former to justify the funding requirement. What is sought under applied and relevant research is nothing but innovation in technology or technique to enhance some skill, which is not research. Gadamer put it succinctly: In truth there can be no other research except basic research. That means that there is no other type of research except research which in its own activity is not concerned about the practical and pragmatic purposes which may be related to it. The freedom of the will to know consists exactly in pursuing to the end all possible doubts and one’s own possible self-critique.24 University in a modern society necessarily performs a critical function. In Gadamer’s words, It must seek to discover a balance between the duty to prepare students for a profession and the duty to educate which lies in the essence and activity of research … We need to think through the continual opposition between the educational task of the university and the practical utility which society and the state expect from it.25 In the technological society there is greater demand not only for innovation but also for greater differentiation of specializations, both of which lead to decline of education as Bildung, which makes the existence of university geared to research and education as Bildung doubtful in the modern technological society. There is a third factor too. In a technological society, goaded by information technology, there is a greater demand for learning skills in handling different technologies and bureaucracy. The onus of fulfilling this increasing demand is put on the university, requiring an exponential increase in the enrolment of students in the university. These three demands to innovate technology and training in skills, to specialize, and to increase exponentially the enrolment of students have brought three-fold alienations to the university. The first alienation is between the student and teacher, the life of scholarship in which students participated with their teachers is gone and an anonymity of bureaucratic management has entered the relationship between the teacher and the students as the enrolment number increases. The second alienation is the alienation of one

The idea of a university and its leader  77 branch of knowledge from another. Due to specialization there is fragmentation and departmentalization as the university is becoming large under the two factors, i.e. massive enrolment of students coupled with increasing number of specializations. This in its wake has brought in a disruption of the intellectual communication, while the latter is necessary for the idea of the university to realize it as an organic actuality. The third and most serious alienation is alienation from living with ideas. The student life in the university, in the idea of the university, is living with ideas. Students are required not only to forget living with ideas, but also living as a student in the university is becoming a kind of new profession, just like other professions in the larger society, with its own bureaucratic rules. Students are now participating in another bureaucratic profession of human resource development to supplement other professions. Now we must face this question: can we have an independent academic world insulated from pressure groups? What happens to the idea of the university in a technological society, which induces in those who are growing up an ever increasing distrust of the university’s way of life, so that the very appeal is only heard with mistrust, as they want to learn skills to enter a profession in the future? How should the idea of education as Bildung, or education through participation in research, or education through living with ideas, which may still be the actual attraction for academic studies, be made possible in actuality? In the modern technological society the idea of the university is understood as an ‘ideal’ for the university. But that is an erroneous way of grasping the idea of the university as it completely divorces the idea from the actuality. The idea of the university has to be in the actuality of the university. One cannot imagine a university where the idea of the university is lost and no longer recognizable. The idea of the university cannot be a distant guiding image; rather it has to be recognized in the actuality of a university. Hence, we have to face the task of recognizing and defending the independence of the university from all pressure groups. We cannot have a romantic idea of the autonomy of the university of a bygone era. Now we live in a technological society controlled by a bureaucratic state and the university in its actuality depends on that thoroughly organized social system. Within this social system a modest space of autonomy for the university is still available and that is the modest space within which we have to carry out research as inquiring teachers and inquiring learners. As members of the research and teaching university we still enjoy the distance from practical activity and in this distance lies the possibility of freedom and autonomy. Just to give an example: there is enormous distance between research and teaching of law in a university and the practical activity of the profession of law in the Court and Bar. Only when one moves from the one to the other does one realize what unique and massive relearning then takes place. This is true of all areas of research and teaching in the university and the corresponding professions, if any. This is the ground for the accusation against the university that it is divorced from actual practical

78  Binod Kumar Agarwala life. This accusation proves that there is freedom and autonomy in the university, which is denied in other professions. This freedom and autonomy cannot and does not require any strengthening through reform or modification of the university as it emerges from the very fact of the position of humans in nature and the fact that humans possess language. Even though humans are part of nature like other animals, humans, as opposed to animals, are in a special way social beings which have moved beyond the natural impulses, instincts, and hierarchies which otherwise determine life in nature. This has happened within nature, as humans are also in nature, because nature has taken a decisive step in itself to release humans from itself, when it granted humans language, a system of communication which surpasses those used by animals of so many other species in nature. In the words of Gadamer: And with language we received distance and thereby pretense, lies, self-deception, in short all the great ambiguities of human existence … We live this dangerous distance to ourselves, which possesses an eerie presence in the impulses of the human soul as for example, the phenomenon of suicide shows, or is seen in the terrible legacy of war against one’s own kind not known elsewhere in nature.26 But, this impulse for distance that has emerged in humans in nature with its dangerous possibilities which have been actualized to a large extent, has also given rise to positive possibilities, which also have been realized to some extent. From the impulse to distance, there has emerged for humans the possibility of theoria, i.e. “of living in pure observation or thinking which sees things as they are.”27 This is only a possibility that needs to be accomplished. University in a modern technological society offers and grants us a free space of a limited type to accomplish theoria, i.e. a pure witnessing of what is there. But this free space of theory is offered to the university not as a privilege of a particular class but as a human possibility, which is not never totally unrealized in any person and which we have been given in a university to develop to a higher degree for everyone. Since there is enormous distance between the theoretical training in the university and the practical life of a profession, which one may enter, persons are disappointed as this transition requires new learning and renunciation of the abstract, exotic, and unpragmatic knowledge, which one has absorbed in the university. This is a fundamental problem inherent in desiring to know and needing to know, which is the very essence of human nature, and implies a dislodging from the path of natural practical life. This problem is nothing but a problem of the tension that exists between true knowledge, which is knowledge of the binding universal on the one hand, and the pragmatic correctness, adroitness and prudence required in a specific situation on the other. This tension, to put it in different words, is the tension between free thinking, which is bound by no political, economic, psychological, or emotional restrictions, and the new restrictions in which life must exist.

The idea of a university and its leader  79 This tension is not insurmountable. It can be overcome by exercising good judgment with taste, but for those who lack judgment the tension is insurmountable. So we have a task in the words of Gadamer: “Within the restrictions of our social life, in the fateful framework into which each one has been placed by birth and experience, it is important to preserve the free space which one has been allotted.” Unless this free space is preserved one cannot realize one’s own possibilities. So from this there follow at least three tasks. The first task is to realize that the freedom, which permits the university teachers and researchers a theoretical orientation in their life, is not a gift bestowed on them. This realization is specially difficult because the technological society in which all live now, in order to preserve its own order, informally pressurizes and formally rewards adopting to and fitting into its institutionalized structure of being. In such a situation, given the large number of students in a university, there is no possibility of extensive participation in research, but the only actuality left for most students is the mere possibility of awareness that there are teachers here “who as participants in research speak to them and take a position in questions which concern everyone…”28 This actual possibility of awareness among the students that there are professors who still participate in research out of theoretical interest and without asking whom their research and knowledge acquired pleases has enormous value. This possibility if actualized is itself a passive, theoretic, participation in research, and not an active participation in research by way of making one’s own contribution to it. Success in making contribution to research is not a possibility for all teachers, yet all the teachers who attempt authentic accomplishment in research, mediate between the few successful researchers and the enormous mass of students. This limited and passive participation in research is possible for all students even in the present situation. This assures the students that they can still risk their judgment and need not simply agree with opinions, either of the powers that be that claim to know the truth, or of the pressure groups that fight for some interest. It is this theoretical attitude of the students that the university is strengthening, inviting the charge that the university gives no ideological direction to students nor does it give instructions concerning how to act in future concrete situations within professional life. What the university makes actually possible, for students, is to receive the temperament to risk his or her own judgments and not simply to allow himself or herself to be manipulated. The second task for a researcher and teacher in the university is to keep up with the knowledge that is ever disintegrating into multiple specialized disciplines, and within one’s own discipline also further sub-disciplinary specializations are growing, making it difficult for a scholar to keep himself or herself abreast of even a single discipline. This requires of teachers in the university to freely question their own disciplinary prejudgments, so that they can participate in other disciplines with their respective disciplinary prejudgments. It is only such imaginative teachers who can help students to develop the ability to judge and the confidence to think for themselves.

80  Binod Kumar Agarwala Gadamer writes, “That we criticize ourselves and others criticize us is the authentic breath of life for every true academic and researcher.”29 To be criticized is not a comfortable experience for anyone. Even a teacher and a researcher, who is facing criticism, is a little distressed and doubts himself more than the usual doubts he may be having. Since the teachers and researchers have chosen a career of research and teaching in the university, to be criticized is their lot, which they have to learn to bear with equanimity. The third task, which is with them not only as a researcher and a teacher in the university, but also as a human being, is to find free spaces and to learn to move therein. One may find everything questionable from one or the other interested point of view. But the questions that emerge from interests are not necessarily genuine questions or open questions and may not give rise to possibilities, which are actual and open and hence may not provide free spaces to move therein. We have to learn to exclude many things from questioning in order to arrive at truly open questions and actual possibilities. The noblest part of the university is that the researcher teachers and the youth are together in the task of finding and learning to discover the truly open questions, which open up actual possibilities and thereby open up possible ways of shaping our own lives as citizens. How to find a way to translate the idea of the university to actuality is the most important question for us now. The idea is translated into actuality only through the people who run it. So, what we need to concentrate on is to put the selection procedure of the leaders of the university into place. If we have a succession of able leaders in the university it will take care of the selection of people to run other positions in the university to achieve actualization of the idea. So the question is: what is the test that makes a scholar worthy of being a leader of the university? One of the most important requirements is that the person must be capable of taking a critical attitude, particularly to his administrative and political competence, so that he is capable of learning from his own errors. What is the way to find this capacity in the person? Gadamer answers: For this there is no better way than the one Plato lays down for his guardian who would rather be doing something else than the task to which he is appointed. Someone who finds nothing more beautiful than power – and power must seem attractive if it is to be used effectively – will surely not be able to find that distance from himself and his power that would make a liberal use of his power possible.30 By ‘liberal use of power’ Gadamer, in the context of universities, means exercise of power to maintain universities as research and teaching institutions as self-fulfilment of humanity that is legitimate and needs no further justification in terms of some further ends. Implied in this is also the idea that institutional power is exercised as public power and not private power of the person to advance his private ends. Here we have to be aware that “intrinsic to the desire

The idea of a university and its leader  81 to govern and pursue one’s own interests,” is revitalization of “all the aspects of intolerance.”31 It follows that there should be no requirement of inviting applications for the post of leader in the university and only those professors who have had some unblemished successful previous administrative experience and are still pursuing their theoretical studies vigorously should be considered for appointment. Let me emphasize Gadamer’s words again: theory involves and is, in my opinion, distance from oneself … Plato showed that the guardians, the people who exercise control over power and thus hold real power, can resist the law of constantly expanding and overweening power only if there is something else that they would rather be doing. This is the Greeks’ idea of the theoretical life, which I do not consider at all out of date and which has merely been expelled from our conscious reflection by a certain over-emphasis on practice.32 Secondly, the person to be worthy of the position of leader in a university must be capable, if we follow Gadamer, of overcoming the illusions that constantly arise from one’s own ego (that of an individual, group, people, or culture to which the person belongs and listens) in order to see what is. The secret of all government – the evil of power and its counterpart, the wisdom of political assembly – is hidden here.33 What Gadamer means is that the person who is capable of coming out of the narrowness of his vision can see what is happening in the university in truth and can listen to the various statutory bodies of the university to arrive at impartial decisions. But the one who cannot do so faces the danger of succumbing to the evil of power, i.e. the exercise of power for narrow interests, whether his own or of the narrow group identity he espouses. Thirdly, the person worthy of the position of leader in a university must abhor “the real ‘terror’ that comes from power,”34 which is “the universal conformism that knows no considered decision but only accommodation to those in power and their supposed or actual opinions.”35 That is to say that in the university in general and in the group of advisors in particular he does not allow narrow pragmatism, absolute conformism, and servile adaptability to “become victorious over the cultivation of individual judgment and original imagination,”36 these being essential for research and teaching. He must encourage the cultivation of sound judgment and productive imagination in the members of the university. Fourthly, the person occupying the position of leader is a solitary man. He suffers from a “form of solitude that besets one unsought,” and it “is the solitude that is concealed in power.” Gadamer writes: The powerful man is solitary. It is the curse of power that the anticipated will of the powerful gets reflected back to him along the thousand paths

82  Binod Kumar Agarwala of flattery: great powerful men have always also been great despisers of men. Flattery and fear weave the veil of solitude that surrounds the powerful.37 This kind of solitude leads to isolation, for this solitude besets one unsought. “Isolation is suffered – in solitude something is being sought.”38 This isolation gradually leads to increasing alienation – i.e., increasing alienation of the leader from the community of scholars of the university. This of course need not become a complete separation, a complete breach. But it leads to “a mounting uneasiness that the familiar closeness is becoming false.” In Gadamer’s words, “The intimacy has not yet vanished, but just seems to be dwindling. For someone who becomes isolated this experience of dwindling intimacy becomes intense. The world of nearness becomes altogether more and more alien to him.”39 If we follow the logic of Gadamer, isolation has the tendency towards inner self-involvement, and hence the powerful man like the leader in a university becomes more and more involved in his own self and get drowned in it and can no longer extricate himself from it to approach the community of scholars to understand them and their issues. He becomes a stranger in the academic world. He is immersed so much in his own self-interest that he loses the capacity to identify with the universal, here the universal being the whole scholarly community and its interest. In fact a time comes when he denies himself identification with this universal and this denial is also experienced as compulsion. It is a strange kind of compulsion to which he is exposed by his own experience, and it renders him incapable of resistance even to the slightest degree when he encounters powerful forces of the external environment of the society. In fact non-­ resistance to the external forces becomes the hallmark of his administration in the university. This in no time becomes a complete dependency, dependency of his administration on such external powerful forces. The communality that is missing for the chief executive in the university extrapolates into the form of his consciousness that takes up the causes of these external powers as its very own affair at the cost of the university’s interest. This leads university into the danger zone. So it is essential for the person to be worthy of the position of leader that he is in a position to handle this form of solitude to establish binding solidarities in the university as conditions for the exercise of practical reason from the very beginning. To overcome this kind of solitude and convert it into right kind of solitude the person must be capable of what the Greeks called “friendship with oneself.” But this depends on the ability of the person “to master its own internal divisions, despite all its conflicts and pent-up urges, and to unite behind one thing,”40 the one thing in the present case being the interest of the university. The constitution that rules out inner discord of the soul of the administrator also binds him with the community of scholars in solidarity of action. “Man’s inner constitution and his ability to be part of a community are fundamentally one. Only someone who is friends with himself can fit into what is common.”41 For this he needs to value true solitude,

The idea of a university and its leader  83 solitude distinguished from isolation and alienation. Solitude is not experience of loss of community but an intense desire to hold on to something undisturbed by anyone or anything. Solitude requires the capacity to be contentedly alone in sympathy with nature that knows nothing of the human vices, fending off the soulless machine of technically rational institutions. Only when a man is being at one with himself can he participate in binding solidarities. What does one hold onto in solitude in this context of recovery of solidarities? One needs to preserve and hold on to the consciousness of one’s ability. This consciousness of one’s ability is the only form of freedom that one can hold onto in the face of all the compulsions of the technologically rational institution. According to Gadamer, Hegel rightly saw that the consciousness of the servant, “because it is consciousness of the freedom bestowed by its ability, is on the way to a self-consciousness that is more genuinely human than is the master’s proud self-consciousness.”42 Gadamer continues: Now, in the consciousness of freedom that arises from ability, which is the only grounded self-consciousness, individual being is always surpassed by what is common. Ability founds solidarity. Solidarity in ability, responsibility in one’s profession, and the knowledge that one shares with others and allows others to control, are all forms of solidarity that refer back to the one inherent, fundamental possibility that man has of aligning himself with, even of making friends with, himself and the world, by working.43 This is what we refer to as friendship with oneself. Here we have to be very careful, for the consciousness of ability is not to be confused with consciousness of power. The latter reverses the relationship between solitude and what one holds on to in solitude. In solitude consciousness of ability is held on to, but solitude that is concealed in power which besets one unsought is self-alienation, alienation from the community of scholars. When a person is capable of overcoming isolation and alienation and capable of being a friend with himself he can meet the powerful external agencies without suffering from an inferiority complex and meet them with strength of solidarity, and awareness of the superiority of his ability and knowledge over them. Fifthly, he must have the capacity to preserve the autonomy of the university relative to all interest groups, the social pressures, and the requirements of publicity that exist in society at large. This is the educational mission of the university, that exposure to the spirit of genuine research and exposure to university instruction would enable every student to acquire the sense of what real research involves, i.e., immunity from the opinions that are so widely disseminated in the mass media. This spirit of front-line research is important even in the formation of lawyers, engineers, schoolteachers and all professions. This is one of the educational requirements that every practitioner of the professions would be exposed to serious academic research

84  Binod Kumar Agarwala and would preserve the research consciousness in the daily exercise of his profession. The university can preserve this consciousness of factualness and research only when the university is protected from politicization and remains immune from pressure groups or mass media. Lastly, a person worthy of being the leader of a university, one of the highest educational institutions of a state, must be a person who has achieved harmony between words and deeds. He must not be a person who merely employs strategies to appear to conform to rules but does not conform to rules in practice, who merely formally recognizes the rules but transgresses them. He must not be a mere consummate actor, who merely theatrically gives an appearance of conformity to the academic ideal of disinterestedness while actually promoting specific interests. No doubt “hypocrisy is the homage paid by vice to virtue,” but this is not the form of homage to virtue which universities are meant to teach young people. Hence the leader must institutionalize and encourage a critique that endlessly uncovers corruption, clientelism, favouritism, ambitiousness and at best a private interest behind the veneer of public purpose. No morality can survive unless “legitimate imposture,” to use Austin’s words, is exposed, i.e. unless public officials are caught in the web of their own posturing. Hence, within the university itself effort must be made towards unveiling hidden differences between official theory and actual practice, between the limelight and the backroom manoeuvring. According to Bourdieu: This work of uncovering, disenchantment, or demystification, is anything but disenchanting. On the contrary, it can only be accomplished in the name of the same values of civil virtue (equality, fraternity, and especially disinterestedness and sincerity) with which the unveiled reality is at variance.44

Notes 1 Hans-Georg Gadamer, On Education, Poetry, and History: Applied Hermeneutics, edited by Dieter Misgeld and Grame Nicholson, translated by Lawrence Schmidt and Monica Reuss, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1992, p. 47. 2 “Everyone must come to terms with reality in their own way and I believe that whoever wants to come to terms with reality has to recognize that ideas and reality always belong together and are always apart.” Gadamer, On Education, Poetry, and History: Applied Hermeneutics, p. 47. In my essay I make a distinction between ‘reality’ and ‘actuality’ going against Gadamer. Actuality is what depends on actions for its being, while reality is that which exists by its own substance without depending on anyone’s action. 3 Gadamer, On Education, Poetry, and History: Applied Hermeneutics, p. 48. 4 Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, Second, Revised Edition. Translation revised by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, Continuum: London and New York, 2004, pp. 11f. 5 Gadamer, On Education, Poetry, and History: Applied Hermeneutics, p. 48. 6 Ibid., p. 3. 7 Ibid., pp. 4f. 8 Ibid., p. 7.

The idea of a university and its leader  85 9 Ibid., p. 8. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., p. 15. 13 Ibid., p. 16. 14 Ibid. 15 Immanuel Kant, “What Is Enlightenment?”, translated by Mary C. Smith, accessed April 3, 2018, http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html 16 Gadamer, On Education, Poetry, and History: Applied Hermeneutics, p. 17. 17 Ibid., pp. 17f. 18 Cf. Ibid., pp.18f. 19 Cf. Ibid., p. 20. 20 Cf. Ibid. 21 Cf. Ibid., pp. 20f. 22 Cf. Ibid., p. 21. 23 Cf. Ibid. 24 Ibid., p. 49. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., p. 55. 27 Ibid., p. 56. 28 Ibid., p. 57. 29 Ibid., p. 58. 30 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Science and the Public Sphere,” in his In Praise of Theory: Speeches and Essays, translated by Chris Dawson, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1998, p. 69. 31 Gadamer, “The Idea of Tolerance 1782–1982,” In Praise of Theory, pp. 99f. 32 Gadamer, “Science and the Public Sphere,” In Praise of Theory, p. 67. 33 Gadamer, “Praise of Theory,” In Praise of Theory, p. 31. 34 Gadamer, “The Idea of Tolerance 1782–1982,” In Praise of Theory, p. 93. 35 Ibid., pp. 92f. 36 Ibid., p. 93. 37 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Isolation as a Symptom of Self-Alienation,” in his In Praise of Theory: Speeches and Essays, translated by Chris Dawson, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1998, p. 104. 38 Ibid., p. 104. 39 Ibid., pp. 104f. 40 Ibid., p. 111. 41 Ibid., pp. 111f. 42 Ibid., p. 113. 43 Ibid., p. 113. 44 Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1998, p. 145.

5 The challenges that a university confronts in India D. V. Kumar

When one speaks in terms of the idea of a university, it is quite possible that one would be taken to task for essentializing the role of a university or for adopting a logocentric approach, as if the university is meant to be doing only one thing. To pre-empt that possibility, it needs to be made clear that we are using the ‘idea’ of a university in the sense of an ‘ideal’, what a university is expected to be doing to justify itself. As Newman argued, a university is the place where a certain type of valuable activity is supposed to be happening (1996). The term which was used by Plato for the place where most abstract enquiries happen was ‘academy’, though later on this term began also to be used for other places, such as a place where young cricketers train in Australia. Be that as it may be, the essential point one is making here is that when one speaks of the idea of a university, one is essentially referring to the ideal that characterizes a university. It is the place where the creative and critical exploration of ideas is expected to take place, where truth is sought and where imagination is deployed to engage with issues that confront society. At a fundamental level, the essential duty of a university is to search for the ‘truth’, however unpalatable it may be. The idea is not to simply try to achieve the objectives set by the State or others. If a university is simply busy trying to achieve objectives set by others, it would necessarily lose sight of what it is supposed to look for, i.e. truth. As Prabhat Patnaik argued (2017), if universities are to simply promote ‘nationalism’ or ‘development’ the way they are conceptualized or understood by the dominant groups, then they are not doing their job seriously. It is only by searching for the ‘truth’ that the best interests of societies can be served. It needs to be realized that the first thing dominant interests try to hide is the truth. If truth is discovered, then the whole hegemony of dominant interests simply breaks down. Universities are the places where the search for truth is supposed to be pursued. For this to happen contending viewpoints need to be given their legitimate space. If only one idea, however dominant and powerful, is given complete space than the search for truth would not succeed. Universities are the places where a hundred flowers are expected to bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend. At a larger level, a university as a social institution holds special significance in every modern society. A lot is expected from a university and any

The challenges that a university confronts in India  87 failure on its part to meet these expectations is critiqued and rightly so. It is expected to contribute significantly to the material and cultural advancement of a society. It is supposed to provide the direction in which a society can grow. From providing skilled manpower which can take up different tasks essential for the running of a society to the inculcation of values without which no society can be established on a firm democratic, liberal and secular framework, a university performs some of the most essential functions. It is also supposed to act as a critique on society itself. If society is not moving in the direction it is expected to move, then the university needs to step in and make a critique of it so that society realizes this and takes corrective steps. This article essentially seeks to deal with three serious challenges that universities in contemporary India find themselves confronted with, though there are many others which have been commented upon. Before we do so, it would be appropriate to pursue some theoretical engagement on the very question of how education is to be looked at from a larger perspective. That would give us a sense of theoretical context in which we can look at the challenges that universities are facing. From a functionalist perspective, education is considered indispensable for the smooth functioning of society. Emile Durkheim, whose theory of social change (from societies characterized by mechanical solidarity to societies characterized by organic solidarity) became dominant in sociological literature, spoke at length on the importance of education for society. He believed that the fundamental functions of education are firstly the transmission of societal norms and values, and secondly, the passing of skills which are necessary for carrying out various tasks in the society. Co-operation, solidarity and social cohesion, which are central features of a society, as he believed, would only be possible in the context of homogeneity which is engendered only when people share common norms and values. Education performs this function by transmitting the existing norms and values and making people realize that they are part of a larger society (Durkheim 1961). Unless they see themselves as such and subordinate their individual goals to that of society, social life would be impossible. The teaching of history especially creates a realization among children that they are part of something larger than themselves, leading to a sense of commitment to society. Secondly, in every society there are different tasks to be performed for the maintenance of the society and individuals with different skills are required. It is education which is responsible for producing such individuals. Talcott Parsons, another functionalist whose dominance continues unabated in sociology, also referred to the functionalist aspects of education. He argued that one of the most essential functions of education is to enable a smooth transition from following particularistic standards of behaviour to universalistic standards, which are the hallmarks of a modern society. The emergence of a modern society is predicated upon the presence of value orientations such as achievement, universalism and so on and education plays a critically important role in inculcating such value orientations among children (Parsons 1960).

88  D. V. Kumar Coming to the radical interrogation of the role of education in society, Althusser (2014) clearly stands out. For him, education being a part of a superstructure simply reflects the existing mode of production and is essentially used by the ruling classes to perpetuate their dominance in society. Education is an instrument for the reproduction of labour which itself involves two aspects. First is the reproduction of skills necessary for an efficient labour force. It is through education that the skills required for engaging in various activities for the generation of surplus are acquired. Second is the reproduction of ruling class ideologies so that the existing power structure does not get questioned. The ruling class cannot expect to perpetuate their dominance inordinately through force. It needs to make it the existing state of affairs, i.e. the dominance of many by a few needs to be seen as perfectly natural and legitimate. In other words, it needs to ideologically justify the exploitative situation that obtains in society. Education is entrusted precisely with that responsibility and that is why he views it as part of the ‘ideological State Apparatus’. The major function of any such apparatus, whether it is education or religion, is to perpetuate false class consciousness which makes it extremely difficult to question the ruling class ideologies. The perpetuation of dominance depends upon the continuation of ruling class ideologies which in turn depend upon the presence of false consciousness which the ideological state apparatuses ensure. Ivan Illich in his critically acclaimed book Deschooling Society (1970) advances extremely powerful yet widely criticized formulations regarding the role of education as it is practised in schools. He believes that education, instead of being a liberating and empowering experience, actually destroys human creativity with its emphasis on following rules and regulations and existing pedagogical practices. Schools have emerged as the main institutions which have smothered creative imagination and tried to ensure conformity with the dominant value system. He further argues that skills which the schools are entrusted to transmit should actually be taught by those who are using them on a daily basis, certainly not by schools which are not adequately equipped to do so. He gives the example of Spanish-speaking youth in New York who are school drop-outs, but have done a very good job of teaching Spanish to teachers, bureaucrats and others, and they have done so particularly well, as they speak Spanish all the time. Therefore schools are not the place where specific skills should be taught. Instead schools should be the places where one explores creatively, develops his or her critical faculties and advances solutions to the problems being faced by society. In his analysis of liberal ideas which have emphasized the role of schools, he says schools have actually become institutions which are repressive and conformity-seeking. The basic solution lies in abolishing schools and bringing in ‘learning webs’ where people with similar interests and abilities meet around a problem, discuss it and evolve a solution on the basis of their own initiative. His radical ideas on education have evoked a deep sense of indifference as they are considered ‘impractical and utopian’. But it needs to be recognized that what he said about schools and the way they try and ensure conformity to repressive pedagogical practices is largely true.

The challenges that a university confronts in India  89 Another enormously critical mind who has captured the imagination of all those concerned with education and its critical power is Paulo Freire (1972). For him, education is the main instrument in the hands of oppressed classes to obliterate class distinctions. It does this by conscientizing their conscience and breaking the ‘culture of silence’ which the dispossessed classes have been systematically trained to develop by the dominant sections. Their passivity and ignorance are essentially a product of their location in a certain socio-economic and political situation which is oppressive and hegemonic. The oppressed and the disadvantaged are discouraged from questioning the status quo and from pursuing creative and critical engagement with reality. There is nothing like a neutral educational process. It either secures conformity of the youth with the logic of the system or it becomes the ‘practice of freedom’ whereby the youth are able to engage critically and creatively with the exploitative reality around them and seek to transform it.

Three challenges The fact that higher education in India is in ‘crisis’ has been extensively commented upon. Issues such as ‘falling standards’, ‘indiscipline’, ‘inadequate funds’, ‘political interference’ etc. in the context of higher education in India have received wide attention. I would therefore refrain from dealing with them. I would take up three serious challenges which universities in contemporary India find themselves confronted with and which they need to surmount in their own creative way if they have to survive. One of the first serious challenges that we need to recognize is that the universities are ceasing to be the critical spaces they are supposed to be. A university stands for dissent and criticality. If there is a failure on the part of universities to provide an enabling environment in which critical imagination and a spirit of questioning can be promoted, then universities need to sit and take note of it. A university loses its very logic of existence if its students are not permitted the space to express themselves and are forced to agree with the dominant narratives present outside the campuses. If universities are expected to simply follow the hegemonic modes of thinking without questioning them, then clearly they cannot be agents of change. In history, there are instances of students throwing up alternative possibilities and imaginations. The glorious student uprising of May 1968 in France can be given as one such illustration. Massive numbers of students in Paris came out onto the streets against what they termed an authoritarian political structure, a deeply embedded patriarchal value system, an enormously inegalitarian economic system and conservative sexual rules. They were soon joined by millions of workers who saw an imminent economic revolution. They put forth their demands which were about better working conditions, higher wages, and greater participation of union representatives in the factory decision-making processes. With students and workers coming together, everything seemed possible. Whether the student uprising finally

90  D. V. Kumar succeeded or not in what it wanted to achieve is a moot point. Conservatives delegitimized the uprising by saying that it promoted promiscuous sexual mores and hence was dangerous for French society and leftists termed the uprising as much ado about nothing. It did not go as far as it intended to and hence was a failure. In whichever way one characterizes the student uprising, the larger point one wishes to make is that the Paris student uprising threw up an alternative imagination which intellectuals, policy-makers, journalists and social activists could not ignore. What was distinctive about the uprising was that students showed the power of dissent to the world. Back home in India, on the campus of India’s most prominent public University, i.e. Jawaharlal Nehru University, what was supposed to be a cultural event, named the ‘country without a post-office’ on February 9, 2016 (this was called by a group of students to commemorate the death of Afzal Guru, who was hanged to death in connection with the attack on Parliament House, New Delhi) turned out to be an event of momentous significance. The university administration called in the police, as seriously objectionable slogans were allegedly used and charges of sedition were framed against some students of JNU. Judicial proceedings are ongoing and one only hopes that the truth will come out sooner rather than later. In tune with the reputation of JNU as a site of intense debates and discussions, a series of lectures was held on the campus of JNU about multiple ways of interrogating the very idea of nationalism (Azad 2016). JNU has always had an enviable reputation of contributing substantially to the debates on issues of great socio-economic and political consequence. What one is essentially saying is that such critical spaces such as the University of Paris or JNU are becoming few and far between. It is not always necessary that one agrees with them but one needs to encourage such critical spaces. The second serious challenge which is being faced by the universities, about which scholars are seriously concerned, is the growing commodification of education. Education is being increasingly seen as a commodity to be sold on the market in exchange for money. Commodity, as is wellknown, has two aspects, viz. the use value and the exchange value. What is happening on an increasing scale is that the use value of education, i.e. knowledge for the sake of a greater understanding of the reality around us, is being replaced by the exchange value, i.e. how much income I can generate from my qualification. Clearly, the market has become a great determinant of which degree is desirable and which is not. A degree in engineering or management is much more sought after these days because it can be sold on the market much more easily than a degree in history or philosophy or political science. The degree does not itself constitute a source of satisfaction for the possessor. Rather what gives pleasure to him/her is the money which is made when the degree is sold, i.e. when a job is obtained. The enormous growth in the number of private coaching institutes which are supposed to prepare students for engineering and medicine admission tests is a reflection of the extent to which commodification of education has proceeded. One also constantly hears about the enormous anxiety and

The challenges that a university confronts in India  91 tension which young boys and girls are subjected to as they prepare for these admission tests. So much money and energy are invested that any failure on their part to pass the tests is taken so seriously that they see no other recourse but to take the ultimate step of committing suicide. Being unable to get into an IIT is almost tantamount to seeing that the world has vanished before them. It is really a pathetic state of affairs and no substantial attempts are made either by the families or educational institutions to explain to the young boys and girls that education has a much larger meaning and purpose than to indulge in this mad rush for places. What this has done to education is that it has made it an unreflective and unreflexive activity. Critical engagement with ideas is discouraged and in fact is considered irrelevant. What this has also done is that it has made education hugely instrumental in terms of how it can benefit the educated by equipping them with necessary skills so that they acquire jobs immediately after completing their course. Those ‘hermeneutic’ disciplines like sociology, literature, and philosophy which are not capable of doing that, i.e. ensuring instrumental value for the educated, are increasingly delegitimized. It is becoming difficult to persuade students with passion to pursue these subjects. The fundamental question which bothers them is: what do we get after acquiring a degree in these subjects? This is a question which is difficult to answer as they are not required by the market and anybody acquiring degrees in these subjects would find it extremely difficult to get employment. Prabhat Patnaik (2016) talks about five problems that would follow if the commoditization of education goes unhampered. First, education, instead of pursuing ideas is reduced to pursuing money, which in the long run would not be beneficial either at the individual or the social level. Second, a commodity by definition is a finished thing, a packaged one which means that a commoditized education too comes in a packaged form which is not open to creative and critical interrogation. This ultimately constitutes a fundamental negation of criticality in knowledge production. Third, such an education would also lack any social sensitivity as it fails to produce any concern for the ‘human condition’ because of its excessive preoccupation with material aspects such as money. Fourth, by excluding large numbers of people from education, as an education requires money, it undermines substantive, as opposed to merely formal, equality of opportunity. Lastly, the gradual withdrawal of the State from education would leave the field open to private players, which has the potential to exacerbate the differentiation between a few elite institutions and a large number of understaffed and underfunded ones. The third challenge from a sociological perspective is that universities are finding it increasingly difficult to strike a balance between enhancing social inclusion by catering to the growing demands of marginalized communities in India, the members of the OBC1 being the latest addition, and ensuring what is called quality of higher education. It is widely believed that enhancement of social inclusion leads to erosion of quality. If quality is to be ensured, then universities need to limit access for all ‘undeserving’

92  D. V. Kumar people. It was perhaps with that intention traditionally that Western universities denied access to women and it was much later that the doors of even Oxford were thrown open to women. In India, of course, universities such as Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, which were the first to be started were much more progressive and open, did not adopt such a restrictive policy and in fact encouraged women to join in large numbers. Though the presence of women is still small compared to men, there are at least no formal restrictions as far as women are concerned, unlike how it was traditionally with the Western universities. Right now the issue is much deeper. It is about providing more access to members of the depressed sections of society as a matter of state policy, i.e. the policy of reservation. Two powerful arguments have been placed in support of the policy of reservation. First, it becomes the fundamental responsibility of the state to ensure that the sections which have been historically oppressed and discriminated against, such as Dalits, are given adequate opportunities to realize their potential in terms of reserving a certain number of places in educational institutions and also a certain percentage of jobs in the government sector. The whole notion of an obligation to remedy past and present historical wrongs has been stressed in the context of the implementation of a policy of reservation (Hedge 2015: 61–104). It recognizes the fact that poverty is not the only inequity that is a cause of concern in Indian society. Prejudice and discrimination are pervasive and eat into the heart of society. It is based on the philosophy of ‘universalising equality and particularising preference’ (Ibid: 66). Those who take the above position respond to the argument that has gained popular legitimacy, that if members of depressed communities are not able to enter higher educational institutions and government jobs, it is clearly because of a lack of ‘merit’. As Satish Deshpande (2003) argued quite persuasively, such an argument is sociological nonsense. Taking a cue from what Durkheim argued long ago, that while every individual suicide is an intensely personal act, it is the rates of suicide which are of sociological significance, as they constitute a social fact. Similarly, while looking at the performance of members of disadvantaged sections of society, what should be taken into account are the rates of representation of these communities rather than individual cases of achievement or lack of it. After presenting an impressive amount of data which clearly show massive underrepresentation of members of these communities in the government sector to buttress his argument, he comes to the conclusion that ‘the only reasonable explanation is in terms of the social mechanisms (whether intentionally or accidentally created) of systematic discrimination’ (Deshpande 2003: 121). Secondly, it has been argued quite relentlessly that the substance of democracy would be served only when the members of the most depressed sections of society are made partners in the functioning of the State. The policy of reservations intends to pursue that. From the perspective of democracy, a policy of reservation should be pursued for the sake of social equality as a common goal for all. It needs to intervene on behalf of those less than equal and prioritize scarce resources for social equality rather than efficiency. There are two

The challenges that a university confronts in India  93 ideas implicit in the policy of reservation. First, the idea of a right to equal treatment, which means the right of everybody to an equal distribution of resources. Second, the right to treatment as an equal, which means the right to be treated with the same respect and concern as anyone one else. Though the above arguments are quite persuasive, there is a point of view which gained considerable legitimacy, especially among the middle class, that the policy of reservation has severely damaged the quality of higher education in India as it is practised in universities. Undeserving members of these groups are entering university campuses and diluting the quality of the universities, which are already doing badly in comparison with universities abroad. Merit is the grand narrative through which they examine the policy of reservation which has been enshrined in the Constitution. They would argue that merit becomes the casualty if the policy of reservation is continued without realizing that merit is not a decontextualized and disembodied category. It is essentially a product of socio-economic environment. A young boy or girl who can afford expensive coaching for IIT entrance would acquire that property called merit without much of a problem. Whether intelligence is innate or acquired is something on which to date there is no consensus. But one thing has been established beyond doubt, which is that materializing innate ability certainly requires an amenable socio-economic environment. That is how the whole category of merit needs to be looked at. The recent debate about extending the reservation policy to the private sector has drawn our renewed attention to the ‘damaging’ effects of reservation. The challenge for the policy makers is to strike a balance between ensuring that access to higher education is provided to the members of depressed sections, without which clearly their socio-economic conditions continue to be impoverished, and ensuring that the so-called quality is not compromised. One very important way of ensuring that quality does not suffer because of the constitutional mandate to pursue the goal of social inclusion is, argues André Béteille, by substantially improving the quality of primary and secondary education which supplies that pool (2010: 18). This is what universities in America and Europe did. They paid substantial attention to the quality of primary and secondary education which help them get good quality human resources for higher education even after pursuing the policy of what they call positive discrimination. Instead of doing that, if the members of the submerged sections are denied access to good quality education in the name of maintaining quality then clearly democracy would lose its substance. Democracy presupposes effective and informed participation from different sections of society, which is possible only when access to education is democratized. The three challenges (apart from many other challenges which have been extensively commented upon, such as inadequate financial resources etc.) mentioned above need to be faced firmly. The health of universities depends to a great extent upon the ability of the universities to withstand and overcome these challenges. Unless universities become the critical and creative spaces they are supposed to be, not much can be expected from higher education.

94  D. V. Kumar

Note 1 Other backward classes (OBC) have been given reservation to the tune of 27 per cent in educational institutions and in central government jobs.

References Althusser, Louis. 2014. On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, translated by G. M. Goshgarian. Verso: London. Azad, Rohit. 2016. What the Nation Really Needs to Know. HarperCollins India: Noida. Béteille, André. 2010. Universities at the Crossroads, Oxford University Press: New Delhi. Deshpande, Satish. 2003. Contemporary India: A Sociological View, Penguin Books: Gurgaon. Durkheim, Emile. 1961. Moral Education, The Free Press: Glencoe. Freire, Paulo. 1972. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Penguin Books: Harmondsworth, Middlesex. Hedge, Sasheej. 2015. ‘The Many ‘Truths’ of Reservation Quotas in India: Extending the Engagement’, Social Scientist, 43 (3/4): 61–104. Newman, John Henry. 1996. The Idea of a University, Yale University Press: London. Ivan, Illich. 1970. Deschooling Society, Pelican Books: Harmondsworth, Middlesex. Parsons, Talcott. 1960. Structure and Process in Modern Societies, The Free Press: Chicago. Patnaik, Prabhat. 2016. The Commoditization of Education, Cafe Dissensus, 15 September. Patnaik, Prabhat.2017. The Idea of a University, The Telegraph, 23 August.

6 UGC and JNU A tale of exceptions told in two acts Ayesha Kidwai

More than 52 years ago, on 24 December 1964, members of the Rajya Sabha were asked to consider a bill that would lead to the creation of another university in Delhi. Moving it as the Jawaharlal Nehru University Bill in December 1964, the education minister and a former Justice of the Bombay High Court, Mohammedali Currim Chagla, made a passionate plea for considering this university as a memorial to Nehru’s life, work, and ideals, and a promise that this university would be different. But parliamentarians were dissatisfied with what Chagla had to offer, both with the fact that it was to be named after Jawaharlal Nehru and the relatively tepid blend of “uniqueness” that was being proposed. The Bill was therefore referred to a Joint Select Committee in the next session.

“Inspired by love and guided by knowledge”: parliament imagines a new kind of university The Joint Select Committee submitted its report on 3 November 1965, and created the context for the stimulating discussion that was to follow. What would be the role of the state vis-à-vis the university and vice versa, what would make it truly “Indian”, “relevant”, “excellent”? Two notes of dissent to the report of the Joint Committee, both of which objected mainly to dedicating the university to “fulfilling the ideals” of Nehru, initiated a process of fashioning in the mind what a truly radical conception of an Indian university would be. A university, H N Mukherjee and P K Kumaran said, must be a space for “systematic thought”, free of “partisan pressure which might stifle intellectual creativity”; it must create a community—“a continuing membership of minds devoted to the tasks of learning and of the good life … inspired by love and guided by knowledge.” It cannot ever be a “church” or “caged in the cult of a prophet or any great man”, M B Lal and H Barua said, because it “must represent all of India in its totality”. When the Joint Select Committee’s report was tabled in the Rajya Sabha on 1 December 1965, Chagla informed the House that discussions on the Bill from the Select Committee had led to them to conceive this to be a university of “an entirely different and new type”, quite distinct from the 70-odd universities in India at that time, and one which, “if it functioned

96  Ayesha Kidwai properly, would be a real memorial to Jawaharlal Nehru”. This university would work to promote social justice and secularism, social responsibility, the composite culture of India, scientific temper, and international understanding, and would teach students sensitive to the “social needs” of the country. Nothing in this university would be a “replica of existing universities”; it would teach all that had not yet made it into university syllabi for most other universities, making “special provision for integrated courses in humanities, sciences and technology in the educational programmes of the University” (because “knowledge is one and it should be integrated, and a man should be an all-round man”.) It would establish departments “for the study of languages, literatures and the life of foreign countries” to inculcate in students “a world perspective” and “international understanding”, and its doors would be forever open for “students and scholars from outside … so that there should be an international atmosphere in this University.”1 No old models of university structure and hierarchy were to be replicated in this university being fashioned in the mind of the parliamentarians, and so that it could define its own higher standards, JNU was not to be, as originally proposed, the southern sister of the Delhi University. It would not be made to “carry a terrible burden from the old University”2 by affiliating the 17-odd colleges south of Ajmeri gate; rather, its relationship with other institutions would be based on collaboration and mutual exchange. A large part of the debate that followed the revised Bill was about the wisdom of naming it after Nehru and whether the institution should be committed to fulfilling his ideals. That point was both won and conceded ultimately, as while the university’s name remained as such, the First Schedule that was ultimately enacted referred only to how the university would “endeavour to promote the study of the principles for which Jawaharlal Nehru worked during his lifetime”.3 For the intent, Chagla said, was never “to propagate Nehruism”, or “to set up Nehru as a prophet”.4 On 6 December 1965, he observed: I do not want the students to go to this University to pay respect to those ideals merely because Nehru believed in them but to consider those ideals as part of our national legacy, to criticize in them, if necessary, to suggest changes in them, or as I said, to give a new life to them.5 But beyond the name, every aspect of the Bill was queried—was the envisaged structure of the university not too radical? Interdisciplinary Schools as the statutory bodies rather than disciplinary faculties departments? Why was there no important role for a registrar? Wasn’t the proposal that the vice-chancellor would be appointed even before the university began too radical, and that he could handpick an academic advisory committee with whom he would work to conceptualize the university too rash? Wouldn’t allowing students representation in a joint council with teachers be too bold a move? Was there any point in having both a chancellor and a visitor? How could the university be guaranteed enough autonomy if it were to have a

UGC and JNU  97 chancellor? Most of these queries were addressed by Chagla alone, readily agreeing to legitimate objections and amendments, patiently explaining away misunderstandings, because he was “certainly not in favour of making the university a department of the state”, as he thought that “the cause of education would be lost in the country if the autonomy of the universities is undermined”.6 In the debate, the aspect in which other parliamentarians had the greatest role was in deciding who would be the students that come to study to this university. Most of the passionate advocates of setting up a unique historical experiment were Oxbridge trained, but they were also attracted to the curricular, and pedagogical innovations of emerging British universities like Sussex. Their education in England and Europe had led them to ascribe a high value to university autonomy—as a legacy from the “good life”of being students there—but their political commitment convinced them that in India, all education but particularly higher education had to play a socially transformative role. As G Ramacandran argued, in the Rajya Sabha on 2 December 1965, this would only be possible if one [l]et education in this university be one hundred per cent free for a thousand of the best young people we can select; make education completely free … Instead of asking talented boys to pay to sustain the university, the university will pay the highest talent in this country to come and make what you wish it to be. So what should this university be? Post-graduate; no under-graduate in the campus a residential university restricted to one thousand students of the highest calibre, learning and working and pledge to carry out ideals which Nehru stood for.7 Chagla, and the rest of the Parliament concurred, with members in both Houses repeatedly stressing the necessity of a residential postgraduate and research character for the university. In the words of Chagla, on 16 November 1966: This university will not be intended for children of the rich. We have provided for entrance examination and I hope we will get the most talented boys and girls from all over the country, however poor they may be and by a system of scholarships we will see to it that the poorest boy and the poorest girl, if he or she is talented, will have an opportunity to study in this university.8 This understanding, though never inscribed explicitly in any statute or rule of the university has guided the policies on fees, scholarships, and cost of living estimates in JNU ever since. How did the parliamentarians feel the need to imagine the university anew? A large part of the answer comes from the debates around the University Grants Commission (UGC) Act, passed ten years before the JNU Act. The voluminous discussions around the Bill made MPs think closely about the

98  Ayesha Kidwai nature of the relationship between the state and higher education in a young decolonized nation, the social mission that university education had to play in forming a new future for its citizens. Another part of the answer comes from the years following the formation of the UGC itself, when via the presentation and debates around the UGC annual reports, the Parliament came to understand the true state of higher education and research in the country.

The UGC Act debates and what they taught parliamentarians The Bill had a rough ride through the Parliament, made even worse by the apparent lack of interest that Maulana Azad, the Education Minister, had in it. Introduced in the Lok Sabha on 30 September 1954, as a Bill for “the coordination and determination of standards in universities and for that purpose, to establish a University Grants Commission’, the Bill was greeted with all round hostility for its encroachment on university autonomy through both its financial powers and its mandate to determine standards. On 22 February 1955, Renu Chakravartty said in the Lok Sabha: Autonomy for free scope for the development of university education, according to the needs and traditions of a particular university, must not be interfered with. For instance, there are the words “determination of standards”. This a very vague term and it may even become dangerous … For instance, the Lucknow University may say that it would like to specialise in Sociology, or may decide to have a special type of education most suitable to women. The Calcutta University, for instance, may like to lay special stress on domestic science; or some other university may choose to specialise in some other subject. Standardisation must not lead to stereotyping.9 Speaking in the Lok Sabha on 22 and 28 February 1955, S S More also protested: This country is a vast country. Different States have different difficulties, different problems, and the educational development of all states is not even. Therefore in assessing what should be the proper standard, or in their efforts to co-ordinate the work of the different Universities, the peculiarities of the states, the social conditions prevailing in all the States and the particular classes of society which are trying to take advantage of this University education must be the deciding factor, and some dead bureaucratic attempt to create uniformity which will yield to the same yardstick is not and could not be the objective of this University Grants Commission.10 The pervasive anxiety about the Bill in the Lok Sabha led it to be referred to a Joint Select Committee. On its return—and even though M M Das saw the changes effected as having virtually reduced the University Rights

UGC and JNU  99 Commission into an advisory, recommendatory body—the Parliamentarians remained highly sceptical of the government’s intent, seeing it as a naked attempt by the government to school universities in India, and to erode their autonomy. The specific provision that the UGC must be guided by directions from the Central government attracted a great deal of ire. Speaking in the Lok Sabha, Dr. Krishnaswami remarked: I should have thought that universities are constituted under a charter or under an enactment of the legislature and once they have been so constituted under an enactment of the legislature, the purpose which they are expected to fulfil are absolutely national. It is therefore unconstitutional, apart from its being improper on the part of an outside authority, to tell the universities that there are national purposes other than those in enactments for them to fulfil.11 Others spoke out sharply against the idea of uniform standards, and the very idea that the UGC could claim to have the expertise to set these standards. As Satyendranath Bose, observed in the Rajya Sabha debate: This country has now got about 31 Universities and in each of these Universities there are efficient groups of teachers who take care of education. There are also different faculties and Boards of studies in these Universities and I think they are the best persons in whose care we can entrust the cause of education. In all the Universities at the present moment there exist not only Boards of Studies but also Academic Councils and Senates where we have not only the officers of the University but also distinguished persons who are educationists or who have got high distinctions in various spheres. There are also at the same time representative leaders of public opinion in many of the controlling authorities of these Universities … The people who serve you in the colleges, in the universities, in the laboratories, and in the different research institutes. Ultimately, they are the persons who have been working there all the time—who have got the experience and who will be able to tell you exactly what is needed if you want to improve the standards of education in our land.12 Eventually however, the UGC Bill was passed more or less as it was, because the constitution empowered the union under Entry 66 of List 1 to enact legislation for the coordination and determination of standards in universities. The parliamentarians would also have been convinced by the logic provided by interventions such as that of SyamnandanSahaya in the Lok Sabha on 23 November 1955: Standardisation need not necessarily mean a particular standard from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas in any subject. Standardisation would be based on certain standards which may be different, for different

100  Ayesha Kidwai areas, and different subjects … A second class MA from one university is one who secures 50 percent marks or 55 percent marks. In another university he who secures 45 percent marks is placed on the second class. When applications are called for stating that second class MAs are required, the one securing 45 percent in a university where 55 percent is required for a second class becomes a third class. So, some kind of all-around standardization in such directions is certainly called for.13 But Parliament’s assent did not come before the government had to give detailed clarifications that it had no intention to undermine university autonomy. As Deputy Education Minister, K L Shrimali assured the Rajya Sabha on 7 December 1955, the intention was to combine “freedom with planning”: I would only like to say that there is nothing in the University Grants Commission Bill which makes any attempt—and the Government has also no intention—to encroach upon the autonomy of the Universities. But the Government has a certain duty to perform the duty of reorganising the Universities and putting these houses of learning in order. It is the duty of the Government to see that these Universities perform the social functions and they realise these social ideals which we all cherish. And I would like to say that it is in that spirit that we should approach the question. I can assure you that the autonomy of the Universities will be secure.14

UGC in action Through the annual reports of the UGC from 1958, Parliament was made painfully aware that the coordination and determination of standards in universities was no simple task. There were several kinds of degrees handed out, and several standards of qualification. Respect for university autonomy and the fact that education was not yet a subject on the concurrent list, entailed that a major task of the institution was to persuade the Indian universities to accept the three-year bachelor degree as the standard, with eleven years of schooling as the eligibility criterion. By 1965, only 46 of the 71 universities in the country had been successfully cajoled. During the UGC Act debates, more than occasional mention was made of how expansion and innovation of university education should be one of the prime duties of the UGC, and perhaps parliamentarians had hoped that with the formation of the UGC, beginnings would be made in both directions. By the time the first annual report of the UGC was presented in April 1958, it became clear however that neither would be on the agenda any time soon. In response to the popular demand for college education, a number of state and private universities had, and continued to mushroom all over the country, and there was very little the UGC could do to coordinate with them, given that education was not on the concurrent list. Let

UGC and JNU  101 alone innovation and expansion in a manner that made education accessible to the poorest, the UGC had its hands full awarding recognition to these universities, and determining minimum standards for awards of degrees, infrastructure, determining teachers’ eligibility and their salary scales. In response, the UGC operating then (as now, in straitened circumstances) could ultimately come up with only two recommendations by the early 1960s: please stop opening new colleges and universitiesand reduce the number of students enrolling in higher education (even then, the excuse cited was “indiscipline”). Members of Parliament were in quite a despair that nothing new was being attempted, and that the UGC policy had to be solely dictated by the emptiness of its coffers. While MPs agreed that there was indeed overcrowding in universities, and that standards of education were falling as a result, they felt that the solution was to spend more, rather than less, on education. Over the next few sessions, they protested more and more asserting that access to education, and especially for research degrees, was limited to the rich, as poor and rural students simply screened themselves out. Bhupesh Gupta and Govinda Reddy angrily demanded that there should be no restriction of admissions to universities; Rukmini Devi Arundale and Rajkumari Amrit Kumar wanted expansion of the university system into residential universities which were set away from the cities, to which yet others added the demand of free or fully financed education for poor and rural students. What led to the Jawaharlal Nehru University Bill was then the combined effect of both the discussions around the UGC Act and its reports and the desire to innovate, to create a place of excellence where standards could be evolved without reference to existing priors. The policy masterstroke lay in recognizing that educational innovation and excellent standards were inextricably linked to equity of access and democratization of university structures. That the JNU experiment was to be a success became evident by the early 1970s itself, as by 1974 even as the university was beginning to make a name for itself, 20 per cent of its students were drawn from the Scheduled Castes alone (‘Nehru University Is Yet To Make An Impression’, The Times of India, 25 September 1974). Even today, the university is as rural as urban, has more women than men, with socially and economically backward students forming the overwhelming majority. It is also a place of excellence, not as conveyed by ranking systems, but by the value its research holds for its peers across the world. And certainly before February 2016, it was usually a place inspired by love and guided by knowledge most of the time. Successive generations of JNU students and faculty have prided themselves on their commitment to interdisciplinary inquiry, rigorous questions that have relevance both to the world of knowledge and the worlds their holders inhabit, and for persistently striving for greater social inclusion and democratization of university policies and structures. That a large part of this comes from kernels sown in the debates in the Parliament around the

102  Ayesha Kidwai JNU Act, and which is not part of the discourse (any longer), must not be regretted, because it is merely indicative of the robustness of the university’s foundations, that these commitments can be rediscovered afresh by each generation that passes through.

Not JNU exceptionalism but an exception Although it was the UGC that had recommended setting up another university in Delhi in 1960, once the Joint Select Committee had woven its magic, it was no longer in the loop. Nevertheless, its chairperson conveyed support for its success to the Rajya Sabha, despite the fact that the UGC, its standards and coordination, never once find mention in the intense discussion on the JNU Bill. In the years after the JNU Bill became an Act, the UGC Annual Reports faithfully recorded the growth of the university’s innovative programmes, the acquisition of the land for its campus, and its own disbursal of grants to it. JNU’s experiments with knowledge and standards were never interfered with, and JNU was listened to patiently. In fact, the UGC often, without attribution, borrowed from JNU’s precise formulations—ironically both the 2009 and 2016 version of the UGC Regulations on the awarding of MPhil and PhD degrees draw in part from the JNU Ordinances. For many recommendations made by the UGC, including the UGC Regulations on Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal of Sexual Harassment of Women Employees and Students in Higher Educational Institutions (published in the Gazette of India of 2 May 2016, but whose binding nature no university is likely to be held to), the JNU’s experiences have been drawn upon by the commission. In fact, even as late as 2009–12, when JNU’s research student-to-supervisor ratio shot up because it had faithfully implemented the Central Educational Institutions Reservations Act, UGC did not penalize the university for not being able to adhere to the limit of five MPhil and eight PhD students per faculty member, accepting the logic that in a research university with a multitude of departments that do not have BA or MA programmes, this ratio would just mean a waste of resources. Was JNU treated with laxity by the UGC because of its left-liberal ethos and proximity to those in power? Quite the contrary—JNU students certainly have not been the friends of any regime—it was because its research standards, programmes, and outputs have consistently been judged to be quite excellent by its peers, including by the metrics that a hostile government has decided to institute. The fact that JNU has done well is a testament to how right the Parliamentarians of 50 years ago were when they decided that plans of academic excellence are best built on the bedrock of democracy and justice. While JNU struggles every day to make sure that the small and successful experiment it is survives, it is the UGC that has strayed far away from the object behind its creation, which in the words of the then Deputy Minister for Education K L Shrimali, was an attempt to build “a kind of partnership between the government and the universities, and that “there is no rivalry

UGC and JNU  103 between the universities and the government”. It is definitely time for the UGC to revisit its own legislative history, and recognize the role that it must play. The words of S S More from 22 February 1955 are as good a place as any to begin15: Education is not some dead material which could be lumped up and given some final shape according to the wishes of the Central Government or any other Government. It is a live thing, integrated with the lives of the people, integrated with the lives, aspirations and social conditions of the people. Any attempt to create a dead uniformity will be an attempt to create a stuff which has no life, which cannot expand.

Notes 1 Rajya Sabha debate (1965), pp. 3400–3420. 2 Ibid., p. 3405. 3 Ibid., p. 3402. 4 Ibid., p. 3797. 5 Ibid., p. 3860. 6 Ibid., p. 3860. 7 Ibid., p. 4359. 8 Lok Sabha debate (1966), p. 3499. 9 Lok Sabha debate (1955), pp. 98–99. 10 Ibid., pp. 135–36. 11 Ibid., p. 574. 12 Rajya Sabha debate (1955), p. 1787. 13 Ibid., p. 294. 14 Ibid., p. 2599. 15 Lok Sabha debate (1955), p. 136.

References Lok Sabha (1955) Parliamentary Debates: Lok Sabha, Official Report. New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat. Lok Sabha (1966) Parliamentary Debates: Lok Sabha, Official Report. New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat. Rajya Sabha (1955) Parliamentary Debates: Lok Sabha, Official Report. New Delhi: Rajya Sabha Secretariat. Rajya Sabha (1964) The Jawaharlal Nehru University Bill: Report of the Joint Committee. C.S. No.43. Presented on 3 November 1964. New Delhi: Rajya Sabha Secretariat. Rajya Sabha (1965) Parliamentary Debates: Rajya Sabha, Official Report. New Delhi: Rajya Sabha Secretariat.

7 Higher education and the social sciences in a “smart India” Maitrayee Chaudhuri

There are a couple of points that this paper seeks to make. One, that a cultural nationalist vision led by the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) and the larger global neoliberal vision of market-friendly education that has been pursued in India for the last two decades is not necessarily antithetical. In other words, the buzz on global universities (Wildavasky 2010) and smart classrooms can sit easily with parochial claims of cultural nationalism. (If the desires of the cultural nationalists however remain unfettered and disrupt everyday stability and the market, the storyline could be different, but that is outside our focus here in this paper). Common to both the “global” and “cultural nationalist” rhetoric is the new common sense of neoliberalism. Two, it contends that the rise of a managerial discourse is an essential element of the neoliberal vision and further this lends itself well to the new language of communication – of soundbites, buzzwords, optics and acronyms. Three, it puts forward a plea for critical social sciences in general and a revisiting of debates amongst social scientists in India. For this, one argues, is imperative for reinvigorating social sciences and thereby a vibrant public sphere that is so crucial for democracy.

The global, the cultural national and the neoliberal vision Higher education has been in the news for some time in India. The buzz a few years earlier was about a global India and global universities (Chaudhuri 2013). That buzz has not died down. The idea of the global university is very much there. I will come to that just a little later. But what has happened in India from 2014 when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power is that it has now tied up with quite another narrative about “Indianization”. I quote Manmohan Vaidya, a senior RSS leader on two central universities, namely the Banaras Hindu University and Jawaharlal Nehru University: The Banaras Hindu University is a symbol of Indianness, while the JNU is that of “un-Indian[n]ess” … There are two ideas of India, one that comes from the West which is un-Indian in nature, and the one which is completely Indian…

Higher education in a “smart India”  105 Actually, the clash between ideologies in the country today is a clash between the two different ideas about India: If Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is a symbol of un-Indianness, the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) is a symbol of Indianness. The word Hindu is not a communal word. If you look at the BHU’s constitution, it talks about Indianness… Vaidya was speaking at an event here to mark the 70th anniversary of RSS-associated weeklies Panchajanya and the Organiser which he argues were not RSS mouthpieces but nationalist publications.1 This trend stemming from a Hindu cultural nationalist perspective to turn inwards to an idea of an exclusive and parochially defined “Indianness” however in no way suggests that the vision of higher education has moved away from the idea of a neoliberal education wherein the state openly responds to the needs of the market, whether through monetary and fiscal policy, immigration policy, the treatment of criminals, or the structure of public education. For neoliberalism is not simply a set of economic policies; it is not only about facilitating free trade, maximizing corporate profits, and challenging welfarism. Rather, neoliberalism carries a social analysis that, “when deployed as a form of governmentality, reaches from the soul of the citizen-subject to education policy to practices of empire”. 2 Neoliberal rationality, while foregrounding the market, is not only or even primarily focused on the economy; it involves extending and disseminating market values to all institutions and social action, even as the market itself remains a distinctive player. Indeed I would contend that even “culture”, “gender”, “ancient histories” and “nationalism” become imbued with market values in “smart” times. This is manifest in what has been unfolding in India since 2014 (Chaudhuri 2017). And this has serious political implications for Indian democracy, whose rich histories are being snuffed out in a public discourse that is constitutive of a strange mixture of ready to “write” answers drawn from guidebooks that rule education; copy writers from the advertising world who are now hired by newspapers to provide catchy headlines; and political rulers who do not even have a passing acquaintance with learning (Ibid). The rich histories, the complexities and challenges that went into the making of a composite culture and a nation state also led to the rise of ideas of unity and diversity, growth with equity, equality for all. They were not slogans that market researchers and PR personnel coined in contemporary times. They were not marketing gimmicks but were intrinsic to the nationalist struggle that strove even as it contested with other social movements that engaged, differed, critiqued and often worked together. Taking the example of gender rights, we have seen the way the corporate sector and state alike have appropriated the question of “women’s empowerment” in the neoliberal era. International Women’s Day on 8 March sees a slew of advertisements catering to what is recast as women’s special day: radio

106  Maitrayee Chaudhuri channels and TV programmes all have something to offer; restaurants and shops offer discounts for women’s wear and jewellery, and even drinks. Most often the same products would advertise for Karwa Chauth.3 One has alluded to the RSS view of education and “Indianness” earlier in the paper. The point I want to address here is also that the tendency to have smart messaging is not confined to the media industry alone. The academia and its practices also reflect a use of glib formulations to address complex and serious issues such as higher education. If we shift attention to government statements we see another aspect of cultural nationalism and its law and order approach, coupled with smart technologies towards higher education. A quick look at the recent Human Resource Development’s (HRD) All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE)4 reflects what one can call the “Smart” vision. The HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar released the (AISHE) survey for the year 2016–17 in New Delhi in January 2017. The media reports that this “is making us happy and sad at the same time”. The good news was that the reports show an increase in the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER). GER is the ratio of enrolment in higher education to population in the eligible age group (18–23) years. Gender Parity Index (GPI), a ratio of proportional representation of female and male, had improved from 0.86 to 0.94 to the corresponding period though in the last 5 years, the GER of Muslims and other minority communities has been slow. That however is not listed under the bad news. What is listed under bad news is that over 80,000 teachers have been found to be faculty members of 3+ higher education institutions in the country: the survey states that “ghost teachers in state and private universities who have been using proxy methods to work at multiple places as full-term employees have been identified”. The ready solution is usually technological, managerial and most often punitive. Thus the quick-fix solution is a recourse to deploying the Aadhaar number for “action to be taken against them”.5 The solution through Aadhar6 reflects an approach that understands higher education as a site that needs cleansing from criminals rather than one that needs the seeds of high quality liberal education. As is in the fitness of things in a “smart” age, technological solutions are clearly the flavour of the day. The state sees in Aadhar an effective tool of governance to solve the malaise of higher education. We witness a similar language of technological solutions in the media. I draw from one such in a write-up from Huffington Post. This report bemoans the state of higher education HE in India and offers some smart solutions. The problems as evidenced in the report in Huffington Post quotes are: (i) the rising cost of higher education; (ii) low-order thinking skills that make graduates unemployable; (iii) and the urgent need for investment to build capabilities of education.7

Higher education in a “smart India”  107 In India, the write-up goes on to state, “aspirations of India’s 130 million youth in the 17–23 year age group are only increasing. They know that a good higher education can help them climb the socioeconomic ladder faster than any other route”. The Union government’s ambitious agenda to take the gross enrolment ratio (the percentage of youth in the relevant age group going to college) from 23.6% now to 30% by 2020, will mean adding several thousand HEIs, or augmenting seats and infrastructure in existing universities. This capital expenditure alone will be several lakh crores, not to speak of annual revenue expenditure with huge fee burden on future students.The answer to these rather challenging issues appears both simple and easy in this write-up. The answer is technology, which can be leveraged to answer all the questions of quality, quantity, access and social equity. A quick summary of the trends is presented below. Trend 1: Online learning is slowly becoming mainstream More than 90% of India’s college and university students crave for a mobile phone and/or an internet connection… Learners will take more control of the university experience and become the centre for all curriculum-making, pedagogical practices and competence building Weak classroom lectures are too boring for the youth. With inexpensive data connectivity, future students will find new ways to acquire knowledge. Their dependency on books and classroom lectures will come down…. Trend 2: Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data will change pedagogy Education technology writers such as Barbara Kurshan have noted that AI (which helps Facebook suggest friends, powers Siri to answer your queries or helps Google in its driverless cars) can in the next few years create “virtual mentors for learners”, … Trend 3: Research-based teaching will inform how students experience learning New technologies will help us challenge traditional paradigms such as class lectures, terms and modes of assessment. … Trend 4: Personalisation, customisation and contextualisation in all parts of the learning experience Higher education of the future will become modularised … Each chapter or learning module will become customised to suit different learning styles or even different teaching styles of faculty. And the content can come from different sources to meet the learners’ aspirations and needs.

108  Maitrayee Chaudhuri The main driver for students to enrol in higher education programmes will be “how to combat the obsolescence of knowledge and technology?” Learning will not be confined to classes, but even outside. Students can be virtual apprentices for a researcher or in an industry, with one mentor leading dozens of students to become consummate professionals in the new age.8 What is common to both the global and the cultural nationalist visions is that they offer “smart” solutions to the problems of higher education. What is completely missing is the core issue of liberal education and substantive values that higher educational institutions ought to pursue. What is also missing is the absence of any of our constitutional values on which India rests. It is also very disturbing to see the emphasis on the “customized” and “modularized” that goes against the grain of the constitution of a larger “public” that is the pivot for a functioning democracy. Education is seen as a service that now caters to the “customer” and it is no longer seen as a central building block of engaged citizenship and democracy. I will elaborate on this in the sections below in the context of the transformation of the idea of education as a public good to yet another product in the market. The success of this project, I argue below, has to be also seen in the curious conjunction of neo-liberalism along with the unprecedented rise of communication, publicity and the managerial discourse.

The global marketplace, communication, and the managerial discourse The neo-liberal vision and language over the last decades have engulfed all sectors including higher education as it has settled in its new place in the global marketplace. There are many institutions such as media and communication which are key to both the production and dissemination of the new ideology. Not surprisingly, education’s sector was the top sector in print advertising during 2010 (AdExNews Letter 17 August 2010). The nature of the new communication technologies lends itself well to abbreviated messages and one-liners that has been the hallmark of a managerial discourse that fits well with contemporary neoliberal practices. It effectively works, albeit in an unintended fashion, to erode the rigour and painstaking process that good liberal education entails. Browsing the web, I find innumerable sites on higher education that suggest how education is big business. For a generation who reached adulthood and entered university when the dominant discourse on education was centrally about core “national/constitutional” values, education as business was new. The write-up below captures the new spirit. With 400 million people under the age of 18 and a blistering economy that has readjusted aspirations across the country, higher education in India is a boom market. Indians already spend $7.5 billion annually

Higher education in a “smart India”  109 earning degrees in other countries. On American campuses, their presence is bigger than that of any other nationality. As India looks to dramatically expand and improve higher education at home, the possibility of luring top-flight American schools is an intriguing one. (Hannon, 2010, emphasis mine) In the global marketplace universities try to attract as many students from abroad as possible (not least because foreign students usually pay full fees). Nearly 3m students now spend some time studying in foreign countries, a number that has risen steeply in recent years. Universities are also setting up overseas. New York University has opened a branch in Abu Dhabi. Six American universities have created a higher-education supermarket in Qatar. Almost every university worth its name has formed an alliance with a leading Chinese institution. But globalization is going deeper than just the competition for talent: a growing number of countries are trying to create an elite group of “global universities” that are capable of competing with the best American institutions. China and India are focusing resources on a small group. The French and German governments are doing battle with academic egalitarians in an attempt to create European Ivy Leagues. Behind all this is the idea that world-class universities can make a disproportionate contribution to economic growth (The Economist 13 May 2010). Higher education is a central site for competition in contemporary global capitalism. International students contributed $45 billion to the U.S. economy in 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, much of it from tuition, fees and living expenses. These students typically pay higher tuition than domestic students, making many American universities dependent on the revenue streams.9 Covid 19 Pandemic has affected this sector adversely. The Institute of International Education’s study of international student enrolment amid the COVID-19 crisis in the USA shows a 43 per cent drop in new international student enrolment and a 16 per cent reduction in total international enrolment in the autumn of 2020.10 Social science in the old scheme of things was considered important. The scene has dramatically changed since then. Social science in the new scheme had to be refashioned as a tool for project implementation, such as social sciences’ input for disaster management or women’s empowerment on one hand or for projection evaluations. The implications of a market-driven educational industry go against the university as a centre of intellectual ferment, a crucial element for a functioning democracy. The focus in the higher education sector has been on the opening up of new universities and massive expansion plans.11 In a world where management discourse is dominant,12 where snappy one-liners and acronyms are deployed to convey complex processes, management discourse has captured the imagination of educational administrators. Management discourse has two aspects to it: one, management literature is technical, composed of practical recipes for improving the productivity

110  Maitrayee Chaudhuri of organizations (here educational institutions) as one improves the performance of a machine; and two, it simultaneously has a high moral tone, if only because it is a normative literature stating what should be the case, not what is the case. If one looks at any brochures of the new educational institutions today, one will encounter both a host of practical recipes and a flood of platitudes posturing as profound knowledge. Take the example of Sharda University’s projection of: “Global Curriculum, Global Faculty, Global Ambience, Global Community”. Or of its Mission Statement: Creating a stimulating and flexible learning environment for its students as well as faculty Leveraging academic research to form strong industry linkages Developing a culture that strongly promotes innovation and continued betterment in all facets of life While words such as “flexible”, “leveraging”, and “innovative” abound, there is very little in terms of substantive vision. A cursory comparison with the vision statement of Jawaharlal Nehru University of 1966 would demonstrate the distinction I seek to make between buzzwords and management mantras, and deliberated humanist values. The First Schedule, The Jawaharlal Nehru University Act, 1966 states that: The University shall endeavour to promote the study of the principles for which Jawaharlal Nehru worked during his life-time, namely, national integration, social justice, secularism, democratic way of life, international understanding and scientific approach to the problems of society. Towards this end, the University shall: (i) foster the composite culture of India and establish such departments or institutions as may be required for the study and development of the language, arts and culture of India; (ii) take special measures to facilitate students and teachers from all over India to join the University and participate in its academic programmes; (iii) promote in the students and teachers an awareness and understanding of the social needs of the country and prepare them for fulfilling such needs; (iv) make special provision for integrated courses in humanities, science and technology in the educational programmes of the University; (v) take appropriate measures for promoting inter-disciplinary studies in the University; (vi) establish such departments or institutions as may be necessary for the study of languages, literature and life of foreign countries with a view to inculcating in the students a world perspective and international understanding; (vii) provide facilities for students and teachers from other countries to participate in the academic programmes and life of the University.

Higher education in a “smart India”  111 The key terms of national integration; social justice, secularism, democratic way of life; international understanding, and scientific approach to the problems of society are derived from a worked-out Nehruvian vision, part of India’s long intellectual engagement with colonial rule as it sought to develop a distinctive modern but culturally rooted national identity. One need not dwell on the stark difference between such a vision and the catchwords that seem to be the defining mark of the host of new universities as they market their visions on huge billboards that dot the new highways of Indian cities.

The social sciences, public good and democracy In this context where distinctions between serious intellectual discourses and “management mantras” disappear, it becomes an imperative need to emphasize the role of social science and critical sociology for a democratic and just society. There is a deep and significant difference between the two forms of knowledge. Social science is equipped to analyse deep structures, specific dynamics of historical contexts, social processes and the links this has with emergent products including knowledge forms. Management literature “makes no claims to be exhaustive”. Its orientation is not constative, but prescriptive. In the manner of edifying books or manuals of moral instruction, they practice the exemplum, select the cases according to their demonstrative power—what is to be done as opposed to what is not to be done and take from reality only such aspects as confirm the orientation to which they wish to give some impetus. (Boltanski and Chapello 2005: 58) For instance, if within this framework they have to look at higher education, they would suggest prescriptions for efficient and transparent functioning but not questions of the normative visions on which an institution rests. An example here would be in order. Responding to this massive expansion in the higher education sector and the rise of intense competition, a central fear expressed from an “industry” and “management” perspective would be the problem of malpractice and misrepresentation in advertisements. Competition is intensifying in higher education sector and many institutions in India are engaged in over- promising and misrepresenting. This happens in other consumer sector too, however here stakes for the consumers (students) are very high. A detergent company claiming whiteness of shirt has very different implications as compared to an educational institution claiming 100 per cent placement or a coaching institute claiming selection to top institution, when the reality is poor offering. The influence of unfulfilled claims is not only on the career and expectations of students but their families too. (Choudaha 2010, emphasis mine)

112  Maitrayee Chaudhuri The above quote reveals an astute understanding of the difference between a detergent company and educational institutions. It operates however with a model of education as industry and derived from that, a model and ideas of fair practices. The critique is about “unfulfilled claims”, not about the very nature of “claims”. It falls short of (indeed it has to fall short of) either understanding or analysing the far-reaching implications of such a model of education for a good society, democratic and inclusive citizenship and the very spirit of critique, which social sciences and humanities embody. Higher education in a neoliberal context redefines itself as a site for “useful” knowledge, of skill enhancement and market competitiveness. The four practices that distinguish a liberal arts education, namely, critical thinking, examination of life, encounters with difference, and free exchange of ideas, are sure victims of this new vision. A liberally educated person, it has been argued, should be capable of principled judgment, seeking to understand the origins, context, and implications of any area of study, rather than looking exclusively at its application.13 What we have been witnessing is a steady and rapid decline of this.14 The buzzword “global” is perhaps as frequent as the other buzzwords about “industry tie-ups” and “employable” human resource in the current discourse on education. My contention is that such one-sided emphasis would undermine the space and role of liberal education for which familiarity with social sciences is crucial. I quote from the stated objectives of one of those universities, the Global Open University (GOU), Nagaland to underscore its skewed approach. The GOU: … revises its curriculum periodically as per the industry requirements and offers latest subjects and technologies empowering the students to get the latest skills to be employable. Learning Resource Provider also has industry tie ups with different Multinational Companies, Banks, Financial Institutions, Hotels & Restaurants, Hospitals, Clinics and other establishments to give hands-on industry exposure to the students. Once the purpose of education is seen only as catering to the needs of the industry, there would necessarily be a break from liberal education seen as a “public good”. At such a time as this where students are seen as customers, teachers as service providers, where the impact of education would be measured only in terms of direct tangibles such as employability, it is necessary to invoke another time, another spirit, not for any purpose of nostalgia but for its persisting relevance. Humayun Kabir, one of India’s most distinguished education ministers, and himself a scholar of some repute, observed way back in the 1950s: Higher education – as distinct from professional training – is abstract and often has no direct relation to the practical problems of life. Its abstractness is however its saving virtue, for it gives to such education a universal aspect (Kabir 1959: 186 emphasis mine).

Higher education in a “smart India”  113 This is not to argue against skill acquisition and education for employability. This is to challenge the idea that skill acquisition and abstract education have to be dichotomous. Or worse that employability should be the sole defining criteria for education. Liberalization of the economy creates new opportunities and demands for certain types of skills and education but this may pull away an increasing number of scholars and students from liberal and humanistic social sciences such as sociology” (Singh 1996: 11). This vocationalizing of sociology he feared would invariably disturb its core for “sociological training…” which is to “inculcate in them the ability to critically comprehend the place of these forces in the scheme of social order from a critical-historical perspective” (Singh 1996: 13). In 2018 at JNU we witnessed the administration seeking to recast social sciences as service providers to courses such as disaster management. The last decades have seen an expansion of a certain kind of social science research. These are usually about corporations conducting “pre-research”, NGO evaluations, or “women employing statistical analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of USAID” (Hunter and Yates 2002: 337). This not only provides the authority by which action is justified; it also supplies an idiom by which “the work” is accomplished on a day-to-day basis. The very “practical” outcomes against which such research can be gauged makes such social science a more desirable knowledge practice in a world where “doing” rather than “thinking” is the mantra of present times. The state of many of our malfunctioning higher educational institutions make academics willing to accept any recommended change, any sense of accountability, any sense that some work is getting done. Another point of contention that is invariably raised in India today about higher education and globalization is the question of privatization. This somehow suggests that state universities are necessarily national universities. The paradigm of the national university cannot simply be reduced to the state university or the question of funding by agencies of the state. Neither can it be defined as an essential cultural one in the manner in which Vaid defined BHU, to which this paper alludes earlier on. What one can argue is that it is more important to consider the national university in terms of its complete integration into the intellectual life of the nation. Put differently, the national model defines itself vis-à-vis a national public sphere, both in cultural and political terms. The students ought to be perceived as academic citizens whose education is related not only to the needs of the state (administration) but also to the needs of the civil society. Martha Nussbaum’s proposal to reinvigorate the American undergraduate curriculum invokes the idea of the education of citizens. Critical of older definitions of the national community for its cultural exclusiveness, she reconnects her project to the political nation defined in multicultural terms (Nussbaum 1997: 90–91). In our own Indian context this implies that it is possible to be critical of the nationalist framework for its exclusiveness, yet argue for a democratic and inclusive political nation, a just world order without necessarily dropping the national, democratic project entirely. Unfortunately, since 2014

114  Maitrayee Chaudhuri the democratic content of Indian nationalism has been hijacked by a rhetoric and practice of hate-fuelled cultural nationalism. What has taken place in contemporary India since the economic reforms is a reframing of what constitutes the national project. This I argue is linked to the liberal concept of the public sphere, which has been so essential for the emergence of the modern national university.15 The question that looms large in present-day India is:What happens when “the public sphere itself has openly transcended national borders and reflects global concerns?” (Hohendahl 2005: 89) Or: Put differently, what happens to the university when it has to define its mission in transnational terms? I argue that this relatively new situation has changed the way the university looks at and assesses its resources as well as its achievements. It can no longer be satisfied with the task of serving the nation. Instead, it develops a global map for its mission and negotiates its role within a broader international public sphere. This transition entails not only new opportunities but also new and different responsibilities that could possibly conflict with the idea of a traditional, national university. (Hohendahl 2005: 89) At one level “global concerns” such as global peace or global ecology are indeed more desirable than narrow national concerns. The crux of the matter however lies in who defines “global concerns”. An article in The Hindu, entitled “Issues in University Education”, reflects one influential view of “global” concern. It is not irrelevant to mention that it is authored by Calestous Juma, a professor of the practice of international development at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. This particular piece is written in the context of Africa but the prescription for us would not be very different. I quote him at length to illustrate what exactly the key think tanks visualize as university education for the developing countries. The argument being made is that education in countries such as African countries ought to “focus on solving local problems”. Today, the argument goes that “…universities can also play role of social entrepreneurs…” “The university could use radio and other tools such as podcasting to extend its mission to the wider community”. As philosopher Eric Fromm once observed, “in times of change only learners inherit the earth” (Juma 2005, emphasis mine). Without commenting on what Fromm would have had to say on this unusual invocation, the direction that higher education ought to take could not be stated any clearer. Critical social science simply has no space in this vision, nor does liberal education, which critical social science promotes. Even if one were not to enter the terrain of liberal education, it is important to distinguish between professional and polytechnic training. Kiran Karnik, NASSCOM president, observed how “the future of India is linked to the knowledge industries, and our success in these depends upon how well we nurture and grow our human resources”. But he significantly warns that “it

Higher education in a “smart India”  115 is important not to convert professional education into polytechnic training” (Karnik 2005: 10). He argues how: The ability of learning how to learn is an essential part of good education … As we do more work of greater sophistication, the need for qualified researchers – those who have done a masters or a doctorate – is going to grow … However, to do this, teaching needs to be made even a more attractive profession. Today, not only are teachers poorly paid, even their social status has suffered a decline … with privatisation, market forces will hopefully play a role in ensuring quality. “It may, however, be necessary to go beyond market forces. This may be one area where the state can set the highest standards, creating a benchmark for private institution”… India also needs to foster innovation, an area in which we have a unique advantage … We need to inculcate the habit of questioning answers, rather than answering questions. (Karnik 2005: 10, emphasis mine) International policy makers are forthright about what the role of universities in countries such as ours should be. One is less sure that our national policy makers have thought things through. The CARRHE Report submitted on 1 March 2009 begins with an idea of the university, restating ideas that are not so different from the idea of freedom articulated by Hohendahl in the western context. I quote from the The Committee to Advise on Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education (CARRHE 2009): A university is a place where new ideas germinate, strike roots and grow tall and sturdy. It is a unique space, which covers the entire universe of knowledge. It is a place where creative minds converge, interact with each other and construct visions of new realities. Established notions of truth are challenged in the pursuit of knowledge. (CARRHE 2009: 9) This invocation that “the university has also been regarded as the trustee of the humanist traditions of the world” (Ibid. 2009: 10) is accompanied by a quite contrary view that: university education is no longer viewed as a good in itself, but also as the stepping-stone into a higher orbit of the job market, where the student expects a concrete monetary return, and consequently in this perception, the university of today is expected to be in tune with the emerging needs of the society. (Ibid. 2009: 9–10) However, the Report also mentions that university education is no longer a place only for socially privileged students and therefore the matter of

116  Maitrayee Chaudhuri employability and skills become even more crucial. I have no quarrel with this stance. This formulation however seems to suggest that the humanist tradition of university education is essentially an elite project. Some of the most interesting conceptual challenges to mainstream Indian sociology in recent times however have come from the margins (Chaudhuri 2010). In this new world of pragmatism, theoretical and ideological debates are seen with some relief as remnants of a well-rid past. My contention here is that a concerted attempt has to be made by academics to bring back theoretical issues and ideological questions. For the commonsense of the current regime is deeply ideological even as its ideology is clothed in the garb of “pragmatic” “deliverables”. Further, my contention is that in order to do so, we need to focus on the body of work that Indian social science has produced (Chaudhuri and Thakur 2018). And look back on the debate on relevance of social sciences.

Indian social science, sociology and the spirit of critique The contemporary context we have seen is abuzz with the possibilities of the expansion of higher education and its place in the global market. The focus more recently has been on solutions. A few years earlier the focus was on infrastructure and economic reforms. Kapil Sibal, the present Minister for Education, has remarked that the key problem is infrastructure and economic reforms.16 My own experience of four decades as a teacher suggests that while even where we have done reasonably well in infrastructure, what has failed us is the quality of education and the quality of teachers and teaching. In a mindless quest to be “democratic”, education was reduced to what could procure marks and degrees. There has been a systematic flattening out of our education. What is easy is seen as what is desirable to reach out to a wider section of society. There has been no attempt to consolidate our past debates in social science scholarship and on questions of “relevance” and “quality”. It is imperative that we re-engage with the past debates. In these debates sociologists have had a major role to play, a part that needs highlighting today.17 Sociologists have introspected often enough “about the nature of the enterprise in which he is involved” (Jayaram 1980: 18). Sociologists have also noted this penchant of sociologists to “air their disciplinary anxieties” (Uberoi 2000: 14). I argue that this penchant of sociology to reflect and critique emerges from its intellectual orientation – a product of the public enlightenment project. I return to this role of sociology in the concluding part of this paper in an effort to buttress my contention that a sociological perspective would be crucial for liberal education (Chaudhuri 2003). In the Indian context, marked by a colonially mediate modernity, this search for “public enlightenment” was compounded by its anti-colonial struggles, its nationalist visions and the struggles of groups outside the nationalist framework. The questions of why social science and what kind of social science have been central to Indian social science discourse (Singh 1986; Oommen 2000).“In the late 1960s, the social sciences in India were

Higher education in a “smart India”  117 astir in search of a direction and an identity. Phrases like ‘science and Swaraj’ were in the air” (Saberwal 1980: 10). Uberoi elaborates: Every swarajist should recognize what are the essential preconditions, under this system, for the advancement of universal science in our environment. Until we can concentrate on decolonization, learn to nationalize our problems and take our poverty seriously, we shall continue to be both colonial and unoriginal. (Uberoi 1968: 123 emphasis mine) The international division of labour and power was taken as given. The view was strong that “the problem or problems of science in a rich, technologically satiated society are different from, even opposed to, its problems in a society of poverty lately liberated from colonial bondage” (Uberoi 1968: 119). This changed over the next decade as did “the scene in international politics”. “Even though the social sciences in India have begun to be financed relatively well, the Young Turks of yesteryear discovered that greater insulation was not synonymous with better growth; that autonomy – personal and collective could be stagnative as easily as creative” (Saberwal 1980: 10). Reading through the debates of the 1970s one is struck by the fact that the entire issue of autonomy and freedom of social science research was primarily geared vis-à-vis state funding, and much less that of corporate funding. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya writing in 1972 thus observes that the problem’s autonomy: would also apply to the situation of the social science consultant visà-vis the corporate sector. In fact, such possibilities are likely to be far greater and more pernicious. But links between social science work and the private sector have not yet been established in a big way. (Bhattacharya 1972: 39 emphasis mine) At the turn of this century the scene had entirely changed. Forced to go where the funding is, the sociologists’ research priorities and criteria of relevance are determined by the sponsoring agencies, whether government or, increasingly the big extra- and multinational funding agencies. Each has its attendant hazards, but in either case the role of sociology as social engineering is likely to prevail, for every project – if it is not to be deemed infructuous – is expected to yield a clear set of policy implications and recommendations. Cross-country comparative projects, though often lushly funded tend to be devised without consultation with the Indian partners who are merely expected to execute the Indian “country study” according to a predetermined protocol! (Uberoi 2000: 19 emphasis mine)

118  Maitrayee Chaudhuri A key contention in the debates was about the very role of social sciences, whether social science should be involved in social engineering. Can one frame the debate in the abstract set of choices between social engineering and that of critical understanding? (Beteille 1972: 14) Or is this very framing of the choice in these terms missing the colonial story that spelt different trajectories of modernity for the west and the rest. P.C. Josh elaborates: In the first place, professionalisation has created and sustained the conception of a “scientific man” possessing skills and tools and standing, as it were, outside and above social problems and conflicts … underdeveloped countries have, however, inherited not the Renaissance conception of the social scientist as a social critic who was as much a participant in as an analyst of human affairs; they have inherited the contemporary conception of social scientist as a value neutral technician or a specialist. In this way, the very definition of a social scientist today puts a high premium on certain attributes which do not meet the basic needs of the underdeveloped countries. By sanctifying value-neutrality, non-activism and social rootlessness as the desirable attributes of a social scientist, professionalisation promotes the alienation of social scientists from their own societies. (Joshi 1972: 25, emphasis mine) While Joshi draws attention to how professionalism in our context can easily be reduced to social rootlessness, it is I think important not to necessarily conflate professional functioning with an alienated one (Oommen 2000). It is enlightening to look at the way Satish Saberwal seeks to explain how the colonial experience has shaped a “non professional” mode of functioning even within academia with the insight that historical sociology alone can provide (Saberwal 1980: 14). Returning to that matter of relevance, Nandi comments that “it is an artificial distinction designed to give prominence to relevance at the cost of quality. As if the inept could be relevant…” We have had nothing but relevant research during the last two decades. Since the beginning of the nineteen fifties we have been producing with fanatic zeal hundreds of unreadable scientific profanities on the panchayat raj system, agricultural extension, family planning, public administration and management. Few more hundreds of studies have done on social stratification in villages, inter-community perceptions, social distances and prejudices. The number of village studies run into thousands. And now election studies and socio-economic surveys are being bred at a rate which will put to shame our population growth rate. Prima facie, all of them are relevant. Prima facie very few of them can be used by anyone, let alone the policy maker (if that happens to be, by any chance, your concept of relevance). (Nandy 1972: 30, emphasis mine)

Higher education in a “smart India”  119 The call to be “relevant” has acquired new urgency and new responses since the 1990s. We are flooded by research that “few can use”, to quote Nandy’s observations forty years ago. Maithreyi Krishnaraj commenting on research by women studies centres in 2005 once again makes the same point while she explicates what social science research ought to be: Women studies scholars are expected to move away from this narrow academic view. NGOs claim that they on the other hand constantly keep in view the subjects of their research. However, women studies research is not for just locating immediate problems or seeking immediate solutions. It has a wider scope. It seeks to delve into history, to understand other disciplines by a careful reading of their theories attempting thereby to locate biases and shortcomings in mainstream disciplines in the way they articulate women’s lives and hopefully, and thereby evolve new theories and methodologies. While immediate problems are indeed necessary, these broader engagements are equally important as an intellectual enterprise for creating new knowledge, that form the basis for understanding issues and formulating action. Hence, all women studies research need not only be empirical research. Both theoretical and empirical work constantly complement each other. (Krishnaraj 2005: 3008) The contemporary academic world is governed by certain markings of the current corporate culture. Like the advertisements around us, society values quick and tangible success that demands high visibility. Social scientists cannot but be part of this, even if in the process of making smart soundbites in the electronic media, we end up either squashed by the anchor, a little lost or much more commonly plain superfluous, just one more ingredient in the programme director’s menu. I think social scientists ought to engage in public discourse but to the extent that this is possible, in their own terms. This paper has argued at some length the changing contexts within which the race to be global and the rush to do “useful social science” are taking place. It is crucial that we pause, think and reflect. Given that we have a tradition at hand, we need to engage with that. But first a careful consideration of why the rush to be “useful” has its persuasive power, a point I mentioned earlier too. We witness the increasing presence of non-governmental organizations, both national (NGOs) and international (INGOs); research projects funded and sponsored by diverse bodies; increasing interest of corporate bodies on social matters. We also observe how scholars are completely caught up in a tight schedule of projects, field work, consultations and workshops. For anyone used to the laid back, lazy world that most institutions of higher learning are assumed to be (and sometimes are) this flurry of action is a welcome relief. Since many of these researches and workshops are directly geared to action or evaluations of projects in action the whole exercise seems a far more worthy and fruitful endeavour than traditional academic pursuits.

120  Maitrayee Chaudhuri Indeed, as Chatterjee remarks, “there are positive things that have also been said about this kind of sponsored research”. (a) They are often more closely tied to urgent policy issues or social movements. (b) Since there is less baggage of traditional disciplinary rigour, researchers can afford to be more adventurous and innovative in their methods. (c) Their vision may be less clouded by the abstract concepts of academic social science theory; they may listen more carefully and sympathetically to the concrete knowledges actually accumulated by ordinary people in the course of their experiences and struggles. But as Chatterjee himself warns: A more radical version of this argument in favour of sponsored research would go so far as to say that a country like India cannot afford the luxury of pure academic social science research. Researchers here must be able to demonstrate that their studies are of some direct use for those whose business it is to do things in society – for producers, managers, administrators, labourers, citizens etc. Research that fails this test cannot legitimately claim any funding, whether state or non-state. (Chatterjee 2002: 3610) This, of course, immediately raises the issue of the division of intellectual labour. This apparently radical-sounding position on the social accountability of the social scientist, if adopted, would actually lead to a situation where fundamental theoretical research would be confined to the firstworld universities and third-world researchers would be sent out to the field only to do empirical policy-oriented research. In fact, this is actually the situation today in most third-world countries. Even as policy makers at the helm of affairs remain oblivious of Indian scholarship, particularly in social sciences and humanities, the “global” universities of the west are in a rush to internationalize their curriculum and appropriate Indian debates on issues ranging from culture, identity, and multiculturalism to new approaches arising from gender and historical studies in India, to mention just some areas. At a time in history when India is poised to expand its higher education sector, grossly uninformed of India’s academic legacy, moving dangerously from one buzzword to another, it becomes extremely important to draw our attention today to the fact that: India is one of the very few exceptions where there exists an institutional network and a pool of trained social scientists capable of fully participating in the international field of social science discourse and contributing albeit in varying degrees, to the theoretical debates in the different social science disciplines. These are institutional and intellectual assets that have been built over several generations and at some social cost. It would be foolish and irresponsible to throw them away. (Chatterjee 2002: 3610–11, emphasis mine)

Higher education in a “smart India”  121 As Chatterjee observes: even in the former socialist countries (including China), there appears to be no social science research today that has any original theoretical content; the younger and brighter social scientists there are desperately trying to catch up with the currently fashionable trends in the first world. (Ibid.) Indian social scientists have to urgently ensure the space they have today is retained in the future. Unfortunately we too are witness to trends that reflect a desperate attempt to be with the latest, to deploy theories as ornamentation and with a gross lack of historical perspective. I mention this unfortunate gap between academics and policy makers for two reasons: one, that the contemporary period to my mind is a historical turning point in geo-political relations with deep implications for higher education generally and for India in particular; and two, that social science in general and a sociological perspective in specific has much to offer in terms of both analysis and visions of a democratic and just society. This is particularly crucial at a time when the rhetoric of India’s growth and global power threatens to obliterate more lasting and time-tested normative values such as peace and equity, and when influential global policy makers suggest that a more productive way forward would be to gear our higher education either to solve “local problems” or produce more efficient “global human resource”. It is in this scenario that sociology needs to put its “critical” and “public enlightenment” best foot forward rather than be a willing handmaiden of human resource education. A key contention that runs through this paper is that a social science, informed of a critical perspective, is required at a time in history where we seem to be dangerously perched on the race to “global”. I have also dwelt on the significance of liberal education and its close links to some basic tenets of sociology, a point that Peter Berger explicates: the teaching of sociology is justified insofar as a liberal education is assumed to have a more than etymological connection with intellectual liberation. Where this assumption does not exist, where education is understood as purely technical or professional terms, let sociology be eliminated from the curriculum. It will only interfere with the smooth operation of the latter, provided, of course, that sociology has not also been emasculated in accordance with the educational ethos prevailing in such situations. Where, however, the assumption still holds, sociology is justified by the belief that it is better to be conscious than unconscious and that consciousness is a condition of freedom. (Berger 1963: 198, emphasis mine)

122  Maitrayee Chaudhuri I also argue that the theoretical openness of sociology, seen as a lack especially versus a discipline like economics, is “useful”. One of the great advantages of sociology in the context of a democratic conversation is precisely its openness. The self-reflexivity of individuals is also reflected in that of the discipline itself … The crucial point about sociology is that by challenging such constructs it is not only alternative theories that may be advanced but other ways of seeing the world which in turn might lead to different policy prescriptions. This enables sociology to be part of a democratic conversation that is not dominated by one particular model of how we think and act, thereby confining debate within set parameters. (Lauder et al. 2004: 8) In Kushal Deb’s words, sociology seemed to “possess a strong subversive potential”, an “ability to unravel the relations of power and domination implicit in everyday life, and in social processes and institutions” (Deb 2010). Going back to Bottomore, I reiterate the two features of sociological thought that he thought justified speaking of an inherently radical orientation. In the first place, he emphasized as the principal legacy of the Enlightenment in sociological thought, and in Marxism as one of its forms, the critical outlook of science, rather than the idea of the domination of nature and its extension to social practice in the domination of men. He argued that it is one of the positive, and radical, features of sociology considered as a science that it “involves a continuous criticism of all extant theories of society, including those everyday conceptions of the social world which shape practical life”. The second feature of sociology to which he drew attention was the social consequences and how these are conceived within sociological thought. If the aim of sociology was taken to be the discovery of the hidden mechanism of social life, which is then communicated in the training of a small elite of “social engineers”, he asked whether this entails the production and reproduction of a form of domination. But if, he asks, “the aim is seen as the diffusion through society of an understanding of how social relationships are established, persist, or can be changed– as a kind of public enlightenment – then its effects can well be seen as liberating” (Bottomore 1975: 15–16). As Robert Lynd once observed: “Social science is not a scholarly arcanum, but an organized part of the culture which exists to help man in continually understanding and rebuilding his culture” (Lynd 1939: ix). However dismal parts of our academia are, we cannot turn away from liberal education and social science. More importantly while stories of our dysfunctional institutions catch public attention, the cumulative body of social science scholarship, “globally” recognized, remains invisible. Further

Higher education in a “smart India”  123 for what ails in higher education, and a great deal does, we cannot have one-shot solutions, a plethora of buzzwords and smart soundbites touted as education policy. This challenge has been compounded today by the rise of a regime that sees the academia and social sciences as one more site for propagating its cultural nationalist and majoritarian vision. That its populism is essentially anti-intellectual is a story for another paper. I end the paper with Rajni Kothari’s words nearly five decades ago: No one can deny the importance of the social sciences in our time– both in regard to the advancement of knowledge itself and in regard to the relationship between knowledge and purpose in society. We are at a stage in history when the social sciences constitute the new frontiers of science … The social sciences also constitute the new frontiers of philosophy and normative studies … There is little sensitivity, let alone sustained analysis, of the kind of world we are living in and the kind of future that is unfolding before us and the nature of challenges thrown up by these developments to us as citizens and as students of society. (Kothari 1972: 17, emphasis mine)

Notes 1 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/bhu-symbol-of-indianness-jnu-of-unindianness-rss/articleshow/62608904.cms (accessed 9 February 2018; emphasis mine) 2 Wendy Brown: https://www.mcgill.ca/ahcs/files/ahcs/wendy_brown_undoing_ the_demos.pdf (accessed 21 March 2021; emphasis mine). 3 On Karwa Chauth, married women, especially in North India, observe fast from sunrise to moonrise for the safety and longevity of their husbands. https://www.seniority.in/blog/why-do-we-celebrate-karva-chauth-it-shistory-and-significance/ (accessed 25 March 2021). 4 The survey, undertaken as an annual, web-based, pan-India exercise on the status of Higher Education since 2010–11, covers all the Higher Educational Institutions in the country. The survey collects data on several parameters like teachers, student enrolment, programmes, examination results, education finance, infrastructure, etc. The survey findings were based on responses of 795 universities, 34,193 colleges and 7,496 standalone institutions. India Today,7 January 2018. https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current-affairs/story/all-india-survey-on-highereducation-ghost-teachers-1124248-2018-01-07 (accessed 7 February 2018). 5 See https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current-affairs/story/all-indiasurvey-on-higher-education-ghost-teachers-1124248-2018-01-07 (accessed 7 February 2018). 6 The Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique number issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). This number is issued by taking a person’s biometric details such as iris scan and fingerprints, and demographic information like date of birth and address. 7 First, higher education has in its entire history, never been more costly than it is now. In the US, the education loans aggregate has crossed a trillion dollars, while in India the aggregate is about ₹700 billion from banks alone. Students and administrators are, meanwhile, realizing that traditional job opportunities for

124  Maitrayee Chaudhuri the existing curriculum are dwindling. In the last two years, campus recruitment numbers have been declining. Industry recruiters say most campus graduates do not possess higher-order thinking skills, nor do they meet the exacting demands of an increasingly technology-driven industry ecosystem. In fact, recruiters have difficulty in finding people with the latest skill sets in emerging technologies. Does this mean universities and even the higher education institutions (HEIs) need to invest more in building the capabilities of students? And even if they do, will they see enough return on their investment, in terms of number and quality? How do private HEIs in a regulated system find adequate resources? http://www. huffingtonpost.in/k-ramachandran/5-trends-that-will-completely-disruptindian-higher-education-by_a_21640987/ (accessed7 February 2018). 8 See http://www.huffingtonpost.in/k-ramachandran/5-trends-that-will-completelydisrupt-indian-higher-education-by_a_21640987/ (accessed 7 February 2018). 9 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/loss-international-students-damage-us-economy-experts/story?id=71754388 10 https://theconversation.com/us-colleges-report-a-43-decline-in-new-internationalstudent-enrollment-and-not-just-because-of-the-pandemic-149885 11 T. Jayaraman, a theoretical physicist commenting on recent policy statements writes: “…even prima facie, it seems that this round of proposals and announcements has a substantially ad hoc character leading one to doubt whether they indeed amount to a serious initiative to re-vitalize research in the basic sciences….” The Hindu, 9 August 2005, p.10. 12 See Manish Thakur 2010. 13 The task force vision of a liberal education stresses cognitive skills on the one hand (e.g. the ability to think critically and distinguish between valid and invalid inferences), and breadth of knowledge on the other (e.g. some familiarity with the sciences, some knowledge of human achievements of the past and philosophical and religious concepts). Apart from the acquisition of the values of responsible and modern citizenship mentioned above, liberal education is to be valued because, if done right, it allows an understanding of the nature of learning itself. This is a necessary foundation for a lifetime of re-learning, a key attribute of survival in a knowledge-based economy (Abraham 2000: 19). 14 https://thewire.in/education/scholars-at-risk-report-academic-freedom 15 See Maitrayee Chaudhuri 2010, Introduction, pp. 1–30. 16 This was at the Mail Today Education Conclave, 30 July 2011. www.1edupage. com/secondary-education 17 See D.P. Mukerji 1952; Unnithan et al. 1967; Saberwal 1968; Singh 1968 and 1986; Beteille 1972; Oommen and Mukherjee 1988; Saberwal 1980; Oommen 2000.

References Abraham, Itty 2000 “International Trends” Seminar, no. 494 (October). Special Issue on Higher Education in South Asia. AdExNews Letter 17 August 2010. Beteille, Andre 1972 “The Problem” Seminar, no. 157 (September) pp. 10–14. Beteille, Andre 2003 “Newness in sociological enquiry” in Maitrayee Chaudhuri ed. The Practice of Sociology (Hyderabad, Orient Blackswan) pp. 403–419. Berger, Peter L. 1963 Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective (Harmondsworth, Penguin). Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi 1972 “All the Ifs” Seminar, 157 (September) pp. 37–40. Boltanski, Luc and Eve Chapello 2005 A New Spirit of Capitalism (London, Verso). Bottomore, T.B. 1975 Sociology as Social Criticism (London, George Allen & Unwin).

Higher education in a “smart India”  125 CARRHE 2009 Report of “The Committee to Advise on Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education” (CARRHE). Chatterjee, Partha 2002 “Institutional Context of Social Science Research in South Asia” Economic and Political Weekly, 31 August. pp. 3604–3612. Chaudhuri, Maitrayee ed. 2003 The Practice of Sociology (Hyderabad, Orient Blackswan). Chaudhuri, Maitrayee ed. 2004 Feminism in India (New Delhi, Women Unlimited/Kali). Chaudhuri, Maitrayee ed. 2010 Sociology in India: Intellectual and Institutional Practices (Jaipur, Rawat). Chaudhuri, Maitrayee 2013 “Higher Education in ‘Global’ India: The Need for Critical Sociology” in Ishwar Modi ed. Education, Religion and Creativity. Essays in Honour of Professor Yogendra Singh 2013 (Jaipur, Rawat) pp. 3–22. Chaudhuri, Maitrayee 2017 Refashioning India: Gender, Media and a Transformed Public Discourse (Hyderabad, Orient Blackswan). Chaudhuri, Maitrayee and Manish Thakur. ed. 2018 Doing Theory: Locations, Hierarchies and Disjunctions (Hyderabad, Orient Blackswan). Choudaha, Rahul 2010 “Advertising (Mal)Practices: Lack of Professional Standards” 18 October 2010. https://www.dreducation.com/2010/10/education-advertising-malpractices.html. (Accessed July 16 2011). Deb, Kushal 2010 “The Challenges in Teaching Sociology at IIT: Are “Karl” and “Marx” Relevant? in Maitrayee Chaudhuri ed. The Practice of Sociology (Hyderabad, Orient Blackswan) pp. 215–234. “Global Universities, An Old Idea Refashioned, How to Create a HigherEducation Supermarket” The Economist, 13 May 2010. www.economist.com/ node/16103856 (Accessed July 17 2011). Hannon, Elliot 2010 “Learning Curve” New Delhi Time in Partnership with CNNN. 1 November. www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2026887,00. html (Accessed July 16 2011). Hohendahl, Peter Uwe 2005 “The Transnational University and the Global Public Sphere” in Max Pensky ed. Globalising Critical Theory (Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield Publications) pp. 89–112. Jayaram, N. 1980 “The Social Reality” Seminar, no. 254 on ‘Studying Our Society’ pp. 18–22. Joshi, P.C. 1972 “The Question of Relevance” Seminar, no. 157 (September) pp. 24–29. Juma, Calestous 2005 “Issues in University Education” The Hindu, 15 July. Kabir, Humayun 1959 Education in New India (London, G. Allen and Unwin). Karnik, Kiran 2005 The Hindu, 18 July. Kothari, Rajni 1972 “In Search of a Role” Seminar, no.157 (September) pp. 17–23. Kothari, Rajni 1975 “Policy and Culture” in Satish Saberwal ed. Towards a Cultural Policy (New Delhi, Vikas) pp. 25–31. Krishnaraj, Maithreyi 2005 “Research in Women Studies: Need for a Critical Appraisal” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XL, No. 28, pp. 3008–3017. Lauder, H. et al. 2004 “Sociology and Political Arithmetic: Some Principles of a New Policy Science” The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 55, No. 1, pp. 3–22. Lynd, Robert S. 1939 Knowledge for What? The Place of Social Science in American Culture (Princeton, Princeton University Press). Mukerji, D.P. 1952 “Sociology in Independent India” Sociological Bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 1. Mail Today Education Conclave 2011. www.1edupage.com/secondary-education (Accessed July 31 2011).

126  Maitrayee Chaudhuri Nandy, Ashis 1972 “Conspiracy of Incompetence” Seminar, no. 157 (September) pp. 30–32. Narlikar, Jayant V. 2005 “Reaching for the Stars” The Times of India, 30 July. p. 24. Nussbaum, Martha C. 1997 Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press). Oommen, T.K. 2000 “Professionals without Professionalism” Seminar, no. 495 (November) pp. 24–28. Oommen, T.K. and Partha Mukherjee eds. 1988 Indian Sociology: Reflections and Introspections (Bombay, Popular Prakashan). Saberwal, Satish 1980 “For Renewal” Seminar, no. 254 on ‘Studying our society’ p. 1218. Singh, Yogendra 1986 Indian Sociology (New Delhi, Vistaar). Singh, Yogendra 1996 “Constraints, Contradictions and Interdisciplinary Orientations: The Indian Context” in Lochan Kanjiv ed. JNU: The Years JNU Silver Memoir Committee, Popular Prakashan, pp. 56–65. Thakur, Manish 2010 “Of Mainstream and Margins: Sociology in Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs)” in Maitrayee Chaudhuri ed. The Practice of Sociology (Hyderabad, Orient Blackswan) pp. 157–180. Thapan, Meenakshi 1991 “Sociology in India: A View from Within” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 26, No. 19, pp. 1229–1234. Uberoi, J.P.S. 1968 “Science and Swaraj” Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol. 2, pp. 119–123. Uberoi, Patricia 2000 “Déjà vu” Seminar, no. 495 (November) pp. 14–19. Unnithan, T.K.N. et al. eds. 1967 Sociology for India (New Delhi, Prentice Hall). Wildavasky, Ben 2010 The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities Are Reshaping the World (Princeton, Princeton University Press).

8 The idea of university in a princely state Reflections on the century-old Osmania University, Hyderabad1 K. Srinivasulu

Osmania University, established in 1918 by the Nizam-ul-mulk Osman Ali Khan, the last ruler of the princely state of Hyderabad in the capital city, is now a century old. The existence of an institution for one hundred years itself is worthy enough cause for celebration but it must also be seen as an occasion for revisiting the idea that inspired the establishment of the university in the context of an autocratic native princely state. Thus the centenary year could be seen as providing an opportunity to examine the idea of a university that gave birth to the Osmania, its evolution into a full-fledged university, its travails through the passage of time and the state it is in at present and perhaps also to reflect on the possibility of its rejuvenation. Institutional memory is crucial for the survival and revival of institutions. The understanding of institutional history and historical sociology of institutions demonstrates the importance of the act of remembering to strengthen the endurance and sustain the continual relevance of and respect for institutions. This connects the present with the past and helps the present to draw upon the past, not only in symbolic terms but also in intellectual, cultural and even material terms as it reconnects to the historically accumulated scholarly and social capital of that institution. The success and continual glory of great institutions like Oxford and Cambridge is a result of their conscious and continuous remembering of their historical legacy, and celebration of their achievements. This article, making use of the opportunity provided by the occasion of the centenary of the Osmania, attempts an evaluation of the institution through the revival of its memory with the hope that the regaining and refreshing of the institutional memory helps in rejuvenating it and in moving forward. This exercise also helps us in reflecting on the question of university and higher education in the regional context, especially in the backdrop of growing privatization, commercialization and hierarchization of institutions informed rather than enforced by the so-called principle of demand. Market as the site and demand as the criterion of assessing the relevance and viability of institutions of higher education and the disciplines of knowledge within them, raise serious questions and doubts about

128  K. Srinivasulu the state and future of public universities and more specifically of regional universities, and within them of course, the fate of humanities and social sciences.

Osmania University – the idea Osmania University is the seventh oldest university in India and third in south India. Interestingly, it is the second university to be established in a princely state in south India. A year before, the University of Mysore was set up in the princely Mysore state. The Firman (Royal decree) that was issued by the last ruler of the Asaf Jahi dynasty declaring the establishment of Osmania stated that the university would cherish and embody ‘all that is best in the ancient and modern systems of physical, intellectual and spiritual culture’ and further proclaimed that the university would strive to emerge as a locus in which ‘the ancient and modern, oriental and occidental arts, sciences are synthesized in such a manner that the defects of the present system of education are rectified…’2 Osmania occupies a unique place in the history of higher education in India, for it is the first university in the country to choose an Indian language, i.e. Urdu, as the medium of instruction. The rationale for this decision was understandably based on the fact that Urdu was not only the official language but also the lingua franca of the multi-lingual Nizam’s Hyderabad state, whose population consisted of Telugu, Marathi, Kannada and of course Urdu speakers. The Mysore University in spite of the promise of the native ruler to make Kannada, a language with a relatively developed literary legacy and scholarly resources, its main language, opted for English as the medium of higher learning. It is no exaggeration to state that the choice of Urdu was a spirited move in the context of high colonialism, where English was widely perceived as the only possible means to achieve intellectual, cultural and social upward mobility and recognition. It was a bold decision on the part of the Nizam to make Urdu the medium of instruction and then a risky choice for aspirants of higher academics to opt for a vernacular medium. Besides the obvious inhibition in the choice of a vernacular university in the context of English dominance, what was an understandable constraint was the paucity of scholarly resources in Urdu to deliver higher education and to pursue research. One can very well imagine the hardship in the case of sciences, technology and modern medicine where even the basic materials were almost non-existent in Urdu. It is not far from true to imagine resistance from the Muslim nobility and elite in Hyderabad who were sufficiently Anglicized/Europeanized by the turn of the last century. For it was due to the fact the Nizam’s state was under the suzerainty of the British and especially due to the relatively liberal dispensation during the rule of the sixth Nizam that the Christian missionaries were able to open English-medium schools which catered to the educational needs of the Muslim nobility and elite in the city of Hyderabad and subsequently in other towns (Leonard 2003, p. 375).

The idea of university in a princely state  129 The decision to make Osmania an Urdu university, despite the pro-English proclivity and preference of the elite, clearly indicates that there must have been a higher ideal and of course a strong political and ideological reason that motivated this policy decision. The influence of pan-Islamic social reform that was gaining wider currency and its influence felt among the nobility of Hyderabad made them focus on modern education and making it accessible to the wider public. One of the aspects of this was an implicit anti-colonial sentiment that looked at Western culture with a sense of scepticism and a criticism of Western intellectual domination gaining ground, which emphasized the importance of oriental cultural roots and heritage. This perspectival change informed the felt need for educational instruction in the native language. One of the important figures in this movement who had a huge influence on the Muslim intelligentsia in the country in general and in the Hyderabad state and its ruling elite was the Islamic reformer Jamaluddin Afghani.3 Thus the grand idea and principle underlying the establishment of Osmania as an Urdu university, as evident in the Osmania University statement of purpose, prioritized the task of facing the ‘intellectual challenges posed by the West and those practices of science and knowledge that were understood to be the peculiar mark of the West’s triumph’.4 It is further asserted that the triumph of the West ‘is not final and one’s fortunes could be changed by absorbing the success of others’ (Datla 2009, p. 1118). The statement however clearly emphasizes that the overstretching of the antithesis between the Orient and Occident would be counter-productive. This is evident from the Firman which stated: ‘The fundamental principal in the working of the university should be that Urdu should form the medium of higher education, but that knowledge of English as a language should at the same time be deemed compulsory for all students’ (quoted in Satyanarayana 2018, p. 35). The uniqueness of Osmania’s experiment in the history of higher education in India by choosing an Indian language has made a mark as a symbol of anti-colonialism and its criticism of the Western dominance received appreciation from a wide section of social, scientific creative cultural intellectuals. The spirited reception of this innovative idea and institution is best expressed by Viswakavi Rabindranath Tagore (quoted in Satyanarayana 2018, p. 35): I have long been waiting for the day when, freed from the shackles of a foreign language, our education becomes naturally accessible to all our people. It is a problem for the solution of which we look to our Native States, and it gives me great joy to know that your State proposes to found a University in which instructions are to be given through the medium of Urdu. It is needless to say that your scheme has my fullest appreciation. The most important condition for the translation of the idea of an Urdu university into reality, as rightly identified, was to expand the scholarly base and to make the writings in other languages available in Urdu. For this

130  K. Srinivasulu purpose, the Nizam issued a Firman to set up a Translation Bureau with sufficient human and material resources.5 The seriousness in this endeavour is evident from the fact that the gigantic task of translating writings from English, Persian and other languages into Urdu was undertaken with earnestness and was also accomplished so that soon different departments could impart instruction in Urdu. The range of disciplines, apart from humanities, arts and social sciences, and law, included sciences, and even engineering and medicine. In addition, manuscripts were collected and preserved in the university library which soon emerged as one of the prestigious depositories of manuscripts. The expansion of the university with the introduction of new disciplines to be taught in Urdu was a testimony to this. This is not to suggest that the growth trajectory of Osmania has been a smooth one. The decision to make it an Urdu university had its share of criticism and reactions. It led to a section of Hindus moving to British India for an English education (Elliot 1974, p. 34). Some of the prominent political elite and intellectuals from the Hyderabad state had their higher education in Nagpur, Banaras and Madras. Thus the contact with the Bombay and Madras Presidency had its influence on the social and political articulation in terms of ideas of nationalism, linguistic identity and anti-Brahmin movements as evident in the Vandemataram, Andhra Maha Sabha-led Telugu linguistic and subsequently anti-Nizam and anti-feudal peasant movements.

Expansion of the university In the history of the university three phases could be identified on the basis of institutional expansion, pedagogic, scholarly contribution and changing sociological character. During the first phase, that is, from its inception to the integration of Hyderabad state into Indian Union in 1948, Osmania evolved itself into a full-fledged university with the necessary ability to teach not only social sciences but also sciences and engineering courses in Urdu. As stated earlier, to meet the challenge posed by this gigantic task, huge funds were earmarked and a large contingent of expert translators were employed to prepare the teaching material. The university during this phase however remained an elite university catering to the educational needs of the youth of the aristocracy, landed gentry and upper classes. This was so, largely because of the absence of access to educational opportunities for the vast majority of people at the grassroots level and the absence of official encouragement, let alone patronage, for the language and education of the Telugu-speaking majority in the despotic princely state. Despite its limited social base and elite character, the university carved out a unique place for itself in the social, cultural and political history of the region by responding to the challenges of the times. In a significant sense the university became the site of aspiration for freedom and development, as can be witnessed from the fact that its teachers and students have been an integral part of the progressive transformation of Hyderabad from a native feudal state under the suzerainty of the British to a secular democratic part

The idea of university in a princely state  131 of independent India. The role of Osmania University in the Vandemataram movement and the formation of the leftist Comrades’ Association (which played a key role in the formation of the Communist Party in Hyderabad), in the cultural and literary movements led by the Andhra Mahasabha, and in the anti-feudal and anti-Nizam peasant uprising in the 1940s providing intellectual and political leadership is noteworthy.

Post-Independence phase It was only after the integration of the Hyderabad state into the Indian Union, that the medium of instruction was shifted to English. The merger of Telangana with the Telugu-speaking Andhra region that was part of the erstwhile Madras Presidency to form the state of Andhra Pradesh on the basis of linguistic principle in 1956 paved the way for a thorough transformation of the university. The university’s response to the scholarly challenges and research developments in various disciplines, especially in science and technology at the national and global levels, is visible in the disciplinary, pedagogic, and institutional innovations. The growth of Osmania into a major affiliating university is a result of its response to the expanding educational needs of the vast backward hinterland of the Telangana region. This growth is also a testimony to the visionary intellectual and administrative leadership that the university was fortunate to be bestowed with during this period. One important aspect of this was the conscious and pro-active initiative on the part of the Vice-Chancellors, especially during the tenure of D S Reddy, to invite eminent scholars in different fields to join the faculty. This enhanced the academic standing of the university and transformed it into a premier institution in the country. During this period Osmania made its mark internationally in several disciplines.6 Sociologically, the university witnessed a transformation after the AP state formation in 1956 that had a subversive potential, as became evident in subsequent decades. Two significant aspects of this change are noteworthy. Firstly, the post-AP state formation politics and, as a part of it, the replacement of Urdu by English as the medium of instruction had paved the way for the gradual and perceptible decline of the Muslim component in both the teaching faculty and also in the student composition. Secondly, having the advantage of English education in the Madras Presidency, a large chunk of the aspirants from coastal Andhra, obviously from an upper caste Hindu background, were recruited into the faculty and administration of Osmania and came to dominate the university academically and also administratively. It was this shift in the sociology and spatiality of Osmania University which distorted the regional balance that formed the backdrop of the separate Telangana movement in the late 1960s in which Osmania played a pivotal role. The separate Telangana movement marked yet another change in the social composition and institutional behaviour of Osmania University. These changes have to be seen in the context of the overall changes in the

132  K. Srinivasulu state politics following the Telangana movement. The Telangana movement in a significant sense demonstrated, if not initiated, the centralizing logic of party and regime politics during the Indira Gandhi era. Instead of addressing the basic question of uneven development that underlined the Telangana movement, the Congress which was in power both at the Centre and state sought to resolve the issue through the change of leadership of the government and party. This new crop of hand-picked leaders was known to be favoured more because of their proximity to the High Command than for any popular social base or acceptance in the party organization of their own. To consolidate themselves in power these leaders sought to connect to the popular masses directly, rather by-passing the already existing party channels of communication and mobilization, and the popular appeal most often was made in the name of Indira Gandhi. Thus driven by the logic of centralization, party organization and political regimes in the regional theatres were sought to be controlled by the central party High Command and central government under Congress. The formal organizational channels thus sidelined and rendered ineffective, the stage was set for the populist radical politics of the Indira Gandhi era. The regimes of power at the national and regional levels were characterized by the rise of direct populist appeal to the subaltern layers and their formal and informal mobilization and accommodation without adequate preparation has had sweeping, often contradictory, consequences for and impact on the institutions at various levels (Srinivasulu 2016). The changes in the universities in the regional context, both the positive and negative, have to be seen in this macro scenario. The changes in the regional universities going by the history of Osmania University can be identified by the following markers. The universities which were seen as spaces of excellence were compromised. This is evident from the appointment of a Vice-Chancellor, faculty recruitment, and student enrolment. Following regional identity assertions, all these positions have become confined to the sub-regions. Secondly, the enactment and implementation of the reservations and provision of social welfare scholarships to the Backward Classes, apart from the already existing reservations for the SCs and STs,7 has led to their increased entry and visible presence in the university system. The neglect of the public school system and the uncontrolled mushrooming of private schools in the subsequent decades though have expanded the social base but definitely weakened the quality of the student output. With the gradual expansion of the educational infrastructure in Telangana we witness the entry of youth from the middle and lower sections of society cutting across the castes and communities into the portal of the university. This changing social character is reflected in the enhanced visibility of the university in the civil society and public domain through the response of both the faculty and students with increasing practical import for political and policy issues in the state. This often caused discomfort to the ruling regimes. With students from a rural background entering into the university portals, it appeared but natural for them to respond to the simmering rural

The idea of university in a princely state  133 unrest against the still prevailing feudal dominance in the rural Telangana in the form of the CPI (ML) movement in the late Sixties and much more significantly in the post-Emergency period (Srinivasulu 2017). In keeping with the changing social character of the university in the late 1970s the students were permitted to write their exams in Telugu, though officially English continued to be the medium of instruction. With the new entrants the university evolved into a space for the expression of their angst, anxieties and concerns. This is often perceived to be limited to political expression alone. Contrarily, it has in fact released creative energies whose results can be seen in the pedagogical practices, research agenda and in some cases in terms of significant methodological shifts. As a matter of fact, in this change a historical opportunity could be seen to make our institutions of higher learning more inclusive, plural and democratic and benefit from the energies of new entrants from diverse social backgrounds. The humanities to some extent could be seen responding to this reality and benefiting from their presence by expanding the scope and depth of research agenda. It is instructive to note the shift in the research focus and thematic expansion, for instance in the discipline of Telugu language and literature. As becomes evident from a recent compilation of the history of the Telugu department in Osmania University, the research focus till the 1970s was on the classics and canonical texts like Ramayana, Mahabharata and Puranas and other high literary texts. With the entry of students from a subaltern background the focus has expanded to include folk forms, productive caste puranas, histories, oral song cultures, etc. This demonstrates how the entry of students from underprivileged communities could contribute to the expansion and richness of social research and make it grounded in the social reality of the majority of the population (Satyanarayana and Chennappa 2013). The role of the university and its teaching and student community in the Telangana state agitation in the late-1960s and the struggle against the internal Emergency, in the expanding democratic and civil rights movement against the repressive policies of regimes since the 1980s, and in the autonomous student mobilization for the Telangana state demand movement since the 1990s till its realization in 2014 demonstrates its vibrancy in the larger societal and political issues. It is a commentary on the university and college campuses becoming the sites of manifestation of the larger social contradictions and contestations and resultant expression of explosive potential of student politicization and mobilization that elections to the student bodies in universities and colleges have been banned since the 1980s on the pretext of student unrest posing ‘law and order’ problems.

Regional populism While it is heartening to see the university system responding to popular and societal issues and concerns in a responsible way, it also needs to be recognized that this in the long run had a drastic impact on its quality and

134  K. Srinivasulu character. The balance between the autonomy, quality and social response to the larger context has to be carefully nurtured and jealously safeguarded. What disturbed this balance paving the way to institutional crisis is a complex story. Osmania is not an exception to this. In fact, it is part of a pattern that could be witnessed in a number of states and quite conspicuously in the Hindi heartland. If the political regimes since the 1970s, with their populist regionalist ‘anti-elite’ rhetoric have paved the way for compromise on the institutional integrity and academic standards, then the pretext of expansion of university education without adequate attention to the financial, institutional and human resource requirements has led to the devaluation or even impoverishment of the idea of a university. What has happened during YS Rajashekara Reddy’s tenure as the Congress Chief Minister has been disastrous for higher education in the state. On the pretext of expanding university education, almost all the district-level post-graduate centres were declared as universities. As a result, every district in the undivided AP ended up with a university. In the absence of any attention to the requirements of a university in terms of funding, faculty and administrative staff recruitment and the infrastructural base, these institutions not only look stunted but in fact have become a joke of a university. It would not be an exaggeration to state that the policy of proliferation of universities without proper preparation and support if anything has only depreciated the very idea of a university. Seen in this broad context, it would be instructive to identify the specific causes that contributed to the malaise that the regional universities find themselves in. Firstly, there is the weakening of the academic and administrative leadership due to the political considerations and even widely alleged and rumoured corruption in the appointment of vice-chancellors and the governing bodies that has become endemic to the regional varsities. Often these positions are seen from the prism of politics of accommodation pursued by the government of the day in which criteria other than the academic credentials of the appointees assumed more significance. This political interference, as is amply evident, has a cascading effect on the recruitment process, especially so because universities are seen as part of a patronage network for they are seen as a major source of public employment in the predominantly agrarian social context of these institutions. Secondly, the changing populist policy and social context of these institutions could be seen impacting on the quality of education offered by them and resulting in the conspicuous change in the social character of the university in terms of the student composition. Drawing on the insight from the historian of ideas, Albert Hirschman’s classic Exit, Voice and Loyalty (Hirschman 1970), the existential reality of the regional universities can be described as one characterized by the ‘exit’ of the elite and middle classes from them. Though the entry of the first-generation literate, rural and subaltern-caste youth is a welcome development but with the almost total exit of the upper and middle class youth from them, there could be witnessed the weakening of the critical ‘voice’ necessary for their vibrancy

The idea of university in a princely state  135 and endurance. Thus these universities could be seen as becoming sites of structural exclusion, thereby defeating the very purpose of the university as a space of social inclusion and integration. One can very well imagine the long-term implications of the depreciation of the university as a pluralist space of interaction, understanding and relationships between diversity of communities, castes and class as disastrous for the society.

Challenge of privatization With the thrust towards the privatization of higher education initiated by the government as part of the economic reforms at the state level, the neglect of the regional universities became more pronounced. In this narrative the pro-active of role of the regime headed by N Chandrababu Naidu in influencing the course of higher education itself needs to be recounted. Coming to power in 1995 by toppling NT Rama Rao who won the popular mandate in the 1994 assembly elections and openly pronouncing a pro-reform posture as a way of disassociating himself from NTR’s overtly populist regime, Naidu projected himself as the champion of state-level economic liberalization. Two important rhetorical and policy decisions of the Naidu regime have in fact changed the higher education scenario with a decisive impact on pre-university education. One is the regime’s projection of the IT sector as an opportunity to enter into the globalized knowledge economy. Governmental encouragement has led to the shift of both the existing and aspiring middle class into the IT stream in a big way, depriving other disciplines of support and clientele. The mushrooming of IT training institutions apart from the proliferation of engineering colleges in the state is evidence of the shift. Correspondingly a depreciatory atmosphere developed for basic sciences and humanities and social sciences. The AP experience is a clear instance of what a power regime can do to the field of education through its acts of commission and omission (Srinivasulu 2007). Other measures that can only be made sense of in relation to the macro-context of liberalization and privatization, like the cutting down of grants to universities, the accumulation of vacancies at various levels in academic and administrative positions due to a notorious ban on recruitment, and discursive privileging of private initiatives as indispensable for quality education all added up to the woes of the already fragile regional universities. The neglect that higher education has been experiencing for quite some time is sought to be legitimized on the pretext of the relevance of courses to the market and corporate sector. The signals were quite loud and clear that the universities were forced to ‘mend for themselves’ and become market friendly for their survival. The impact of this cynical perspective has been quite disastrous, especially for the humanities and social sciences. Thus we could see language departments turning into ‘soft skill’ imparting cells, history tuned to tourism industry, economics paraded as management, and so on. With the accent on privatization the public regional universities suffered a browbeating.

136  K. Srinivasulu The present state of Osmania University is clearly not reflective of let alone a continuation of the idea and ideal that it began its journey with a century ago. In the last couple of decades, like most of the universities in the state, Osmania has seen a reduction in grants so much so that it has often found itself in a difficult position to meet even its salary bill. The universities are advised, rather forced, to meet their financial requirements by generating resources, for instance through so-called ‘self-financed’ courses. Government’s approval to faculty recruitment is even more pathetic: it is definitely not commensurate with the number of vacant positions resulting from superannuation of teachers. This is evident from the fact that the Osmania university faculty strength during the last couple of decades has dwindled to 585 when the sanctioned faculty strength is 1267. With the senior faculty superannuating in significant numbers, some departments are virtually on the verge of closure. In many departments the part-time teachers (known as consultants) outnumber the regular faculty. This is true of most of the universities in the state. The visible non-priority of the regional universities in official education policy thinking, the resultant decline of them as centres of academic excellence and their simultaneous emergence predominantly as spaces of political mobilization are the principal causes for the exit of the elite which began in the 1980s and reached its acme by the turn of the century. As a result, it would not be far from true to state that the regional universities have hardly any middle-class presence as the latter have shifted their ‘loyalty’ to Central or private universities and national law schools, not to mention preferring to get an education abroad. It is no exaggeration to suggest that the decade-long Telangana movement in which the students in the Osmania University along with other universities have played a key role had a depreciatory impact on the higher education scenario. For during the duration of the decade-long Telangana movement, the students in these public institutions organized into Joint Action Committees were literally on the streets. It is the idea of Telangana (Srinivasulu 2011) as a solution to the problems of regional backwardness and unevenness that illuminated their imagination and resultant participation and sacrifices.8 Of course, one of the positive results of this phenomenon is the emergence of a new generation of leadership from the subaltern ranks of society which would otherwise not have been possible, given the existing dominant party system in India that prospers and in fact cultivates a political culture of family ownership based on hereditary or successional leadership from higher to the grassroots level. In fact, social movements throwing up new leadership have an impact, though still limited, on the otherwise oligarchic parties that are known for their internal democratic deficit. This should not blind us to the fact that this overbearing of the political has had disastrous consequences for the intellectual standing and scholarly role of the university. This stark reality is ignored in the regional public discourses, making everybody concerned reconcile themselves with the fait accompli.

The idea of university in a princely state  137

Post-Telangana state formation It was quite rational to expect that things on the educational front would improve in the new state. In the demand for statehood to Telangana which has been looked upon as a solution to the problems of backwardness and uneven development, the place and role of education has undoubtedly been fundamental. Further, given the fact that it was the students who were not only the critical base but also the driving force of the Telangana movement, whose participation in fact sustained the movement, education and employment generation ought to have been the utmost policy priority in the new state of Telangana. The Telangana Rastra Samithi (TRS) which claims to be the ‘exclusive’ voice of Telangana aspiration has not paid the kind of attention that educational and social development, its raison d’être, deserves. It is not unfair to state that this issue has not been demonstrated to be the priority of the state government. This is evident in the fact that all the universities in Telangana were deprived of proper governance as the appointment of regular vice-chancellors and governing bodies to them was delayed for over two years. Needless to add, the absence of a qualified and responsible person at the helm of a university means not only the paralysis of its normal day-today functioning but in fact a dent in its future. It is widely held that the cultivated neglect of universities by the TRS regime is a response emanating from its uneasy relation with the student community, when in fact the emergence of the TRS as a major political force in Telangana is largely a result of the student support it enjoyed, and perhaps it is symptomatic of the changing times that they are perceived as a major source of challenge to the regime. The centenary of Osmania University provided the new state and its leadership with an occasion to reflect on the above issues. It was a historic opportunity to the government to demonstrate its commitment to the development of Telangana by initiating necessary measures to protect its identity and pride by attending to the numerous problems – institutional, human resource-related and financial – that have accumulated over a period of time largely due to the neglect of the past. Needless to say, the development of a region depends principally on the quality of its human resources and they can be created only by improving the quality of institutions of higher education by making them the abodes of learning and research and also sites of social and cultural plurality and diversity. The government’s positive response to Osmania, which is the soul of Telangana, would not only have blurred the impression of TRS’ government’s neglect but also instilled popular confidence in its stated commitment to the development of Telangana. Sincere support for its rejuvenation is what is the need of the hour and Osmania richly deserves it for its pivotal role in shaping the intellectual, social, cultural and political life of Telangana. Alas, such a historical opportunity provided by the centenary is missed by the present regime. This could not be taken to be a casual and unintended one as the developments on the policy front proved to be the contrary. It is a sad commentary

138  K. Srinivasulu on the future of higher education in Telangana that in the centenary year of Osmania University the ruling TRS regime should go ahead with legislation of the private universities bill in spite of widespread opposition and without much legislative debate. This shows that the intent and direction of the official policy is quite opposite to the founding idea of Osmania and it is the social forces aspiring for a democratic and egalitarian educational future that need to take the call to protect and uphold the idea and institutions of public university. Institutions like Osmania University deserve to be protected, upheld and energized for the benefit of future generations.

Notes 1 This is a revised and expanded version of the paper ‘Celebration and Introspection: Reflections on the Century-old Osmania University’ published in Economic and Political Weekly, December 23, 2017. I am thankful to the editor of the journal for the permission to use the material published in it. 2 For the excerpts from the firman, see Satyanarayana (2018), p. 35. 3 Afghani’s central message was: ‘Progress depends on the instruction being imparted in the language of the country’. For an elaboration of this aspect, see, Shankar (2017). 4 As H. K. Sherwani stated much later in 1966, Osmania reflected the ‘symbolic of the age-long reaction against the continuance of English as the medium of University education in the country’ and in the immediate context against ‘the subservience … to Madras University’ which was one of the colonial universities to which the Nizam college was affiliated till the formation of Osmania University. See, Leonard (2003, p. 370). 5 For details, see, Datla (2009), pp. 1126–1128. 6 For an experiential autobiographical account of this, see, Bh Krishna Murthy’s Memoirs (2013). Prof Murthy was the founder head of the Department of Linguistics, and during his long career held important positions in Osmania University. 7 Scheduled castes and scheduled tribes (SCs and STs) are the most marginalized sections of Indian society, for whom there exist constitutionally mandated reservations in educational institutions and jobs. 8 Apart from the academic loss, a large number of student suicides happened during the movement, beginning with Srikanth Chary’s in 2009.

References Datla, Kavita (2009), ‘A Worldly Vernacular: Urdu at Osmania University’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 43, No. 5. Elliot, Carolyn (1974), ‘Decline of a Patrimonial Regime: The Telangana Rebellion in India, 1946–51’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 34, No. 1. Hirschman, Albert O (1970), Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Leonard, Karen (2003), ‘Reassessing Indirect Rule in Hyderabad: Rule, Ruler, or Son-in-law of the State’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 37, No. 2. Murthy, Bh Krishna (2013), Bathuku Batalo Konda Gurthulu (Telugu), Emesco, Hyderabad. Satyanarayana, Adapa (2018), ‘Remembering Osmania University’s Contribution to Public Life’, Economic and Political Weekly, April 14.

The idea of university in a princely state  139 Satyanarayana, SV and M Chennappa (2013), Telugu Sahithee Veechika, Department of Telugu, Osmania University, Hyderabad. Shankar, Kunal (2017), ‘Glorious past, Perilous present’, Frontline, July 21. Srinivasulu, K (2017), ‘The Caste Question in the Naxalite Movement’, Economic and Political Weekly, May 27. Srinivasulu, K (2016), ‘Region, Caste and Politics in Andhra Pradesh: Mapping the Paradigm Shift in the State Politics’ in MP Singh et al. (Eds), State Politics in India, Primus, New Delhi. Srinivasulu, K (2011), ‘Discourses on Telangana and Critique of the Linguistic Nationality Principle’, in Sudha Pai and Asha Sarangi (Eds), Interrogating States Reorganization: Culture, Identity and Political Economy in Independent India, Routledge, New Delhi. Srinivasulu, K (Ed.) (2007), ‘Crisis in Higher Education in Andhra Pradesh: The Challenges Ahead, Ways Forward,’ Governance and Policy Spaces (GAPS) Project, Centre for Economic and Social Studies, Hyderabad.

9 Spaces of contested nationalism Sajal Nag

In February 2016 some Indian universities were rocked by the debate over the definition and redefinition of nationalism. It is ironic that it was on the campuses of universities that the discourse of nationalism originated. There was a time when “nation” was a term used to differentiate a group of students coming from one region against those from another in the European universities in the late medieval period. The etymology of the term nation shows that the term originated from the Latin word “nasci” (to be born) and its original meaning was a group of people born in the same place.1 In another usage nation was used as a suffix for differentiation. It meant a strange people.2 The King James Bible distinguished between the people of Israel and nations of gentiles.3 The historian Hobsbawm scrutinized various editions of the Dictionary of Royal Spanish Academy to find that the terminology of state, nation and language in the modern sense did not exist before its edition of 1884. For the first time in 1884, langua nacional was used to mean the official and literary language of a country and the one generally spoken in that country, as distinct from dialect and languages of other nations. Before 1884 the word nacion simply meant the aggregate inhabitants of a province, a country or a kingdom and also a foreigner.4 Nation with such a denotation was common to many parts of Europe. It was in this sense only that the English colonialists in North America spoke of Sioux, Cherokee and other indigenous groups as “nacions.” Napoleon described the English as a “nation” of shopkeepers.5 Nationhood therefore started off as a term of “othering”. After the War of Independence, 1775–1783, white Americans started to refer to themselves as one “nation” distinguishable from those indigenous tribes who formed another nation. The denotation of nation from “others” to “us” came in the subsequent period. With the Enlightenment, when the supremacy of the Church and Pope were being questioned, monarchs began to assert their sovereignty over a group of people. The subordination of the incipient idea of nation was reflected in the declaration of Louis XIV when he said that in France the nation is not a separate body, but dwells within the person of the King, or the personification of the English resided in the person of Elizabeth I at the Spanish Armada (1588).6 When the French monarch Louis XVI in 1776

Spaces of contested nationalism  141 declared himself the embodiment of the French nation, his Advocate General Segurier amplified it further: The clergy, the nobility, the sovereign courts, the lower tribunals, the officers attached to these tribunals, the universities, the academies, the financial companies, the commercial companies, all present, and in all parts of State, bodies in being which one can regard as the links of a great chain of which the first is in the hands of your majesty, as head and sovereign of all that constitutes the body of nation.7 In the 19th century, political orators of Europe addressed their people as “nation” though it meant only the supporter of the government as seen in the appeal issued to the nation of Artois. In fact, the nationalism historiography of the Tudors, Valois and Bourbon dynasties extolled their respective nations in terms of its monarchy, landscape and resources rather than its people.8 But the transfer of nationhood from the monarchy to the people began with the Glorious Revolution (1688) in England and the Revolution in France (1789). After that, people were the basis of nationhood whose will was reflected in the Parliaments and National Assembly to which the rulers were subordinated. The restoration and revolution in England (1688–89) proved the triumph of Parliament over the monarchy while the formation of a National Assembly in France (1789) provided a concrete example of the development of the concept of nation.9 The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) marked a development of the concept of nation as the real source of legitimate political power: “The nation is essentially the source of all sovereignty, nor can any individual or anybody of men be entitled to any authority which is expressly derived from it.”10 Breuilly pointed out that it was clear from the rest of the declaration from the subsequent constitution of 1791 that the idea of nation did not refer to a special group of people with a common cultural identity but a sum of citizens whose rights were based on their common humanity.11 This marked a momentous event on the trajectory of nation. The events of 1789–1918 brought a unitization of cultural entities. Questions regarding homogeneity, common past and common affinities were raised, which created a thrust for the political unitization of cultural groups. But what if such unitization did not satisfy the urges of the people or cultural groups who were criss-crossed by political boundaries? Such judgments were expressed by Johann Gottlieb Fichte when he appealed to a German nation over the heads of several dozen princes, by Mazzini when he advocated Italian unity, and eastern European nationalists who pioneered the disintegration of the multilingual Ottoman, Hapsburg and Romanov empires. This on the one hand led to the unification of Germany, Italy and Poland and on the other brought about the disintegration of the above-mentioned empires and the emergence of a number of nation-states. It is interesting to note that early theoreticians of nationalism had recognized that “nations were something new in history.”12 The history of nation

142  Sajal Nag could not be indefinitely antiquated even though the narrators of nations’ histories often did exactly that. But the fallacy was conspicuous. Hence the modernity of nationalist discourse was rarely controverted other than the idea that there was perhaps pre-modern ethnic or cultural roots of modern nations.13 It was also pointed out quite early that nations were not a “natural” entity as often supposed, but only a recent product of modern history. Nations are, in reality, constructed identities.14 Such construction is based on a certain imagining which in turn was based on certain definite political ambitions. The essence of nation is the imagining that all individuals in community have things in common which even they might have forgotten.15 Understanding nations and nationalism was also a part of the crisis. John Stuart Mill used nationality as a human group bound together by common solidarity that is loyal to group interests more than any other. He said, A portion of mankind may be said to constitute a nationality if they are unified among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between them and any others – which make them co operate with each other more willingly than with other people, desire to be under the same government and desire that it should be government by themselves or a portion of themselves exclusively. Mills’ kind of nationality is more primordial and had existed in all parts of the world in pre-modern times.16 Yet it is only the post-18th-century world that witnessed the phenomenon of nationalism and nation-states of the kind we are talking about. Hans Kohn defined nationalism as a “state of mind” which emerges from “some of the oldest and most primitive feelings of men”, such as one’s love for birth place, a preference for one’s own language, custom and religion or race which forms the objective or features that shape the collective consciousness called nationalism. To Hans Kohn, nation-state demands the supreme loyalty of the individual. A deep attachment to one’s native soil, to local traditions and to established territorial authority has existed in varying strength.17 For Kohn, nationality is the by-product of the living forces of history and therefore fluctuating and never rigid. Most of them possess certain objective factors distinguishing them from other nationalities, such as common descent, language, territory, political entity, customs and traditions or religion. But none of these are essential or definitions of nationality. Although objective factors are of great importance for the formation of nationalities, the most essential elements are a living and corporate will. It is this will which we call nationalism – a state of mind inspiring a large majority of people. It asserts that the nation-state is the ideal and the only legitimate form of political organization and that nationality is the source of all central creative energy and of economic well-being.18 Kohn made a distinction between western and non-western nationalism, both originating from different sets of socio-economic and political conditions. Western nationalism was of course the product of European enlightenment and coeval with

Spaces of contested nationalism  143 the idea of progress and modern democracy that was visible in Western European countries with an Anglo-American influence.19 The other variety existed in Central and Eastern Europe and on the Asian continent. While the former aims at internal political freedom, the latter aims at national independence at the expense of civil rights which are hostile to freedom. For Carlton Hayes, the essential prerequisite of nationalism was the principle of the sovereignty of the people. It is a revolutionary force which is indivisible from democratic revolution. He too distinguished between two types of nationalism, Original and Derived. Original nationalism appears through a historical process as was the case in Western Europe, but Derived nationalism manifests itself after the achievement of independence and usually becomes reactionary, militaristic and imperialistic. Although it is inspired by Kohn’s formulations it fails to distinguish between the forms as they appear in Europe and non-European areas. Both his types of nationalism cover only Europe.20 A similar distinction was made by John Plamenatz who talked about two types of nationalism – one western and the other eastern.21 The former was obviously typical of Western Europe while the latter was found in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Nationalism to him is primarily a cultural phenomenon that often takes a “political form.” Plamenatz openly placed England and France as the “pace makers” in the “comity of nations” that formed a consciously progressive civilization.22 The eastern nationalism was consequently found to be “imitative.” The viewing of nationalist ideas as coeval with liberalism and rationalism by the two thinkers above however failed to explain the brutality of Nazism and Fascism. This irreconcilability has been termed by Partha Chatterjee as the “liberal-rational dilemma.”23 To sociological thinker Max Weber,24 nation was primarily a political union of which the nation-state was the secular power complex. Nationalism is the consequence and expression of a conscious participation in the power-political destiny of one’s own nation-state. In this definition, analysis of the question of national identity was overshadowed by the problem of integration. National consciousness was given a derivative role. Elie Kedorie on the other hand felt that nationalist thought is not at all an offshoot of the rationalist-liberalist thought process. It is a European phenomenon foreign to the non-European world. Elie Kedorie was a severe critic of nationalist thought itself who found it to be an ideology that is irrational, narrow and destructive of freedom.25 Anthony Smith did not agree with Kedorie, whose “unequivocal condemnation” of nationalism was “diffusionist” in character.26 Karl Deutsch did not ignore the potential of nationalism as a power.27 Inspired by Otto Bauer, Karl Deutsch found nationality is not “an inborn characteristic but a result of a process of social learning and habit forming.” Nationalism is based on the assumption that the population groups in question are integrated by a high degree of social communication visà-vis aliens. This communication consists of socio-stereotyped behaviour patterns transmitted by education and social learning instead of deriving a nationality directly from a community of language, tradition and history.

144  Sajal Nag The communication consists in the ability to communicate more effectively and over a wider range of subjects with the members of a large group of outsiders. A society’s ability to achieve a high degree of social communication depends upon the creation of a socially standardized system of symbols to which language, customs and historical memories all belong. Cultural factors facilitate communication. They are not a cultural community because culture becomes socially valid only in conjunction with a communication system which imparts validity to these values. Such learning in Europe and North America typically came about through the growth of an intense network of social communication which forms the foundation of a nationality. This social communication network of trade, travel, correspondence etc links cities and villages together. Such “social mobilization” leads to a new pattern of life which is modern. An outside challenge to the new way of life and the advent of a new generation then acted as a catalyst in shaping the political consciousness of a nationality. The most remarkable understanding of nationalism in recent times was provided by Benedict Anderson.28 Anderson avowedly was influenced29 by the Renanian idea of imagined commonality while offering a new definition of nation as an “imagined community.” In defining nation as “an imagined political community” Anderson significantly implied it to be “inherently limited and sovereign.”30 The nation is imagined because “the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members or meet them or even hear of them.” He added it is “imagined because even the largest of them encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations.” It is also an imagined community “because regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.” This community is born out of the decline of feudalism and the rise of capitalism. Feudal hierarchies, he suggested, allowed bonds to exist across national or linguistic boundaries. The bourgeoisie however forged shared interests across class lines within a more bounded geography and thus created a community among people who had never met and did not necessarily have a common outlook. Newspapers, novels and other new forms of communication were channels for creating such a shared culture, interests and vocabularies. Such forms of communication were themselves made possible by print capitalism, meaning the trade in books and printed materials created certain standardized languages that could be used to reach diverse groups of people. Thus the convergence of capitalism and print technology diluted the diversity of human languages and created the possibility of a new form of imagined community and set the stage for the emergence of modern nations. There are three types of nations. The first type was where language was not even an issue in the formation of these states which were first to define themselves as nations. The example was that of the American states of the late 18th and early 19th century. The Spanish-speaking Creole community in South and Central America developed the notion of “nationness”

Spaces of contested nationalism  145 well before most of Europe and they co-opted the indigenous oppressed non-Spanish-speaking peoples into their idea of imagined community. Why did the Creoles do this, when it could weaken the foundation of their nationhood? The Creoles were the landowning community and had a comfortable life compared to the non-Spanish-speaking peoples. But the Creoles were marginalized in the colonial administration which they wanted to correct. The non-Spanish-speaking peoples were conquerable by arms, disease and Christianity and an alien culture to the European imperialists. In contrast, the Creoles had the same relationship with arms, disease and Christianity as metropolitans. In other words, they were simultaneously a colonial community as well as upper class. Their only problem was their domination by the imperial powers from which they desired independence. Their nationalism thus was born out of both dispossession and privilege, which is also behind many anti-colonial nationalisms in later periods. The other form of nationalism was one where language was more fundamental to the development of national consciousness. Here initially owing to the pivotal role played by the literate middle classes and the intelligentsia, nationalism appeared as all-inclusive, popular and with a language-based identification. Such nationalism employed a democratic rhetoric, speaking out against serfdom or legal slavery. But soon it was appropriated by the ruling European dynasties who by responding to popular national movements forged a new identification with the people they ruled. The Romanovs discovered they were great Russians, the Hanoverians that they were English, and so on. Although these identifications were weak, they worked to pull taut the skins of the nation over the gigantic body of the empire. Such official nationalism was an anticipatory strategy by the dominant groups to avoid being excluded from the new communities about to be born. This was a ploy whereby the ruled and colonized were invited to become one with the rulers. (Indians were thus anglicized.) The third form of nation-state emerged after the First World War and consolidated after the Second World War. This includes nations born out of anti-imperialist struggles. The nation-state was conceptualized along the lines of the earlier models. Thus American and European models were now imitated. In the colonies, the native intelligentsia played a crucial role in this formation because they were bilingual and had access to modern Western culture and the models of nationalism, nation-state and nationness. In other words, anti-colonialism is itself made possible and shaped by European political intellectual history. It is a derivative discourse which is dependent upon the colonizer’s gift of language and ideas. Anderson in this formulation did not allow any space for such “imagination” to be continuous or expanding. He did not discuss the possibility of any community expanding its imagination continuously and then including members of other communities in the fold of its own imagined community. In fact, on the contrary there was provision that smaller groups within this “imagined community” in time might imagine themselves to be a separate community and demand secession from the parent imagined community.

146  Sajal Nag Yet such experiences were real in the post-colonial world. This happened because nations are, as Anderson made it clear, political communities. Nation making, like nation building, is a political practice. The clue to this practice is available in Ernest Renan’s formulation itself that national identities are constructed to “present” a collective, cohesive and consolidated group of people who are believed to have shared a common past, and who are desirous of following a common political future. Nation-making requires crucial preconditions: unifying attributes and a competitive past.31 It is, however, an arduous task to rally diverse elements into a “presentable” and “stable” homogeneous community. Nation-making is thus a complex intellectual and cultural project that involves a process of combining heterogeneous elements, continuous construction, co-option and even coercion. It is “a praxis that is perpetual, polemical and sometimes brutal.”32 Anderson’s definition was complemented by that of Ernest Gellner. For Gellner, like Anderson, nationalism is the only form of political organization which is appropriate to the social and intellectual condition of the modern world. Gellner attributes the emergence of nationalism to the epochal shift for pre-industrial to industrial economies. He argued that as forms of social organization become more and more complex and intricate they require a more homogeneous and cooperative workforce and polity. Thus industrial society produces the economic conditions for the growth of a national consciousness which it consolidates politically through a supervisory agency of the nation-state. The most formidable challenge to Anderson’s thesis came from the Indian political thinker Partha Chatterjee. He challenged Anderson’s thesis as far as anti-colonialism was considered. He felt that it was not just borrowing from Europe but also was asserting a “difference” that shaped Indian nationalism. His central objection to Anderson is summed up in his Nation and Its Fragments: if nationalisms in the rest of the world have to choose their imagined community from certain “modular” forms already made available to them by Europe and the Americas, what do they have left to imagine? History, it would seem, has decreed that we in the postcolonial world shall only be perpetual consumers of modernity. Europe and the Americas, the only true subjects of history, have thought out on our behalf not only the script of colonial enlightenment and exploitation but also that of our anti-colonial resistance and postcolonial misery. Even our imaginations must remain forever colonised.33 The Indian nationalists filtered European ideas through our ideological sieve to create Indian nationalism. Chatterjee does this by drawing a distinction between nationalism as a political movement which challenges the colonial state and nationalism as a cultural construct which enables the colonized to posit their difference and autonomy. The former is derivative but the latter draws its energy from other sources.

Spaces of contested nationalism  147 Chatterjee pointed out that the official histories of Indian nationalism would correspond to Anderson’s thesis. In this, nationalism began with the establishment of the Indian National Congress in 1885. But nationalism is not only contestation about power. Long before the challenge to the colonial state, anti-colonial nationalism attempted to create its domain of sovereignty within colonial society. It did so by dividing the world into outer (material) domain (economy, state craft, technology) and inner (spiritual) domain (religion, customs, family); the supremacy of the west is conceded in the outer world whereas the spiritual world must be protected and defended. Although this sphere is not completely untouched by western nationalism, their current project is to fashion a modern national culture. This anti-colonial nationalism is not modelled upon simple imitation but defines its difference from Western notions of liberty, freedom and human dignity. In colonial situations the development of print capitalism took a different form. Although the colonized intellectual was schooled in the colonizers’ language, they also asserted rights over their mother tongue for which they set up instruments for their dissemination and modernization. Thus the Bengali intellectuals tried to create an aesthetic sphere through theatre, novels and art that would be distinctively Indian. They also took the lead in setting up educational institutions that would be distinct from those run by missionaries and the colonial state. It was to such schools that women were allowed to go, because family and women were firmly placed within the inner domain that was to be kept outside the control of colonial authority. The rise of nationalism and the nation-state was a direct offshoot as well as a triumph of rationalism and liberalism in 19th-century Europe. But such liberalism and enlightenment could not prevent the development of European capitalist states from turning into imperialists and colonizers. The rise of nationalism in Asia and Africa or even Britain’s own Ireland in the form of anti-colonialism changed the entire face of nationalist history. The rise of a nationalist consciousness and the nation-state had so far been seen as a European phenomenon and indicator of European progress but its appearance in Africa and Asia was unexpected and paradoxical. So there was reluctance and resistance in according this freedom struggle the status of a nationalist movement. Despite its erstwhile colonies in Africa, Asia and Latin America emerged victorious. But the emergence of Nazism in Germany, Fascism in Italy and Stalinism in Soviet Russia and the conquest of all the newly created states in Eastern Europe by either Germany or Russia obliterated the post-Versailles Treaty (1919) enthusiasm in nationalism. This was further complicated by the subsequent partition of India, Germany, Palestine and Korea each into two new states. From the failure of the League of Nations (1920) which included the Wilsonian Principle of Self Determination and officially adopted the term of nation and extended it to all sovereign states inside and outside Europe, irrespective of their forms of government or civilizational advancement, to the emergence of the United Nations (1945), all were new chapters in the development of nationalist

148  Sajal Nag history. But since then, too, the context, meaning and usage of nation have changed considerably. For example, the 1968 edition of the Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences stated, “In Britain today no serious conflict is generally felt between a wider British and a more particular English, Welsh or Scottish nationality. In Ireland the conflict became irreconcilable between 1846 and 1921.”34 But in 1977 itself Tom Nairn, a distinguished political scientist, talked about the possibility of the breakup of Britain as a result of the nationalist movements active in Scotland, Wales and among the Protestants of Northern Ireland.35 Similarly, when the same Encyclopaedia stated, “like any other loyalty, national loyalty once formed may change its point of attachment or it may dissipate and several loyalties may conflict at a given time,” it surely did not foresee the disintegration of multinationalism in the Communist countries of Eastern Europe either in Soviet Russia or Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia. But that is exactly what happened in the late 1980s. Many new nations emerged out of Soviet Russia, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia and endemic bloody riots broke out between partners of the same nations. The entire course of nationalist history is not as simplistic, autonomous, unilinear or as civilizational as it might appear. National history was, to use Partha Chatterjee’s words, one whose course cannot be described by selecting from history two points of origin and culmination and joining them by a straight line. The critical view point reveals that it is a revolution which at the same time in fundamental ways is not a revolution. It is in the shifts, slides, discontinuities, the unintended moves, what is suppressed as much as is asserted, that one can get a sense of this complex movement, not as to many accidental or disturbing factors but as constitutive of the very historical rationality of its process. The nation has emerged to be the predominant form of modern political identity simply because national community as an identity was absent in earlier political imagination, and institutional organization in the form of a state based on such identity had not developed in the pre-modern period.36 It has competed with other forms of collective identity and has been successful in subordinating other entities like class, region, gender, race and religion. A controversial identity like “religion” has often been made immensely powerful when garbed with the jacket of nationalism. Despite acrimonious debate, the power and primacy of national loyalties and identities over other collective identities have generally been conceded. The instrument of nation has been employed to define the self, differentiate the other and appropriate the claim to power. It has emerged to be the most powerful ideology of modern times responsible for tumultuous changes in the colonial and post-colonial world. It has reshaped territorial boundaries and redrawn maps around the globe. It has partitioned habitats, united communities, divided people, integrated kinsmen. It has led to the crumbling of old empires and the emergence of new states, has fuelled conflicts

Spaces of contested nationalism  149 and waged war. It took the vitality out of hitherto dominant ideologies and was responsible for unprecedented bloodshed in the 20th century. It has emerged to be so omnipotent, authoritarian and powerful that nation-states have been crowned the God of modernity.37

Nation and its principles There is no common understanding of the parameters of nationhood. Yet it is a part of popular imagination in the modern world. While theories and discourses differ, nation as a concept continues to be fiercely applied in the construction or deconstruction of nation-states around the globe. Although definitions vary, the essence of nationhood is about the construction of “self” and then politically empowering that self. This self might be an “imaginary community” or a “community of invented traditions”, it might be the effect of social communication or discursive communication conditioned by print capitalism or industrial modernization; it is all about identifying a collective self in difference to the Other. The basic principles on which nations have been conceptualized are Identity, Unity and Autonomy. These three themes and ideals have been pursued by nationalist thinkers everywhere since Rousseau, Herder, Fichte, Korais, Mazzini and Renan. Once a national identity has been established for a people it develops into a powerful ideology that seeks to first unify the entire people under its jurisdiction and ensure its political autonomy. According to John Breuilly,38 the political doctrine of nationalism is built upon three basic assertions: one, there exists a nation with an explicit and peculiar character; two, the interests and values of nation take priority over all other interests and values; three, the nation must be as independent as possible, which usually requires the attainment of political sovereignty. Nationalism is therefore, first of all, a doctrine of popular unity, fraternity and autonomy. It prescribes that people must be liberated from external constraints. They must determine their own destiny and be the master in their own house. They must control their own resources and must obey only their own voice. This requires fraternity. The people must be united and dissolve all internal divisions. They must be gathered together in a single historic territory, a homeland and they must have legal equality and share a single public culture. The above discussion has shown the emergence of the nation-state as a force in the modern world. It was hailed as providing people with new categories of identity which became the basis of modern politics. Politics is about power and the control of statecraft. Since nationalism is about peoples’ identity, its politics meant the control of the state by the people. In this sense nationalism was a great liberator. In fact, it is the nationalist politics which has changed and reshaped the contours of the state system in sharp contrast to the medieval age. It would not be an exaggeration to say that it is the force of nationalism which marked the transition of states from the medieval to the modern form. The basic doctrine of nationalism is that it provided people with a new identity on the basis of its cultural markers,

150  Sajal Nag their consciousness and will. What made it modern was that such markers have always existed but these were philosophical in nature without any political relevance. In this sense such belonging was rather thin in comparison to modern practices. It was in this sense impossible to achieve the kind of firm identification between people and a form of political space which is presupposed in the political ontology of a modern nation-state. Not only was the connection between the people and the state tenuous in pre-modern times, identity itself meant a different kind of social cohesion. The logic of traditional identity was different from modern identity in several respects. Politically, at least pre-modern identities tended to be fuzzy in two ways. Firstly, an individual’s identity was distributed in several social practices wherein the fact of his distinctive belonging to his village, local community, language, religious sects, and kinship would all have figured in a context-dependent fashion. An individual was not one of these. In that sense individual identity was plural and flexible, making the identity itself fuzzy. Moreover, this identity did not have political ramifications. But modern identities are exactly the opposite. The political identity is supreme and all other identity is submerged against this. But nations and nationalities are inextricable from nation-states in modern times. The objective of nationhood is self-determination and the establishment of nation-states. A nationalist ideology seeks to bind people together in a particular territory in an endeavour to gain and use state power, because it is only with the control of state power that the ideology of nationalism can accomplish its objective of translating cultural identity into a political unity, unify its people in a defined category and ensure autonomy of themselves in the comity of nations. Thus is born the novelty of modern history – the nation-state, the God of Modernity. The modern-day nation-states worship this God against which the seers of the crisis-ridden modern world had appropriately cautioned. Rabindranath Tagore for example had denounced such European types of nationalism. In fact he deplored the fact that no trace of civilization in Europe could be found which could raise the nations above fierce conflicts, injustices and falsehoods. He reiterated this in the course of his lectures on nationalism in Japan and America which had made him unpopular in Japan. Through his lectures he denounced nationalism with his entire wrath and fury and reposed his faith in humanism. He said, The nation with all its paraphernalia of power and prosperity, its flags and pious hymns, its blasphemous prayers in the churches and the literary mock thunders of its patriotic bragging, cannot hide the fact that the nation is the greatest evil for the nation, the nation has thriven long upon mutilated humanity.39

Universities as a concept Conceptually universities are autonomous spaces for the cultivation of knowledge. It is one of the most innovative inventions of mankind. To

Spaces of contested nationalism  151 create a domain only for the cultivation of knowledge was most ingenuous. As such, universities are part of the “progress story” of human evolution. The university was created to be a domain in itself, separate from the space where people have their mundane political, economic and social practices. A look at the ancient universities of the world shows that they were not just notionally distant but even physically distant in faraway places. In Vedic India such educational institutions were part of growing up, which was divided into four ashramas. The earliest of the ashramas was brahmcharya, during which a Vedic student vowed chastity, practised self-restraint and studied the sacred lore. Gurukuls were where they had their education far away from home in the pristine abode of their teachers. Of course, such education was restricted to the upper varnas only. Similarly, during antiquity such cultivation of knowledge was mostly around religion and particular faiths where trainees and disciples of that religion tried to find deeper meaning and layers of understanding. But meaning of religion and spirituality was very different from what it is in today’s world. What is religion today was epistemology then. Since the knowledge of the universe was very weak, people constantly asked questions about life, nature and the outer-world and tried to provide an understanding about them. At the same time there was need to regulate social life in the light of this understanding. People in antiquity did not perhaps know or realize they were practising non-secular aspects of life. For them, they were trying to unravel existential and epistemological questions relating to life and unravel the mysteries of the universe. It was a cultivation of knowledge, seeking enlightenment and finding ways to gain freedom from the shackles of life. But often such cultivation was within the framework of their faiths. But they did produce renegades, too, who had dared to think outside the box or challenge the existing corpus of ideas. Since such knowledge was not secular it competed with the discoveries of the natural sciences and often rejected the latter. It was with the onset of modernity that teaching and production of secular knowledge on the basis of science and rationality actually began. The modern concept of the university emerged in the West. When Wilhelm von Humboldt established a university in Berlin in 1810 it became a model for all modern universities in the Occident. Upholding the principles of Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant underlined reason, culture and excellence as the three major foundations of a university: Humboldt, a great advocate of liberalism, visualised a sublimation of the normative force of reason in a culture of liberal thinking that could make the university a place, reclusive in character, but suitable to pursue and produce knowledge for wider dissemination.40 Reclusiveness was therefore inherent in the very idea of universities either in the east or west which was necessary to allow minds to be liberated. Since it was physically at a distance it was free from control too. It was an autonomous domain which allowed knowledge workers to interrogate and

152  Sajal Nag rationalize. The difference between universities in the east and west was that in the former they came to be established to seek enlightenment while in the west they were a product of “Enlightenment”.

Implant of the Western university system The modern university in India is a colonial transplant. The establishment of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras universities by the colonial government in 1857 did not have any “genealogical and historical connection with India’s ancient and medieval centres of learning”,41 though India had a rich tradition of universities, mostly in the Buddhist culture. Nalanda, Takshila, Saranath, and other such universities took in pupils and scholars from all over the world. In this sense the modern universities marked an organic disconnect with tradition and culture. The colonial universities are primarily extensions of the European-modernist paradigm. Through these universities, teaching of modern Western education was reinforced. As a transplant, the colonial modern university in India overlooked or ignored the real India as an object of study with its socio-cultural complexities and their imperatives. It [the university] is a European implant with all its political, philosophical and cultural baggage. It is a graft imposed with utter disregard for the tissue texture of the host culture. For the graft itself was conceived as a part of a whole good bestowed upon a “nation” to be civilized.42 While the British took over administration of Bengal, all higher education was confined to a study of classical languages such as Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian in tols and madrasas. Vernaculars were sadly neglected and neither natural sciences nor subjects like mathematics, history, political philosophy, economics or geography formed part of the curriculum. Grammar, classical literature, logic, philosophy, law and religious texts formed the main element of higher study while elementary education imparted in pathsalas and maktabs consisted of religious myths and legends. In matters of education and intellectual progress India was passing through a period analogous to the middle ages of Europe. The British government at first took little interest in the development of education. Warren Hastings encouraged the revival of Indian learning and he established the Calcutta madrasa (1781). Inspired by the same spirit, William Jones founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta in 1784 and a Sanskrit College was started at Benares by Jonathan Duncan in 179243 which marked the beginning of Orientalist quests in Asia. It was only after 1857 as a part of the pressure of Utilitarians that Calcutta University was founded and between 1857 and 1887 four other universities were set up in Bombay, Madras, Lahore and Allahabad. The colonial enterprise apparently had two clear objectives: first, “to teach Indians a diffusion of the improved arts, sciences, philosophy and

Spaces of contested nationalism  153 literature of Europe; in short, European knowledge” and secondly, to supplant indigenous knowledge (Oriental knowledge) that was condemned as “superstitious,” “mythic,” “primitive,” and, more generally, untrue.44 European modernity thus began to reach the shores of its Indian colony through universities established by the British. But the products of these colonial universities were not mechanical products of gigantic Imperial machinery. Indians were not passive trainees in colonial educational institutions but recipients of a body of knowledge which they sought to use in Indian conditions. The knowledge was completely new to them and hence was open to interpretation according to their own understanding. The body of Western thought that came with the British education system was merely “texts” which the Indians did not read like a European but read differently to emerge with different meanings. This is the reason that it did not merely produce Anglophiles but intellectuals who admired the Western intellectual tradition and sought to borrow the best to enrich the culture and traditions of their ancient civilization. They not only critiqued British colonial rule but even produced blueprints for self-rule and freedom. Some of them, deviants with a university education were able to reinvent themselves in the Indian cultural-national context even while adhering to the educational objectives of a colonial university.45 From Renaissance to Nationalist movements, to Communist pioneers to revolutionary terrorism – all were products of such a different reading of Western liberal and revolutionary ideas. Despite being colonial, the British universities did not fail to introduce the spirit of Western liberalism in Indian minds. The western impact on India led to revolutionary social consequences. This was because by the time the western tradition could bear meaningfully upon the cultural, political and social systems of India, its own structure had undergone a radical internal transformation. The new liberal, egalitarian and humanistic tradition in the west had come to be imbued with a new found sense of confidence in the scientific and technological world view based on rationalism, equality and freedom. This contact between India and the west was therefore to inaugurate a new era in the history of India.46 The European models of university education inspired the foundation of universities like Aligarh Muslim University or Benares Hindu University but their purpose was completely different. While Aligarh was an attempt to modernize the perceived backward Muslims of India, there was an attempt to establish indigenous education systems in Benares. All wanted to bring European enlightenment and modernity to their pupils. The colonial universities no doubt produced a large number of clerks and bureaucrats, as was the intention of this system, but it also produced renegades. In fact,

154  Sajal Nag most of the nationalist leaders of India who fought against foreign rule and ultimately threw the British out of the country were products of the colonial university system in India. The university in post-colonial India was a continuation of the colonial organizational structure but the objectives were now different. It was to produce the ideas and architects of nation-building. It was entrusted with an ironic responsibility: despite having the colonial structure it was now to oversee the decolonization of a nascent nation. The ideological and educational background of the first prime minister and enlightened outlook of the first education minister of the country helped in giving new shape to the already existing university system in India. Both appreciated the history and worldview of the two institutions set up by different individuals and patronized it by nationalizing them. That is the reason Aligarh Muslim University and Viswa Bharati were the two universities given central university status. For Nehru, the two premises of a university were: (1) that “a university stands for the adventure of ideas and for the search of the truth” and (2) that the spirit of the age shall triumph in bringing about equality in society.47 Nehru wanted universities to produce those graduates who would be the “technicians” of a modern India. He not only included economists, philosophers and historians in his cabinet for advising the government but also facilitated the establishment of research institutes for scientific and social science research. These institutions strengthened the pursuit of higher education in universities. But in time universities have become training and recruiting grounds for local politicians, and state universities especially became spheres of influence for politicians. Such interference severely undermined the autonomy and hence the teaching and research pursuits of universities. As result both the Nehruvian objectives of universities were negated, wherein the autonomy of the university was severely compromised with interventions from outside and with corrosive politics from within. There was a coeval decline in the quality of education and massive commercialization of the system. It signalled a crisis prompting the state to appoint Inquiry Commissions to suggest measures. Eminent sociologist André Béteille with his vast personal experience of having taught and held many positions at different universities in India, has expressed his anxieties and articulates forcefully the malaise that afflicts Indian universities.48 Post-liberalization India has witnessed tremendous changes. There was a huge growth of universities in the country. The number of central universities has gone up to more than forty. With state and private universities the number has gone up to 750 universities. There are more than 35,000 colleges and 30 million students studying in these institutions. Universities are no longer state projects but business ventures. Hence the objectives of universities have dramatically changed. While private universities specialize in imparting technical and vocational education which is in huge demand on the market, state universities have been relegated to being spheres of political influence. The lowering of the voting age to 18 had made graduate students vulnerable to political predators. Political parties consider university

Spaces of contested nationalism  155 campuses as their recruiting grounds. Instead of allowing young minds to play with ideas and opt for high ideals they are targeted for political mobilization. Every political party wants to see these students as their political clients. As a result, on the one hand there is an increase in student activism, and on the other, complete disenchantment with the political system. This is truer of the technical students who are waiting to emigrate to Europe and America for a luxurious and peaceful life as soon as they have their degrees. But the increase in student activism is only in the state-run universities where new generations of leaders are nurtured through patronage.

Epilogue If teaching at the universities has to survive in a techno-commercial-utilitarian academic structure and is burdened with caste, class, gender and other social factors where truth is no longer self-evident but manipulated and manufactured, there is a need for the humanities to redefine itself in the changing context of education.49 All this is possible only when a university is a better place to grow in. Tagore had visualized such a place in his concept of Visva Bharati – the words “Visva Bharati” mean “where the world is subsumed”; Tagore did not say this about the university but he saw his country as a cosmos. One wishes that in these troubled times the following lines of Tagore through which he visualized his country, could very well encapsulate the idea of a university50: Where the mind is without fear/where the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way In the dreary desert land of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever widening thought and action Into the heaven of freedom my father Let my country awake.

Notes 1 ‘Nation and its Antecedents,’ in Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences, Vol. II (b), Macmillan, 1968, p. 8. 2 Ibid. 3 Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 14. 4 Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences, Vol. II (b), Macmillan, 1968, p. 8. 5 Ibid. 6 John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1982, p. 58.

156  Sajal Nag 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 This is article III of the Declaration which was reproduced in Merryn Williams (ed), Revolutions, Harmondsworth, 1977, pp. 96–99, cited in Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, p. 60. 11 Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, p. 60. 12 Ernest Renan, ‘What is a Nation,’ in Stuart Woolf (ed), Nationalism in Europe 181 to the Present: A Reader, Routledge, London & New York, 1996, pp. 48–60. 13 See Anthony Smith, Ethnic Origins of Nations, Oxford University Press, New York, 1986. 14 For example Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1983; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Verso, London, 2nd edition, 1991, and Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1985 reprint. 15 Renan, ‘What is a Nation,’ pp. 48–60. 16 J S Mill, ‘Nationality,’ reproduced in Stuart Woolf (ed), Nationalism in Europe 181 to the Present: A Reader, Routledge, London and New York, 1996, pp. 40–47. 17 Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism, Macmillan, New York, 1967, p. 9. 18 Ibid., p. 10. 19 Ibid. 20 Carlton Hayes, ‘True and False Nations. Two Varieties of Nationalism: Original and Derived,’ in Middle States Council for Social Studies, Proceedings of the Association of History Teachers of the Middle States and Maryland, No. 28, 1928, pp. 70–83 cited in Marxism, Communism and Western Society: A Comparative Encyclopaedia, Herder and Herder, New York, 1973, pp. 25–26; also Carlton Hayes, The Historical Evolution of Modern Nationalism, Macmillan, New York, 1931. 21 John Plamenatz, ‘Two Types of Nationalism in Eugene Kamenka,’ (ed), Nationalism: The Nature and Evolution of an Idea, London, Edward Arnold, 1976, pp. 23–36, cited in Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1986, pp. 1–2. 22 Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, p. 4. 23 Ibid. 24 Max Weber, Politische Schriften, 2 vols, Tubingen, 1958, p. 14, cited in Marxism, Communism and Western Society: A Comparative Encyclopaedia, New York, 1973, pp. 28–30. 25 Elie Kedourie (ed), Nationalism in Asia and Africa, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1972, p. 2, cited in Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, p. 7. 26 Anthony Smith, Theories of Nationalism, Duckworth, 1971, pp. 12–24, cited in Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, p. 7. 27 Karl W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality, MIT Press, 2nd edition, 1966. 28 Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. 29 Ibid., p. 6. 30 Ibid., pp. 5–7. 31 Competitive past refers to a situation when each of the cultural groups is trying to demonstrate that their history is richer and older on the one hand than the others, and on the other, than India. It is continuous appropriation and construction of history to endow oneself with nationhood. It is a common endeavour among the tribes and communities in north east India. 32 Renan, ‘What is a Nation,’ pp. 48–60. 33 Chatterjee, Nation and its Fragments, p. 5.

Spaces of contested nationalism  157 4 Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences, Vol. II (b), p. 8. 3 35 Tom Nairn, The Break Up of Britain: Crisis and Neo Nationalism, Zed Books, London, 1977. 36 Sudipta Kaviraj, ‘Crisis of the Nation-state in India,’ in John Dunn (ed), Contemporary Crisis of Nation-States, Blackwell, Oxford, 1995, pp. 115–129. 37 Josep R. Llobera, The God of Modernity: The Development of Nationalism in Western Europe, Berg, Oxford, 1994. 38 Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, pp. 3–5. 39 Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism, London, 1917, pp. 29–30 and 44. 40 J. Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, Longmans, Green and Co, London, 1907, cited in K. C. Baral, ‘In-discipline(s): Diversity, Disciplinarity and the Humanities,’ under publication in a volume on Critical Humanities. 41 André Béteille, Universities at the Crossroads, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2010, p. 23, cited in Baral, ‘In-discipline(s): Diversity, Disciplinarity and the Humanities’. 42 Rao D. Venkat, ‘Anachronistic Reflections: Of Critical Humanities,” Pratilipi, March-June 2010, www.pratilipibooks.com, cited in Baral ‘In-discipline(s): Diversity, Disciplinarity and the Humanities’. 43 R. C. Majumdar, H. C. Raychoudhury and Kalikinkar Datta, An Advanced History of India, Macmillan, Madras, 1946, 1978 edn, pp. 810–811. 44 Sanjay Seth, Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India, Duke University Press, Durham NC and London, 2007, p. 1 cited in Baral, ‘In-discipline(s): Diversity, Disciplinarity and the Humanities’. 45 Baral ‘In-discipline(s): Diversity, Disciplinarity and the Humanities’. 46 S. Gopalkrishnan, ‘British Impact on Education in the Madras Presidency up to 1855,’ in N. R. Ray (ed) Western Colonial Policy, Vol. II, Institute of Historical Studies, Calcutta, 1983, pp. 16–29. 47 Nehru, cited in Béteille, Universities at the Crossroads, pp. 156–57, cited in Baral ‘In-discipline(s): Diversity, Disciplinarity and the Humanities’. 48 Béteille, Universities at the Crossroads, pp. 156–57, cited in K C Baral, ‘In-discipline(s): Diversity, Disciplinarity and the Humanities’. 49 Ibid. 50 Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Where the Mind is without Fear,’ in Geetanjali, The first English translation of Gitanjali was published by The India Society, London, in 1912. Poem no. 35.

10 Universities as gendered institutions Vijaylakshmi Brara

This is how Swedish pre-schools produce children more likely to succeed. They don’t have little boys and little girls. They have little people. They avoid words that divide people by gender. Instead teachers talk about people, kids, humans and friends. There are no assumptions about what toys children should play with or how they should behave. Girls aren’t expected to be docile and boys aren’t told to swallow tears. Barbie is riding a dinosaur. This means that children make fewer gender assumptions. Traditionally boys are expected to play with blocks and be rowdy and competitive. Teachers expect girls to listen and to obey, which helps them to excel in schools. No country in the world has closed the gap between what boys and girls expect from life. But Sweden is doing pretty well. It is ranked 4th out of 144th economies. (Subtitles of a video posted on Facebook by the World Economic Forum around 3 July, 2016) The epistemological understanding of what it is to be a girl and a boy are ingrained from our childhood, consciously or unconsciously, and this thread keeps expanding into adulthood when we join institutions of higher learning. Now studies are being conducted the world over, as cited above, realising the need for gender neutrality in education as well as in socialisation processes. It is being realised that such attempts lead to better societies and even better economies. Yet there is a need for much greater intervention, to arrive at a paradigmatic shift towards understanding that binaries are not helping. This link to the societal dynamics which affect how the gendered nature of institutions of higher learning operates can be elucidated by the personal account of a woman academician who doesn’t want to be named. This academician moved to a different location with different language and customs because of her marriage. She did not have children till her PhD was over, since there was no support system. After having her children she did not endeavour to find a job, as she had to look after them. It was only after a period of nearly ten years after her PhD that she ventured to find a job. Therefore, compared to her male counterparts she started late and hence had to struggle doubly hard to reach the promotions which the other men had

Universities as gendered institutions  159 already achieved. It is somehow not professional to take these issues into consideration. The multitasking that women have to do along with their profession somehow is impacted by their biological role as a mother first, along with the responsibility of running the household with “love and care”. There are binaries not only of gender but also of various aspects emerging out of it. The productive and the reproductive, science and the arts, Urdu and Hindi/regional language and now English and Hindi/regional language, etc, in short, the subjects and the areas of enquiry are all bifurcated into masculine and feminine. According to Surekha Longjam, a PhD scholar in Manipur University, at the departmental level fewer women are found as compared to the men faculty members. Though there are variations in the composition of men and women at different departments, most of them are men dominated in terms of number. Departments like Sociology, Dance, Education, Adult Continuing Education, English, Manipuri, etc have comparatively higher numbers of women in proportion to their men colleagues. But disciplines like Management, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physical Education, Physics, Chemistry, Economics, Hindi, History, Commerce, etc have fewer women faculties. The disciplines and the gender composition reflect gendering of knowledge. It shows the preference of subjects might have depended on the gender of the learner. Average women might have opted for arts stream while men have preferred sciences, commerce and business studies. A thorough study of the recruitment pattern, gender and discipline will be of help to understand the gendering of knowledge. In addition to this there are structural binaries in appointments, promotions, decision making bodies, positions of power, and even the timings of crucial meetings. They are geared towards the exclusion of women and to placing them in disadvantageous positions. These binaries are multi-layered, with layers of cultural matrix, historical exigencies, and other forms of social realities, both subtle and obvious. Chanana (2003) citing Tremblay says that scholars have begun to question the image of the university as a neutral space and have started to look at features of its bureaucratic organisation and the basic assumptions underlying organisational analyses (Tremblay 1999). They explain the absence of women leaders and managers as being closely interlinked with universities as gendered institutions. Joan Acker explains that there are three gendered processes in institutions (1992). First are the overt decisions and procedures that control, exclude and construct hierarchies based on gender. The construction of images, symbols and ideologies that justify, explain, and give legitimacy to institutions is the second gendered process. Images of masculinity pervade institutions like academia, politics etc. Their leaders are portrayed as aggressive, goal-oriented, competitive, and efficient as opposed to supportive, kind, and

160  Vijaylakshmi Brara understanding, traits which are then considered feminine. But the appearance is made out to be gender neutral and on closer examination, that individual almost always has the social character of a man. But that fact is not noted. It is the “positioning of the abstract”, according to Acker. The third process is that of interaction. Here the persons actually “do gender”, they replicate what they do in other social settings. The term “gendered institutions” comes with an understanding that gender is present in the procedures, processes, ideologies, images, and distribution of power, gearing towards male hegemony. The state, the politics, mainstream religion, the institutional academia, the economy, are all institutions historically dominated by men, developed by men, and interpreted by men in leadership positions. In Chanana’s two studies, one in 1990 and the other in 1995, quoting Brooks (1997), she states that over the past half century, the numbers of women have increased at all levels of education all over the world. However, despite higher levels of education, their qualification does not correspond to their occupational choices and opportunities for positions of status and authority within the university system. Concerns have been shown whereby even though the number of women has increased at all levels of education all over the world, their qualification does not match their occupational choices. They get fewer opportunities for achieving the rank of higher authority within the university. Ramsay has referred to it as a “chilly climate” that women feel when and if they reach the top of the hierarchy (Ramsay 2001). A woman’s credentials are doubted, her dress is noticed and there is always an attempt to establish a link to some important male. In her PhD thesis (University of London), Onsongo makes a subtle yet very distinctive remark. She says that when she asked the top women in the university as to how they reached the top, they said it was a “a big surprise”, while the men in the top position expressed it as “a big jump” (2005). To understand this upward mobility one needs to again look into Chanana’s analysis of formal and informal visibility. While women with their academic credentials and research work can make themselves formally visible, it is the informal visibility where they lose their ground. This visibility is established through informal networks and social interactions. Chanana observes that informal visibility is easy for men who can, for example, visit the vice chancellor at his residence in the evening and also go to all seminars and conferences that the vice chancellor and other powerful men inaugurate in the university. Attendance at such functions ensures that the vice chancellor sees them and often invites them to his house or for a drink. This process of networking usually takes place during and after office hours. Women may find it hard to take part in informal social interaction because of domestic responsibilities and also the fact that such interaction may be perceived by others to mean sexual relationships with the men they are interacting with. This informal visibility leads to formal recognition and appointments to important positions. It leads to files relating to

Universities as gendered institutions  161 applications for promotion and appointments moving faster and decisions being taken in favour of those who are visible (Chanana 2003, p. 152). During the course of my study I interacted with some women PhD scholars and women faculty members. I will just quote three accounts; one from Guahati University and two from Manipur University.

Gender constructs in Gauhati University When I first joined Gauhati University as an Assistant Professor, I was subtly told by Senior Female Professors of other departments that I looked good in mekhela chaddar (Assamese traditional dress), implying that I should continue wearing it and it was an informal dress code for female faculty members. I was educated in a liberal atmosphere at the University of Delhi where my teachers wore anything they liked, not imposed on them, like skirts, jeans, T-shirts, tops and trousers. Initially I did sport mekhela chaddar, not to please anyone, but I was quite young and just registered on the PhD programme and some of my students were my age or one or two years junior to me. So to establish myself as an authority figure, otherwise they won’t take my classes seriously, I sported mekhela chaddar with bindis, as wearing it I somehow conformed to the “Indian Feminised” attire. Once I established my authority with my students I became liberal in my dress sense, mostly Indo-western, which was seen as an attack on the image of the female faculty figure that was created on the pedestal of ethnicity. That was one negotiation I had done to establish my liberal, free-spirited identity. Another negotiation which I had to undergo was that of “young, unmarried, female” Assistant Professor. It is the patriarchal mindset that existed in the University which could not accept me in a position of authority (no female faculty member has occupied the highest administrative position in the university to date – be it V.C., Rector, Registrar or Treasurer. To date, only two female faculty members have chaired as president of Gauhati University Teacher’s Association). There were repeated questions regarding my work experience and the institutions where I earned my degrees – my work experience, because it was hard for them to accept that a fresh graduate with required qualifications could get direct entry. The image of an Assistant Professor had previously been of a male, middle-aged, experienced person. I was challenging their stereotypical image. The institutions were of interest because we (Dr. Shabeena Y. Saikia and I) were the founding regular members of the Department of Sociology in Gauhati University and in Assam, and an MA programme in Sociology was offered in Dibrugarh University, Assam University and Tezpur University. Anyways, it was two female regular faculty members running the department with assistance from Prof. Monirul Hussain, Department of Political Science, who was the founding head of the department, as the Department of Sociology

162  Vijaylakshmi Brara was an offshoot of the Department of Political Science. As Dr. Shakira Shaheen, Associate Professor, Department of Women Studies says, “tokenism exists in the university”, or in the words of Dr. Polly Vauqline, Associate Professor, Department of Women Studies, “there is gender consciousness in the university but not feminist consciousness”. What they are trying to say, and I agree with both of them, is that the patriarchal members of the university acknowledge that yes, there is a gender gap in education, employment and higher positions in the university, but the effort they make to break the glass ceiling is in name only, “for points in NAAC or pressure put by UGC”, as Dr.Vauqline points out. Dr. Polly Vauqline has also served as Director of Women Studies Centre. She outlines the struggle the former directors had faced in the allotment of space, allocation of funds and in asserting/negotiating their identity as female authority heads. She pointed out that how the first Director of Women Studies Centre, Dr. Renu Devi, struggled to establish the centre in 1989 during the reign of her husband who was the then V.C. The Department was established due to pressure put by UGC, as the centre had entered its third phase, and also to improve points in NAAC. I am not going into the struggle and politics of the establishment of our department. But we too faced similar issues regarding the allotment of space and allocation of funds. Being an offshoot of the Department of Political Science, we were adjusted with their space. You’ll find it hilarious to know that one of the men’s toilets was converted as a classroom space for us where one could still see the imprints of the piss pits. We (me and Dr. Shabeena Y. Saikia) along with Prof. Monirul Hussain were stuffed into one of the cubicles as our office space. We shared a table and ran the department from that small cubicle. Our office staffs were treated as second class citizens. We pleaded the then V.C., Okhil Kumar Medhi, for space for a department to breathe and run efficiently. A New Academic Building was undergoing construction at that time and thankfully Prof. Monirul Hussain who chaired as our first head was the Dean of Faculty of Arts. We were promised space in the New Building only if we adjusted with some other department. Our department was new, so were we, we were new to the politics of space allocation but somehow we managed as we agreed to share our space with the Department of Women Studies. Whenever we requested new space they would put forth obnoxious reasons, like why do you need space, you are a new department. We could no longer operate from the pigeonhole. We reasoned, that’s why, Sir, we need a space in New Building as we are a new department, we will grow, our cycle to mature is yet to come. The V.C. agreed and here we are settled now in the Second Floor of the New Academic Building where summers are intolerable, with departments on lower floors having air conditioning. Anyways, we are contributing less carbon footprint as a department. Another struggle is still being made regarding the allocation of funds for infrastructural development of the department. Being a young women-dominated

Universities as gendered institutions  163 ­ epartment our voices are generally lost during allocation of funds to d dominant male departments. We are still struggling to get funds revised for infrastructural development of the department. Negotiations were also made during the construction of the syllabus. Initially our MA programme had an add gender and stir approach. But later on, as I was trained in the gender course, the subject expert who is a professional in Gender Studies insisted on framing the MA syllabus in Sociology with gender sensitivity and with up-to-date concepts, theories, debates and issues. My knowledge in the field of gender was also acknowledged by the neighbouring Women Studies Department was I represented as a subject expert in “Women in Indian Sociology”. These were a few of the experiences that I lived through and am still living through. Gender Sensitive Institutions are rare in number and I’ll strive from my end to spread awareness regarding gender sensitivity through my practice, research and contribution to the educational system. Kaberi Das, Assistant professor, Dept of Sociology, Gauhati University

Gender in Manipur University Gender is a sensitive concept and it encompasses all aspects of life, i.e. the socio-cultural, religious, political, economic and educational aspects. The gendering of education, gender equality in regard to facilitating every child to get compulsory education till the age of fourteen years of age, and supporting girl children to continue education are some of the issues pertinent to education and gendered institutions. The Government of India provides funding for higher education making it easy for students to acquire higher knowledge. The knowledge imparted to the students is in different areas and disciplines irrespective of the gender of the students. It has provided a woman with the power to choose what she thinks is right for her. Manipur University, a Central University in Manipur, is one such educational institution that was established under the University Act 1980. Since its establishment, the university has produced many students at master level and PhD. Though the university has accommodated women in both the academic circle and non-academic space, male domination in terms of holding higher posts is found. The highest post of the University, which is that of Vice-Chancellor of the University, has been men (it is only this year that the university has a woman VC). If we take a look at the photographs of the former Vice-Chancellor hanging in the Vice-Chancellor’s office, they will show men only. This shows that women have never been appointed or women were not qualified enough to fit the post in their professional life-span or it might be because they were less motivated to hold such a high post, which has the attached responsibility of the entire university, also they might not have

164  Vijaylakshmi Brara the required pull. The valid reason for women’s exclusion in the list of top officials might be because of their late entry into the higher education system which hampers them in applying for higher administrative posts of the university. Not only the post of Vice-Chancellor, but the office of Registrar, the Deans of all the Schools, etc. had not witnessed any women officials serving in the said offices. This shows that women are mostly confined to their academic pursuance only. The men-oriented administrative system is made functional by women, as they execute the policy and programmes framed by the administrators. Women are now holding the position of HODs which have a positive inclination that a time will come when women will be holding the highest post of the university. More women in clerical posts are found in Manipur University. At the front office, account section, and translation section, women outnumber the men. In their careers, they get promotion to Assistant Registrar. The women in the accounts section work late hours as they deal with money matters and have to complete their work on time. Besides them, there are the women home-guards who are deployed at girls’ hostels and in the high security zones. They face much bigger hurdles comparative to their men colleagues. Married women have family issues as they have to stay overnight at the hostel for a continuous three-four days, as per their office rules. This issue needs to be tackled especially in the interest of the women who have come out to support their families financially. They should be given 9–5 working hours so that they can manage both family and duty. Then there are students who have faced difficulties while pursuing higher education. Women tend to get through the entrance tests and occupy the seats for themselves. During the time of admission, a girl student runs from post to pillar to get seats both at department and hostel. Out of 100 class representatives, hardly 10 girls are there holding the post of representative. There are only two women representatives so far in the executive level of the Manipur University Students Union, MUSU, since their establishment. Political participation of the women students is low as compared to the male students. Women instead volunteer themselves for campaigning for their men friends who contest the MUSU election every year. For every petty issue the women rely on the elected MUSU executives to back them up in dealing with the authorities. The striking thing is that women students never come forward to contest MUSU elections voluntarily nor have any of them proposed one of their friends to stand in the election. But they are very much important in the cultural festivals or any functions of the university as they enjoy being receptionists, or volunteers in food catering to guests. And in times of protest or agitation they tend to follow the male leaders without having an opinion on the agenda of agitation. The university had laid down equal rules and regulations for both men and women. But when it comes to hostel rules there are differences in

Universities as gendered institutions  165 the hostel entry timing for women and men. Men enjoy full freedom to enter the hostel at any time of the evening. For women, fixed timing, which in winter is 5pm and in summer is 6pm, is imposed, the reason being given of safety measures for women against crime. Such a decision is supported by women officials by giving the justification that it is for the benefit of the female hostellers, although the university ensures equal treatment of the students irrespective of gender. Thus women have to raise their voice against the injustice that is occurring in their lives. But the irony is that they consider their condition as usual, conforming to the rules which have been followed by their seniors and which they will be following as an obedient student. Surekha Longjam, PhD Student, Manipur University

Gender and class discriminations in Manipur University Another woman PhD scholar, Mamta Lukram, a mother of two, had to do her home chores, care for her kids and hurry to attend classes on time. She struggled throughout over her appearance, her dress and the consequent discrimination she faced from the attitudes of security staff to the administration block. She narrates: The importance of impression management; where being a woman from a traditional setup, unable to give attention or focus to our appearance faces problems of underestimation. Everyday rushing to attend class in a so-called not so nice dress, having to show ID cards everyday to the security at the main gate to prove myself a student of the university, however much of a hurry you are in, while an expensively attired girl would be allowed to enter the gate without any proof of identity, her branded dress becoming her self-identity. Once I had entered the university, I used to forget myself how I look, how shabby my dress is or who I am. I become a scholar, with the enthusiasm for learning many new things every day surrounded by supportive guide, professors and colleagues. I did wonder many times whether my professors were dumb that they failed to recognise my shabby looks. Above all I was welcomed and privileged with every opportunity to gain every sort of knowledge and insights I seek for, apart from my guide, from many professors, my guide’s colleagues and my own cheerleading colleagues. It is only when I reached the academic departments and my department, I felt knowledge really matters. On the long way home, from the university main gate till I reach my study centre, I felt like for a woman appearance really matters, the branded dress code, the vehicle you are in really matters. Dr. Mamta Lukram, Doctorate from Manipur University One needs to understand that academic pursuit does not happen in vacuum, as it is made out to be. The gender you are born with determines

166  Vijaylakshmi Brara your acceptance in domestic, social and institutional life. And in all these conformity is the key. Non-conforming entails greater struggle in terms of rejection and harassment. But then what is an academic pursuit? It is an endeavour to question the existing structures, norms, conditioning, anything that leads to new horizons of knowledge; basically then, an academic pursuit is the deconstruction of the existing thought process through an in-depth understanding of the phenomena under study. Non-conformity is therefore ingrained in the intellectual pursuit of new thoughts. Harassment or rejection on account of non-conformity, especially by a woman researcher, will lead to the death knell of her academic pursuit, and this is happening in our institutions, subtly and sometimes overtly. Another area of concern is the gendered epistemic leanings of our curriculum in universities. Leela Dube (1986) contends that in most social sciences women were invisible because their contributions were not recognised or they were “absent, relegated or ignored.” Here, I remember Romila Thapar’s stance, where she says that historians did not think of women having history and that neither do all women need history. At the most, she says that they are the sub themes. Therefore these unwritten women were taken for granted as subordinate members of society. Historically, therefore, women have never been counted as full-fledged members of society. Even for an apparently objective subject such as science, Virginia Woolf has this to say: “science, it would seem, is not sexless: he is a man, a father and infected too” (1938). We are all aware of the branding of women of science as witches, the discussions on women’s “hysteria” when she couldn’t express or was not allowed to express her sexual non-fulfilment, bracketing “women’s disease” as some sort of abnormality not expected from a “cultured” woman. According to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, key examples come from medical science where the feminist critique and activist pressure forced a redefinition of medical research which took ailments of men and male bodies and related disease as the norm for medical diagnoses and treatment for women (p. 8). Then take the examples from the rethinking of models of human evolution. The evolution theorists have been defining it from the roles of male hunters, implying that the demands of the hunt shaped the characteristics that make us human. The feminist evolutionist re-thinkers are now bringing to our understanding that among temperate, desert-dwelling and sub-tropical foragers, the gathering of plants accounted for nearly 70 per cent of the group’s dietary intake. Somewhere in the early 1990s the feminist epistemology started asking questions such as who knows? What can she know? Whose science? Whose knowledge? It became essential to who is imparting the knowledge; the knower. They helped in recognising that there is no one category of knower, but in fact one needs to situate the knower, contextualise it and genderise it. For example, there are works which illustrate that science reflects the values of those who do science: privileged, educated white men who have defined what counts as rational/irrational, objective/subjective, and pure/constructed.

Universities as gendered institutions  167 Dorothy Smith articulated it well in the early 1970s. She recommended taking women’s everyday lives as a “starting point” for research: focus on those aspects of social life and forms of understanding that typically remain “off-stage”, “eclipsed” by the normatively masculine focus of conventional social sciences (Smith 1987). Lately lots of research has been carried out on women’s experiences and concerns by women, on women and for women and everybody else. There is a very important interconnectedness between the organisational structural issues as well as the epistemological understanding of the subjects researched and taught in universities. Both are influenced by the socio-cultural matrix. The rigid establishment of binaries as well as the prescribed gender roles in society impact the gendered nature of universities. The patriarchal edifice, the rigid sexual division of labour and roles, and the customs and tradition bind our thinking into objective and subjective. We need to ask who says? What is said? This thinking has to start from our first initiation into this world, like the way Sweden is attempting to do with the kindergarten children. Otherwise we will never move forward from the famous Hindi nursery rhyme, Mummy ki roti golgol, Papa ka paisa golgol (mother’s roti is round and father’s money is round): the dichotomy of a home maker and a bread earner, with an implied meaning that the position of father is therefore higher. Questioning the established paradigm is the only way to un-gender the universities. Note: I would like to thank Kaberi, Surekha, Mamata and Vatsala for contributing their views and sharing their thought processes. I would also like to express my gratitude to the women in academia who don’t want to be named.

Bibliography Acker, Joan (1992, September). From Sex Roles To Gendered Institutions, Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 21, No. 5, pp. 565–569. Blackmore, G. (1999). Troubling Women: Feminism, Leadership and Educational Change. Feminist Educational Thinking Series. Buckingham: Open University Press. Blackmore, Jill (2008). Re/Positioning Women In Educational Leadership: The Changing Social Relations and Politics of Gender In Australia. In Women Leading Education Across the Continents: Sharing the Spirit, Fanning The Flame, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Education, pp. 73–83. Brooks, A. (1997). Academic Women. Buckingham: Society for Research into Higher Education Series (SRHE) and Open University Press. Brooks, A., & Mackinnon, A. (Eds.). (2001). Gender and the Restructured University: Changing Management and Culture. In Higher Education. Buckingham: Society for Research Into Higher Education Series (SRHE), and Open University Press. Chanana, K. (2000, March 18). Treading the Hallowed Halls: Women In Higher Education In India. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 35, No. 12, pp. 1012–1022.

168  Vijaylakshmi Brara Chanana, K. (2003).Visibility, Gender, and the Careers of Women Faculty in an Indian University. McGill Journal of Education, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Fall), pp. 381–389. David, M., & Woodward, D. (1998). Negotiating the Glass Ceiling: Careers of Senior Women. In The Academic World. London: Falmer Press. Dube, L., et al. (Eds.). (1986). Introduction. In Visibility and Power: Essays on Women inSociety and Development, Leela Dube, Eleanor Leacock and Shirley Ardener (Eds.) (pp. Xi–Xl). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Goodwin, Laura D., & Ellen A. Stevens (1993, March–April). The Influence of Gender on University Faculty Members’ Perceptions of “Good” Teaching. The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 64, No. 2, pp. 166–185. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2960028 Kishwar, Madhu (1990, November–December). Why I Do Not Call Myself A Feminist, Manushi, No.61, New Delhi. Ogbogu, C. (2010). Gender Factors Affecting Female Labour Input In The Nigerian University System. Gender & Behaviour, Vol. 8, No. 1. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Gender-factors-affecting-female-labour-input-in-the-Ogbogu/7 10cbc292e4f9534b4ceda3f34dd598e8bedc08e Onsongo, Jane Kerubo (2005, June). “Outsiders Within”: Women’s Participation In University Management In Kenya, PhD Thesis, University College, University of London. Ramsay, E. (2001). Managing Within the Male Storm. In Gender and the Restructured University: Changing Management and Culture In Higher Education, Ann Brooks & A. Mackinnon (Eds.). Buckingham: Society for Research into Higher Education Series (SRHE), and Open University Press. Smith, Dorothy E. (1987). The Everyday World As Problematic. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (2017, November). Feminist Perspective on Science, http://Plato.Stanford.Edu/Entries/Feminist-Science Thapar, Romila (2015).Being A Woman in Ancient Times, In Indian Woman: Contemporary Essays, D. Jain & C. P. Sujaya. Publications Division. Tremblay, R. C. (1999). Inclusive Administrators and Development: Feminist Critiques of Bureaucracy. In Alternative Administration, K. Henderson & O. P. Dwivedi (Eds.). London: Macmillan. Woolf, Virginia (1938). Three Guineas, United Kingdom: Hogarth Press, OCLC: 1304213.

11 The social contract of a public university Equality, social justice and democracy V. Bijukumar

Public Universities (PUs), like any other public institutions in democracy, are grounded on a social contract, as they not only contribute to knowledge production but also envision equality and social justice. PUs are statefunded educational institutions, not just another institution of the state like legislative, executive or judiciary, though they bet public funding, and have certain social obligations as they promote critical thinking, develop human intellect, nurture both reason and creative imagination and positively respond to social diversity. The social aspect of PUs comes when education produces knowledge in which citizens are considered to be knowledgeable subjects. Since knowledge in its social production is considered a power, knowledgeable citizens are socially and politically empowered in a society. As a public institution it has to respond to the demands of society and it enjoys certain accountability, even though it depends on public spending by government, which is essential for the creation of critical enquiry and knowledge production. The social contract of a PU is centred on the “publicness” of the university. The publicness of PUs is defined in terms of public expenditure, public goods, public governance and public access to knowledge. Calhoun argues that “the publicness” of public university is based on three different things: the source of their funding, the nature of their output or “goods” (producing public goods), and that their work is conducted on an open basis and contributes to the larger public sphere (Calhoun, 2006: 7–43). In other words, the idea of publicness goes beyond the idea of mere public funding of PUs and has as its aim the social production of knowledge. The expectation from PUs is not merely academic excellence but a certain set of values intended to promote humanism and civility. For instance, in the Aristotelian conception of virtue, public education is considered to be an indispensable element for social uplift and moral development. Kant argues that universities played a critical role in holding state bodies and the professions to account (Kant, 1798, 1979). Nehru believes that a university stands for humanism, for tolerance, for reason, for the adventure of ideas and for the search for truth (Nehru, 1983). In the liberal democracies the role of the PUs was recognized as promoting public reason and wisdom. Public reason in a democracy is considered

170  V. Bijukumar as the main value (Rawls, 1993). John Dewey emphasizes that high levels of education attainment is a prerequisite for democracy. According to him, universities develop talent which is closely related to democracy (Dewey, 1916). In his modernization theory, Lipset too is emphatic about the role of education in economic growth and thereby the promotion of democracy (Lipset, 1959). According to him, “education presumably broadens men’s outlooks, enables them to understand the need for norms of tolerance, restrains them from adhering to extremist and monistic doctrines, and increases their capacity to make rational choices” (Lipset, 1959: 79). Reiterating the argument, Almond and Verba argue that education creates civic culture which is essential for democratization (Almond and Verba, 1963). PUs promote democratic values which contribute to democratic consolidation. As such the role of the PU in a democracy is much broader as it encourages public debate and thereby contributes to democracy. PUs are an instrument for fulfilling redistribution and the redistributional ethos of democracy, as they are not only involved in the production and transmission of knowledge, but also generate social imagination among the public. As a public institution, PUs have to respond to social demands as democracy reinforces the expansion of mass education. In democracy, the social role of PUs lies in its conception as a public space and as a deliberative institution. PUs are not the isolated space operating outside society; they have accountability and answerability and should be responsive to popular demands. In other words, PUs should not be insulated from the demands of democracy. Dewey identified the interactive relationship between democracy and education which would bring a participatory democratic society. PUs which promote liberal education create self-conscious engagement. Such liberal education influences modern democracies (Strauss, 1959). The social contract of PUs strives to cultivate social citizenship which in turn promotes liberal democracy in a country. Social citizenship is achieved by emancipating the human mind through liberal education. As the educated citizenry constitute the key to democratic political regimes, education does not create a passive social citizenship but an active and critical citizenship which is a precondition for democracy. Dewey argues that education creates ethical democratic citizenship (Dewey, 1916). As Nussbaum puts it, citizens who cultivate their capacity for effective democratic citizenship need further an ability to see themselves as simply citizens of some local region or group, but also, and above all, as human beings bound to all other human beings by ties of recognition and concern. (Nussbaum, 2006: 389) A PU transforms passive citizens into an active critical citizenship which is not only based on mere voting and their having an obligation to the state, but critically examines and engages in the deliberations and debates taking place in democracy. The institutional autonomy of the university does not mean insulating from the competitive demands for social justice. The

The social contract of a public university  171 accommodation of various social groups would strengthen the institutional excellence and the content of the education. Liberal democracies of the West kept away university institutions from the pull and pressures of democracy for a long time as a centre of excellence. In the liberal debate, university as a public institution never came under the purview of liberal democracy. Liberals did not accept this as institutions for promoting liberal democracy. As Edward Shils argues, “liberal thinkers did not have an especially high opinion of universities, nor did they think that they had any great part to play in liberal society” (Shils, 1989: 429). As such, universities can never be an instrument of the liberal democratization process; they did not contribute to democratic values and remained as autonomous institutions. Most of the Western universities moved away from religious rules and authority and assumed the character of a secular institution. Public universities in the West emerged out of religious knowledge of the church, and the authoritarian influence of the rulers maintained its elite nature. The concept of university flourished when education was the preserve of a social elite. In the course of time, due to the pressure of mass mobilization, the elite university turned into a PU. The twentieth-century expansion of higher education is more state funding in response to various social movements which demanded social justice. In the US, colonial universities founded purely religious bases which later played a public role. In the 1960s, expansion of the social composition of the Western universities with more inclusion of groups such as the middle classes and women who demanded educational equity added a new dimension to PUs. To ensure equity in PUs, the state took a proactive role in monitoring educational equality and investing in high spending. However, the state intervention rekindled a debate on the autonomy of the PUs. According to Shils, “one of the chief features of the liberal order is the autonomy of corporate bodies. The autonomy of universities is consistent with the principles of liberalism and with the pattern of a liberal democratic society” (Shils, 1989: 435). In his opinion, the tradition of the autonomy of universities is one of the oldest of all the traditions of universities. However, since the universities have to depend for external finance support, it has affected the degree of their autonomy. Despite these constraints, the universities have managed through most of their history to enjoy a very considerable measure of autonomy. (Shils, 1989: 435)

Curator of social justice Although the role of education in democracy is recognized by many, the real problem of education is its inclusiveness. PUs should resemble the diversity that exists in society and also catalyse the process of democracy in society. In a culturally diverse society, the institutions reflect their commitment to manifest the diversity in society. The commitment to diversity

172  V. Bijukumar not only manifests in the admission of students from diverse social groups but also diversity among the teachers. What distinguishes a PU as a public institution from other institutions is that universities are considered to be a realm outside the power-centric approach. As a public institution, PUs are addressing the social demands and the issue of social justice in modern liberal democracies. A PU is an embedded social institution which manifests the microcosm of society and needs to respond to social justice questions. Such argument is theoretically grounded on the Rawlsian concept of social justice which is based on the opening up of institutions for all (Rawls, 1971). The redistributive justice should be promoted in the PUs for the persistence of democracy itself. John Henry Newman, who initiated a modern debate on the idea of the university in the UK, emphasizes that the principal purpose of a university is to impart liberal education which can be fulfilled by envisaging the idea of social justice (Newman, 1986). Knowledge production in a university without the commitment to social justice cannot produce a good society. The university as a public institution should come under the purview of social justice where the implementation of affirmative action policies is a way to guarantee social justice. When a university adheres to the principles of social justice, knowledge production assumes the character of “social”. Such knowledge also cultivates the quality of rationality which is essential for democracy promotion. In other words, social justice can transform a university in the production of social knowledge. The dissemination and the transfer of knowledge is possible when there is a strong social justice prevalent in the institution. It reinforces the social context within which knowledge is produced. Educational inequality can be explained in terms of a lack of cultural capital and habitus. The knowledge production and dissemination in a public university has a social role. University as a public institution can be evaluated in terms of the social role of education. Reiterating the sociability of education, Dewey argues that education is a social function as it is fostering, nurturing and cultivating values (Dewey, 1916: 11). According to him, a community or social group sustains itself through continuous self-renewal by means of educational growth of the immature members of the group (Dewey, 1916: 11). Education is a self-renewal and a living thing cannot exist without education. Life become fruitful when sensitized through education. Through education civilization values are imbibed and there is a transmission of values from one generation to another. Paulo Freire finds politics of education central to his conception of education, freedom, and democracy addressing injustice, oppression and inequality. Public universities are necessary not only for knowledge production but also for social production.

Education as a public good The social contract confirms that education is a public good and not a private good. Universities are considered to be an institution for cultivating public good and rational faculty. Public goods are non-market goods that

The social contract of a public university  173 cannot be produced for profit from market-based activity. Samuelson considers public goods as “non-rivalrous” or “non-excludable” (Samuelson, 1954). Goods are non-rivalrous when they can be consumed by any number of people without being depleted. The idea of non-rivalry means one person’s enjoyment of a good does not diminish the ability of other people to enjoy the same good. Excludability means people cannot be prevented from enjoying the good. Public goods cannot be produced for profit, and market principles could not work here. Since education is a public good which is non-rivalrous and non-excludable, PUs should not exclude certain sections of the community. In this context, public goods assume a social justice angle also, as it has a commitment to social justice. Hannah Arendt argues that the concept of knowledge is the public good of education and educators have a specific responsibility to pass on society’s knowledge (Arendt, 1954: 185– 186). Clark argues that a university’s principal functions are to transmit culture, create new knowledge, and pursue truth through teaching, study and research, which are central to the university’s identity (Clark, 1984).

Democratization of public universities and knowledge The social contract of the PUs demands the democratization of institutional structures and the content of the knowledge produced by the PU itself. University is a space for the generation of critical knowledge and for democratic learning and meaningful social values. Education is a process of self-renewal and for national reconstruction. It intended to change the class nature of the university and thereby promotes social integration and stability and the nature of curriculum and pedagogy. The social role of public universities critically depends on the democratization of knowledge which is possible by way of accommodating diversity and promoting values of tolerance. Since knowledge is produced in a social context, the institutional framework too needs to be democratized. Moreover, such a democratization process is legitimized when the production of social knowledge is often met with the hurdles of the social elite who represent the institution (without the principles of social justice). Often due to democratic compulsions, universities are forced to ensure the representation of the students and faculty members in the society, however, not having a conducive curriculum framework and pedagogy makes it difficult, thereby sabotaging the social justice agenda. In other words, democratization is intended to bring social justice not merely based on inclusion of teachers and students into the university system, but on critical changes in the curriculum and pedagogy.

Public university and critical pedagogy The social contract of PUs is even reflected in the nature of pedagogy employed in it. The pedagogy adopted by the PUs has emancipatory potentiality as it can free people from many social and political bondages. Critical pedagogy (CP) adopted by PUs is concerned with transforming relations of

174  V. Bijukumar power which are oppressive and which lead to the oppression of people. CP has its origin in the tradition of critical theory of the Frankfurt School. This contends that the goal of education is beyond dissemination of knowledge but brings about social transformation by developing critical consciousness. It has a comprehensive agenda as it transforms the teacher, learner, individuals and society. Even Socratic pedagogy gives importance to argument which is essential for democracy including the habit of questioning, creating values. As Pusser argues, university is a zone of reasoned argument and contending values (Pusser, 2006). Critical pedagogy aims to emancipate all people through education irrespective of their gender, class, race etc., with emphasis on its commitment to emancipatory education as posing critical questions and healthy deliberations on issues. It also develops critical consciousness to build a more just and equitable society. Critical pedagogy also intends to bring about a just and equitable society based on the principles of social justice and the knowledge produced through CP which has the emancipatory potential to liberate the oppressed. Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator and social activist, argues that education should be a dialogical process, in which students and teachers share their experience in a non-hierarchical manner (Freire, 1993). He sees critical pedagogy as contrary to the banking model of the learning process in education, in which education is like depositing money in a bank.

Demeaning of the social contract PUs are undergoing an existential crisis due to the demeaning of the social contract by breaking their terms and conditions. The real challenge faced by universities is their inability to maintain a balance between excellence and social inclusion. As has been stated earlier, the essence of the social contract lies in elements such as building civic knowledge, cultivation of democratic values and social transformation. Moreover, the social contract of public universities in democracy is based on universities’ access and excellence. The breaking of the social contract has an implication for growing exclusion in PUs. The increasing tendency of insulating public universities from democracy has broken the social contract in various ways.

The pervasive state intervention State through its regressive agenda hampers the nature of PUs due to the dilution of critical reason and public consciousness. As a public university, though the state grants funds to them, the everyday academic functioning of the university and its stake holders should be kept apart. Intense and pervasive state intervention destroys the everyday life of PUs. The abstract formulation for ranking and the standardization of rules by the supra institutions destroy the diversity of the PUs. The new cannons of university are centralization, commodification and homogeneity. Pervasive state intervention would transform a public university into an “occupied university”

The social contract of a public university  175 by state and political forces where there is an implication for knowledge production. The “occupation” takes place not only in the form of control over its administration but also in the academic content of the university. Though the university is a public institution, the question arises as to how far the state exercises its control over the university. PUs are financially supported by the state and thereby state exercises its control over these institutions. The systematic interference of the state and its machinery in the everyday functioning of the university affect the autonomy and the creativity of the university. The excessive interference affects the curriculum of the university and the research process. As Shils argues, “the highest good to which universities would contribute was the formation of individuality or character and the means to this was the discipline, methodological search for truth, i.e., free and unhampered research” (Shils, 1989: 427).

Destruction of critical thinking In a public university, the social role of education lies in generating critical thinking and imaginative understanding. It often defies the authority and dominant narrative constructed by the ruling dispensation. Individuals as rational beings exchange ideas, often leading to arguments and counter arguments. As Nussbaum argues, “critical thinking is particularly crucial for good citizenship in a society that needs to come to grips with the presence of people who differ by ethnicity, caste, and religion” (Nussbaum, 2006: 388). The university is losing the “public ness” of the university. Erosion of public reason leads to the stifling of dissent. The attack on public universities is related to the demeaning of critical pedagogy as it undermines the transformative element for social transformation. PUs are considered a cradle of ideas and a dialogical space. Dialogue as the fundamental element for critical pedagogy is undermined; CP is considered as anti-establishment and often anti-nationalist and thereby its significance in Pus is reduced. CP in the public universities is overshadowed by an assertion of the hyper nationalism of the regime. Since PUs are losing their autonomy due to reckless interference from the state and its machinery it was not able to perform CP. There is a growing assault on the social transformation agenda, and on the other hand, repressive programmes pushed in the PUs can subvert their transformatory potentialities.

Converting to a banking model of education Public universities in contemporary times are moving towards the banking model, as students have no voice in the affairs of the university. Under the banking concept education becomes an art of depositing in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Students are only passive receivers of the knowledge given by the teachers, without any debate or contestation. Teachers as the pillars of knowledge deposit knowledge to their students who never question it but accept it whole heartedly. As

176  V. Bijukumar a result, education lacks creativity, transformation and knowledge (Freire, 1993: 53). Public universities are the dialogical space where there is greater potentiality for emancipation. As Freire argues, “knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other” (Freire, 1993: 53). The teacher knows everything and the students know nothing. The teachers’ acquisition of knowledge is a gift of the knowledgeable upon those who they consider to know nothing. It is projecting the receiver of knowledge as absolutely ignorant and the students and teachers as two isolated entities. The teachers and students are two watertight compartments in which the teacher is the subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects. In the contemporary situations, the public universities are converted into a banking system of education. This is a somewhat oppressive society based on the client-patron relationship as it preaches domination and subordination. It resists dialogue and thereby thwarts the critical consciousness and creativity of students. The public universities are witnessing growing centralization and standardization and more homogenization than heterogenization. However, the libertarian conception of education finds a solution to the teacher-student contradiction and leads towards reconciliation. The critical consciousness of the students is too disciplined or even oppressed to establish the institutional wellbeing. The banking approach does not explicitly preach exclusion of students on the basis of their identity and allows their presence, but it invalidates their capacity to accept knowledge and preaches oppression within it. The liberatory potentiality of education is fast declining. Education is unencumbered. In contrast to the banking model, the problem-posing approach to education regards dialogue as “indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality” (Freire, 1993: 65). The production of knowledge created by such a model can never be social in dimension and also loses its emancipatory obligations. It neither creates critical consciousness nor moulds the students as the active agents of social change precisely because knowledge was treated as another commodity to be transferred as efficiently as possible from the sender to receiver. The problem solving education “as a humanist and liberating praxis, posits as fundamental that people subjected to domination must fight for their emancipation” (Freire, 1993: 67).

Depriving institutional excellence and wellbeing When PUs as public institutions stand for inclusion and social justice in democracy, this also raises the concerns of its institutional wellbeing and excellence. The protagonists of institutional wellbeing argue that public institutions should be insulated from the competitive redistributive demands of social justice as a way to keep their high quality of excellence. In this context, PUs should also be insulated from social justice demands which would ultimately lead to excellence and well-being (Béteille, 2005).

The social contract of a public university  177 Accordingly, the opening of public institutions would lead to institutional decay and institutional instability. It is further argued that as a result of the democratization of public universities, “academic standards have been relaxed, sometimes abruptly and even arbitrarily, in the name of equality and justice” (Béteille, 2005: 3381). Identity assertions in democracy and entry of socially vulnerable sections would lead to a crisis in university institutions. According to another view, democratization of the Indian university with access to higher learning is not always beneficial (Béteille, 2005). The brazen violation of the social contract of PUs for protecting excellence and institutional wellbeing has serious implications for the institutions and for society. When the process of knowledge production excludes certain sections of society, social production comes under jeopardy. The promoters of the preservation of excellence would be focused on the principles of merit and efficiency in sustaining public institutions. In other words, merit is the only criterion which decides the excellence of the university, not the social inclusive values in it. In contrast, merit is a subjective exhibition often based on an objective reality of high scoring marks in examinations. It is argued that “merit has to be viewed not in an individualistic manner, but in a manner that integrates the social context within it. Secondly it means thinking institutionally so that institutional processes can be transformed” (Madan, 2017: 20). The redistributive politics in democracy would enable achieving excellence in the university as an institution. In fact, a socially inclusive university gains academically by diversifying the entry of different students and diversifying areas of research. Accordingly, merit brings excellence which is not considered as a tangible reality in a university. Meritocracy is commonly perceived as a version of modernity and affirmative action policies often demeaned as antithetical to modernity. It is often argued that “the vision of a meritocracy is integral to modernity, resting upon principles of achievement, individualism and the primacy of academic knowledge” (Madan, 2017: 16). The misconceived notion of modernity construed that rising issues of social inequality and exploitation is considered as anti-modern and merit as an indicator of achieved identity against the ascriptive identity. For instance, the social origins of the individual should never be part of the merit debate in India. The proponents of merit often overlook the lack of “habitus” which is determined by individual position in society, among the socially marginalized sections in accessing education in PUs. Bourdieu, the French sociologist, argues that habitus is considered to be the underlying factor in existing socioeconomic disparities in educational attainment leading towards educational inequality. Habitus is a system of durable, transposable, cognitive “schemata or structures of perception, conception and action” (Bourdieu, 2002: 27). Habitus, according to him, is the learned set of preferences or dispositions by which a person orients themselves to the social world. Habitus is related to family background and is determined by one’s position in the social structure. Habitus is a set of attitudes and values that influence education. The attitudes and values prevailing in universities alienate the students from

178  V. Bijukumar the socially marginalized sections. Habitus is a set of attitudes and norms, values rooted in culture, which are often legitimized by the dominant social classes. Bourdieu often called this a “socialised subjectivity” or subjectivity conditioned by structural circumstances (Bourdieu, 1990: 166). Another opposite argument is that PUs should respond to the competitive demands from the society as it is not a centre of social autarky. The wider connotations of the argument are that redistributional ethos of democracy would be reflected in a PU. According to Habermas, a university can function “only as long as it embodies in living form the idea inherent to it” (Habermas, 1989: 101). PUs have a social responsibility and perform certain social functions to promote social mobility. Since PUs create human resources and human capital for development, the exclusion of certain social groups in the university for its institutional wellbeing and excellence would lead to their virtual exclusion in the development process and thereby democracy itself. It is argued that “merit is not only reflection of hard work and motivation but also the influence of family environment, caste, economic resources in a living place” (Madan, 2017: 17). He continues “some families or communities might be early entrants to education and their children stand upon the advantages of their parents to tower over the rest” (Madan, 2017: 17). The public contract is to ensure equity in access to education to reverse discrimination. It often goes beyond the straight jacket formulation of “meritocracy” and so-called “excellence”. PUs cannot stand as an insulated institution for the promotion of quality and excellence. In fact, the social and cultural environments and values influence excellence. Excellence comes when PUs recognize the social reality in which they are located. Patnaik, for instance, examining the Indian case, emphasizes that the quality of a university institution does not come from aping its counterpart in the west but from being rooted in the social reality of India (Patnaik, 2007: 10). It is true that university should not succumb to everyday party politics or politicization. Insulating the university from democracy attempts to keep it as an apolitical institution.

Neoliberal rationality on public university The retreat of the state in development in the age of neoliberalism has an impact on PUs. The commitment to the social contract of the PUs was eroded by the growing influence of market and the process of marketization in higher education. The unleashing of neoliberalism transforms public universities into a different kind of university which Habermas described as “technical-rational university” (Habermas, 1987). Such a university was, in fact, developed to serve the needs of the industrial society which needed technically rational knowledge. However, such crude rational knowledge is often suited to the interests of the elite rather than the masses. Habermas says that “universities must transmit technically exploitable knowledge. That is, they must meet an industrial society’s need for qualified new generations and at the same time be concerned with the expanded reproduction

The social contract of a public university  179 of education itself” (Habermas, 1987: 1). The emphasis on crude technical rationality, however, ultimately insulates PUs from public rationality. The unwarranted emphasis of instrumental rationality in the neoliberal era is producing skill over knowledge and as a result the social production of knowledge is transformed into skills production and responds to market symbols and thereby devalues the social knowledge. The goal of education is reduced to create skills which are essential for the market. When the market-based production and transmission of knowledge are prompted by profit motives, universities are transformed into a pure instrumental rationality, they lose their “publicness”. Nussbaum argues that education caters to the demands of the global markets, “as everyone focuses on scientific and technical proficiencies as the key abilities, and the humanities and the arts are increasingly perceived as useless frills that we can prune away to make sure our nation (whether it be India or the United States) remains competitive” (Nussbaum, 2010: 133). Neoliberalism erodes public education and has changed the values and conception of PUs. As a result, education is no longer a public good but a commodity for profit motive. As Nussbaum cautions, the goal of education should be “not for profit” (Nussbaum, 2010). Neoliberalism also brought changes in the philosophy of economic development of the nation states where the mantra is growth with little emphasis on justice. Such a shift in the goal of economic development also has a precarious impact on the nature of education in PUs. Nussbaum, for instance, asserts that “education systems all over the world are moving closer and closer to the growth model without much thought about how ill-suited it is to the goals of democracy” (Nussbaum, 2010: 24). Philosophers like Hannah Arendt, John Dewey, Cornelius Castoriadis and C. Wright Mills also cautioned the danger of education being under corporate influence and the shrinking autonomy of the universities. Nussbaum argues that recent development in education focuses on “internalization of information, rather than on the formation of the student’s critical and imaginative capacities” (Nussbaum, 2006: 385). Neoliberalism is transforming the “publicness” of PUs not only in the form of cutting public expenditure on education but also not socially motivating the knowledge production. As a result, there is greater depoliticization and growing apolitical tendencies in the process of knowledge production in PUs.

Reversing the public good Education is considered as a public good – a product that one individual can consume without reducing its availability to another individual, and from which no one is excluded. PUs are under public criticism and scrutiny of the market cannot provide a public good because the market is exclusive and a rival to particular social groups. The market is based on profit and free competition always brings exclusion. In the market era, PUs are losing social accountability and autonomy due to the growing tendency of corporatization where education is a profitable commodity and a private good. Private goods

180  V. Bijukumar are based on excludability when commodification of education is taking place. Public good is characterized by its non-rivalness and non-excludability. The penchant for inclusive growth too identifies the wrong in the growing marketization. However, exclusion in education also leads to exclusion in the labour market and larger social empowerment. Tilak argues that “for education to promote inclusive growth, it has to be necessarily inclusive. A system of education characterised by exclusiveness or by a high degree of inequalities cannot contribute to inclusive growth” (Tilak, 2015: 187). However, it is erroneous to say that only PUs produce public goods and private universities produce only private goods. Sometimes private universities too produce public goods and vice versa. Private goods are not necessarily provided exclusively by the private sector (i.e., medical services, housing, etc.). In the era of neoliberalism, university as a profitable knowledge production factory and science, technical and management disciplines and courses are more saleable than humanities and social sciences. It is argued that “inequalities in access to higher education result in inequities in access to labour market information, which result in inequities in employment and participation in labour market, resulting in inequalities in earning, contributing in turn to socio-economic and political inequalities” (Tilak, 2015: 196). In the era of neoliberalism, intellectual fermentation is taking place due to education being demeaned as a commodity which has serious implications for the social existence of PUs. Patnaik argues that universities in the age of globalization have been undermined by the objective of making “organic intellectuals” of people and, however, producing exclusively for the skilled foot soldiers of global capitalism (Patnaik, 2007: 11). The organic intellectuals have disconnected with society due to their market obligations. Intellectualism is diverted to careerism and the promotion of individual wellbeing. The academic and administrative autonomy is essential for ensuring creative and critical sprit. Neoliberalism’s repudiation of social justice and the growing pessimism about the state in ensuring social justice is based on the Hayekian idea of spontaneity of the market. The commodification of knowledge nullifies the principles of social justice and in market-oriented knowledge production, universities are insulated from the compulsions of social justice. The corporatization and the emergence of market-oriented universities do not address social justice and instead emphasize efficiency and meritocracy. The mounting influence of marketization leads to the sale of education and research in the competitive market. Neoliberal influences create an inverted student-teacher relationship as students are often seen as consumers and teachers as donors. In the age of marketization and the commodification of education, education cease to be a social good. There is a mushroom growth of corporate private universities to produce market-oriented skills and technical manpower. It not only changes the curriculum and pedagogy but also the relations and values are more profit oriented. The neoliberal influence on universities is manifested in the form of growing corporate influence on higher education. The corporate ethos of the universities can be seen as the commodification of higher education and

The social contract of a public university  181 knowledge is no longer considered as a social good. In the neoliberal era, there is a corporate-university linkage and universities are reaffirming their commitment to the market forces such that the production of knowledge in university caters to the needs of the market and corporates. Knowledge is aimed to promote marketability rather than social upliftment. Knowledge production is not moved by the impulses of society when it does not adhere to the principles of social justice. In the commodification of knowledge, knowledge is not considered as a social good, but a commodity. The provisions of the World Bank Report (1994), the Ambani-Birla Report (2000) and the Pathan Committee Report (2013) manifest the growing influence of marketization in higher education. This is in contrast to previous committees such as the Radhakrishnan Commission (1949), Kothari Commission (1966), and Yashpal Committee (2009), which recognized the role of universities in the process of democratization and nation-building. In April 2000, the Prime Minister’s Council on Trade and Industry appointed a committee headed by Mukesh Ambani and Kumarmangalam Birla to suggest reforms in the education sector. The committee found that education is a very profitable market (as against the wider perception as a public good) and recommended that the government should confine itself to primary education while leaving higher education to the private sector (Ambani and Birla, 2000).

Marketization and economizing disciplines In the era of neoliberalism, universities overemphasize science and technology and neglect the social sciences and humanities, creating a new kind of rationality which is more technical in nature in the university system. Neoliberalism also makes irrelevant the nature and significance of humanities in university education. In the era of neoliberalism there is a rapid decline in humanities arts and funding. Humanities are being undermined and are no longer relevant in catering to the needs of market forces. The human civilization values which are attached to humanities are fast retreating. The denigration of the humanities has implications for critical thinking too and thereby democracy. The growing tendency is towards the commodification of knowledge production. In fact, humanities play a vital role in the inculcation of values and social sensibilities and in developing critical citizenship that strengthens democracy. Martha Nussbaum even alerted us to the growing tendency of sidelining humanities disciplines in university education. Humanities were neglected as they are not able to respond positively to market signals. The growing nexus between neoliberalism and state percolated into the functioning and the social goal of the university. Corporate business dilutes the social goals for serving the needs of the emerging global economy. It also thrashes the emancipatory potential of education which depends on justice. Some disciplines assumed predominance over others due to their market value. Science and technological management, skill producing disciplines

182  V. Bijukumar gained superiority over humanities and social sciences. The growing misconception is that social science research is not contributing to the nation’s progress and it is often described as a waste of public money. Nussbaum argues that humanities are indispensable for democracy and for cultivating a globally minded citizenry. She even cautions that education based mainly on profitability in the global market magnifies parochialism, haste, sloppiness, selfishness, narrowness of the spirit, in contrast to great rational and imaginative powers in democracies, producing a greedy obtuseness and a technically trained docility that threaten the very life of democracy itself. (Nussbaum, 2010: 142) The tendency to downsize the humanities and arts would put the quality of human lives and the health of democracy at risk. She cautions that this worldwide crisis in education would damage the future of democratic self-government. According to Nussbaum, “if this trend continues, nations all over the world will soon be producing generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticise tradition, and understand the significance of another person’s sufferings and achievements. The future of the world’s democracies hangs in the balance.” (Nussbaum, 2010: 2)

Conclusion When the original social contract has been demeaned, a new social contract is created in the age of neoliberalism. In neoliberalism, a new social contract is emerging in which universities have to respond to the market demands and the production of skilled manpower. In the age of neoliberalism, the initial contract in the form of critical citizens, rational values and an emphasis on humanities and social sciences, and the inclusion of accommodation and deliberation has been violated. The values of the new contract are efficiency, merit, excellence, etc. The first contract is based on the state funding of university education, based on certain social obligations. It had certain objectives of nation-building and institution building. Research and teaching have certain social values and a certain social good. Such a contract is based on a close interaction between society and university. Education is a public good as it aims at social change and mobility. The affirmation to social justice has been altered. Profit motive is the basic goal. The erosion of the social contract of PUs not only affects its public image but also the nation-building process and democratic consolidation. The accountability and answerability enjoyed by PUs as a public institution can be restored when they promotes equality, social justice and democracy in their structure and in the process of knowledge production. The institutional wellbeing and excellence of PUs cannot be achieved by insulating the pulls and pressures of democracy, but by positive acceptance and adoption

The social contract of a public university  183 in the functioning of universities. The standardization of rules by the supra institutions on PUs often threatens its diversity and sociability which has serious implications for the nature of pedagogy and the content of research, thereby leading to intellectual impoverishment.

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Index

Page numbers in bold refer to tables; page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes numbers Aadhar 106, 123n6 academic community 48 ‘academic productivity,’ 41 access to knowledge 10 Acker, Joan 159, 160 advertisements 111 Afghani, Jamaluddin 129 Agarwala, Binod Kumar 4, 66–85 Aligarh Muslim University 153, 154 All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 106 Almond, G. 170 Althusser, L. 88 Ambani, Mukesh 181 Ambani-­Birla Report 181 ancient history 11–12 Anderson, Benedict 144–146 anti-­imperialist content 20 Arendt, Hannah 173, 179 art and aesthetics 48–49 Arundale, Rukmini Devi 101 autonomy 66, 67, 74 Azad, Maulana 98 Banaras Hindu University (BHU) 104–105 ‘banking concept of education,’ 1 Barnett, Ronald 30, 50, 54 Barua, H. 95 Benares Hindu University 153 Benjamin, Walter 40 Berger, Peter L. 5, 121 Béteille, André 42, 93, 154 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 104 Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi 117 Bijukumar, V. 5, 169–183 Birla, Kumarmangalam 181

Bok, Derek 48 Bose, Satyendranath 99 Bottomore, T.B. 122 Bourdieu, P. 84, 85n44, 177, 178 Brara, Vijaylakshmi 5, 158–167 Breuilly, John 149 Brooks, A. 160 bureaucratization 67 Bush, George W. 44 Calcutta madrasa 152 Calhoun, C. 169 Castoriadis, Cornelius 179 Central Educational Institutions Reservations Act 102 Chagla, Mohammedali Currim 95–97 Chakravartty, Renu 98 Chanana, K. 159, 160 Chandrababu Naidu, N. 135 Chandra, Bipin 42 Chatterjee, Partha 120, 121, 143, 146, 147 Chaudhuri, Maitrayee 4, 104–124 Chauth, Karwa 106, 123n3 Chomsky, Noam 37 Christie, Agatha 12 Clark, B.R. 173 Committee to Advise on Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education (CARRHE) Report 115–116 commodification of education 1–2, 4, 25–26, 53–54, 90–91 common school system 62 communal-­fascists 24 community of scholars 82, 83 Comte, Auguste 37

186  Index Conjectures and Refutations 54 consumerism 48 Contributions to Indian Sociology 63 corporate-­financial elite 21–24 COVID 19 Pandemic 109 creative intervention: creative teachers, search of 56–58; curriculum restructuring 50–54; motivated students 54–56 critical engagement 1–2, 4, 91 critical inquiry 11, 14, 18 critical pedagogy (CP) 173–174 critical spaces 89–90 cross-­disciplinary dialogue 35, 36 cultural capital 61, 62 cultural nationalism 123; academics and policy makers 120–121; autonomy and freedom 117; communication technologies 108–109; corporate culture 119; global and neoliberal vision 104– 108; global marketplace universities 109; labour and power 117; management discourse 109–111; non-­governmental organizations 119; public enlightenment 116– 117; public good and democracy 111–116; relevance 118–119; social engineering 118; sociology 121–122; sponsored research 120 ‘culture of silence,’ 89 Dalit Studies 60 Das, M.M. 98–99 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen 141 democratization 173 Desai, A.R. 42, 51 Deschooling Society 88 Deshpande, Satish 92 Deutsch, Karl 143 Devi, Renu 162 Dewey, John 170, 172, 179 Dictionary of Royal Spanish Academy 140 disaster management 109 discrimination 61, 62, 92, 93 Dravidian language 16 The Dream of a Ridiculous Man 45 Dube, L. 166 Duncan, Jonathan 152 Durkheim, Emile 35, 38, 51, 58, 87, 92 Economic and Political Weekly 63 educational content 13, 18

educational programmes 9–10 educational “reforms”: commoditization 25–26; dirigiste regime 19–21; neoliberal State 21–25 education as Bildung 66, 76 education policy 105 education politics 2–3 egalitarianism 20 Elementary Education Professionals 53 Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences 148 English literature 52 European science 70–71 Exit, Voice and Loyalty 134 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 141, 149 finance capital 3 Foucault, Michel 40, 42 Freire, P. 89, 172, 174, 176 Freud, Sigmund 35 Fromm, Eric 114 Gadamer, Hans-­Georg 76, 78–83 Gandhi, Indira 45 Gauhati University 161–163 Gellner, Ernest 146 gendered institutions 5; formal visibility 160; in Gauhati University 161–163; informal visibility 160–161; in Manipur University 159, 163–167; organisational analyses 159; processes 159–160 Gender Parity Index (GPI) 106 gender studies 49 Ghurye 51 Giroux, Henry 32 Global Ambience 110 global capitalism 45, 47, 48, 109 Global Community 110 Global Curriculum 110 Global Faculty 110 globalization 21, 113 Global Open University (GOU) 112 global university 104–105, 109 Glorious Revolution 141 Gramsci, Antonio 44 Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) 106 Gupta, Bhupesh 101 Habermas, J. 38, 178 Habib, Irfan 42 Harappan language 15 Hastings, Warren 152 Hayes, Carlton 143 Herodotus 11 heterogeneity 59

Index  187 hierarchy of knowledge 32–37 High Command 132 Hindi literature 52–53 The Hindu 114 Hobsbawm, Eric 140 Huffington Post 106 The Human Cycle 44 Human Resource Development’s (HRD) 106 Hussain, Monirul 161–162 identity politics 64 Ideological State Apparatus 21–25, 88 Indian National Congress 147 indoctrination 66 international finance capital 22–23, 25, 26 Javadekar, Prakash 106 Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) 7, 104–105; critical spaces 90; Joint Select Committee 95–97; Nandigram violence 56; recommendations 102; struggles 102–103; UGC Act 97–102 Jayaraman, T. 124n11 Joint Select Committee 95–98 Jones, William 152 Josh, P.C. 118 Juma, Calestous 114 Kabir, Humayun 112 Kant, I. 31, 85n15, 151, 169 Karnik, Kiran 114, 115 Kedorie, Elie 143 Kerr, Clark 30 Kidwai, Ayesha 4, 95–103 knowledge acquisition 11 ‘knowledge economy,’ 30 Kohn, Hans 142 Korais 149 Kothari Commission 181 Kothari, Rajni 37 Krishnaraj, Maithreyi 119 Krishnaswami 99 Kuhn, Thomas 41 Kumaran, P.K. 95 Kumar, D.V. 4, 86–94 Kumar, Rajkumari Amrit 101 Kurshan, Barbara 107 Lal, M.B. 95 language of knowledge 17–18 leadership position 80–84 legitimate imposture 84 liberal democracy 171

liberalization 135 liberal-­rational dilemma 143 liberal university 29–30 liberal vocationalism 54 Lokayata school 14–15 Longjam, Surekha 159 Lynd, Robert S. 122 Lyons, F.S.L. 30 Madhavacharya 14–15 management discourse 109–111 Manipur University 159; gender and class discriminations 165–167; gender equality 163–165 Manipur University Students Union (MUSU) 164 marketization 46–50, 50 Marx, Karl 35, 38, 46, 51, 58 Marxism 43 materialism 15 Mazzini 149 Medhi, Okhil Kumar 162 meritocracy 58–64, 93, 178 metropolitan capital 20, 25 Mill, J.S. 142 Mills, C. Wright 179 modern education 14, 129 More, S.S. 103 Mukherjee, H.N. 95 ‘multiversity,’ 30 Nag, Sajal 5, 140–157 Nairn, Tom 148 Nandy, Ashis 118 Narmada BachaoAndolan 36, 44 National Assembly 141 National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) 13 nationalism: anti-­colonialism 145–147; communication 143–144; continuous/expanding imagination 145–146; cultural entities 141; definition 142, 146; Derived nationalism 143; eastern nationalism 143; foundations of university 151–152; imagined community 144; knowledge cultivation 150–151; language 144–145; national consciousness 145; nationalist movements 148; Original nationalism 143; principles 149–150; restoration and revolution 141; Western nationalism 142–143; Western university system 152–155 nationalist publications 105

188  Index Nation and Its Fragments 146 Nehru, Jawaharlal 154 neoliberalism 21–25; AISHE survey 106; smart technologies 106–108; socioeconomic ladder 107; women’s empowerment 105–106 Newman, J.H. 1, 29, 30, 86, 172 Nizam-­ul-­mulk Osman Ali Khan 127 non-­conformity 166 Nussbaum, Martha C. 170, 175, 179, 181, 182

176–178; liberal democracy 171; marketization and economizing disciplines 181–182; neoliberal rationality 178–179; pervasive state intervention 174–175; public good 172–173, 179–181; public reason and wisdom 169–170; social justice 171–172; terms and conditions 174 Pusser, B. 174

Onsongo, Jane Kerubo 160 organic intellectuals 44 Osmania University 5; challenge of privatization 135–136; criticism and reactions 130; institutional expansion 130–131; medium of Urdu 128–130; modern education 129; post-­independence phase 131–133; post-­Telangana state formation 137–138; principle of demand 127; rationale 128; regional populism 133–135; West’s triump 129

Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli 8 Radhakrishnan Commission 31, 181 Ramacandran, G. 97 Rama Rao, N.T. 135 Ramsay, E. 160 rationalism 15 Reddy, D.S. 131 Reddy, Govinda 101 reductionism 32 ‘referred’ journals 41 regional language 15, 17 Renan, Ernest 149 reproduction of labour 88 reservation policy 61, 62, 92–93 right to information 13 right to question 13–14 Rousseau 149 ruling class ideologies 88

Parsons, Talcott 87 Pathak, Avijit 3, 28–65 Pathan Committee Report 181 Patnaik, Prabhat 1, 3, 19–27, 86, 91, 178, 180 Plamenatz, John 143 policy-­formulation 4 political identity 150 political ideologies 13 political party 13, 154–155 politicization 68 populism 133–135 Prakrit 15–16 praxis of learning 43–46 prejudice 92 pre-­modern education 14 primitive accumulation of capital 22–23 principle of demand 127–128 private universities 180 privatization 135–136 public good 111–116 public intellectuals 32, 37 public opinion rules 72 Public Universities (PUs) 5; banking model 175–176; critical pedagogy 173–174; critical thinking 175; definition 169; democratization 173; ethical democratic citizenship 170; institutional wellbeing and excellence

quality education 10–11, 91–92

Saberwal, Satish 118 Samuelson, Paul 173 Sanskrit language 15–17 Satyanarayana, Adapa 138n2 scholarship 67–69, 73–74 secular theology 37–38 self-­consciousness 83 ‘self-­financed’ courses 136 Sex and Repression in a Savage Society 58 Shaheen, Shakira 162 Sherwani, H.K. 138n4 Shils, Edward 35, 36, 171, 175 Shrimali, K.L. 100, 102–103 Sibal, Kapil 116 skill-­acquiring enterprise 3 Smith, Anthony 143 Smith, Dorothy E. 167 social citizenship 170 social communication network 143–144 social inclusion 91–93 social justice 171–172 social order 20

Index  189 sociology 51–52 solidarity of action 82–83 spirit of learning 61 Srinivas, M.N. 42, 51 Srinivasulu, K. 5, 127–138 Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy 166 state universities 9 Tagore, Rabindranath 129, 150 teacher training 11 teaching and research 38; domain of knowledge 39; forces of 75; freedom and autonomy 77–78; government and private funded institutes 75; research publications 39–42; rigour, enthusiasm and intensity 42–43; special educational task 75; tasks 79–80; technological society 76–77 technological development and innovation 69–70, 76–77 Telangana movement 131–133, 136 Telangana Rastra Samithi (TRS) 137–138 Thapar, Romila 3, 7–18 theoria 71–72, 78 theory of social change 87

The Times of India 101 Tilak, Jandhyala B.G. 180 Tremblay, R.C. 159 universalism 33 university administration 8 University Grants Commission (UGC) Act 97; in action 100–102; in Lok Sabha 98–100; in Rajya Sabha 99–100; recommendations 102 University Rights Commission 98–99 Vaidya, Manmohan 104 Vandemataram movement 131 Vauqline, Polly 162 Verba, S. 170 vision 28–31 Viswa Bharati 154 Weber, Max 35, 51, 58, 143 women’s empowerment 105–106, 109 Wood’s Despatch 30–31 Woolf, Virginia 166 World Bank Report 181 Yashpal Committee 181