A group of students from Galgotias University in Greater Noida was recently interviewed at a protest march. (Photo: X/Facebook)
A private university in Uttar Pradesh has attracted what seems like unwelcome publicity across traditional and social media. A group of students from Galgotias University in Greater Noida was recently interviewed at a protest march. They carried posters and chanted slogans that criticised past and future policies of the Congress party. The party’s election manifesto was a particular target, with students displaying placards that claimed that Congress would seek votes through false promises and redistribute wealth. These reflect recent comments by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was more specific in his comments that, were the Congress to be elected to power, wealth would move from one religious community to another. Students also carried posters with hammer and sickle images that decried “urban naxals”.
The point of the media outrage over the event was that, when asked by a TV news reporter about the issues that the students claimed to be concerned about (including inheritance tax, “urban naxals” and the Congress manifesto), the protestors seemed largely clueless. They provided confused answers about what it is they were protesting about and it seemed unlikely that anyone present had actually seen the Congress manifesto, let alone read it. It was, as if, they had been handed some banners and told to look appropriately agitated. Unfortunately for them, however, they encountered an alert news reporter who decided to ask some (not very difficult) questions.
Public anger over the protestors’ lack of knowledge about matters of public and private interest about which they were ostensibly protesting is entirely justified. However, this is not an episode that is necessarily about the end of critical thinking and public awareness at one particular institution whose students were found to be particularly ill-informed. The lack of meaningful engagement with (and knowledge of) critical issues that shape public and private life and affect is part of some broader trends. And, it affects many different kinds off educational contexts, both “elite” and those where students might be first generation university goers whose primary aim is to secure gainful employment rather seek a “broadening” of horizons of thought.
It is important to note that a few days after the apparent public relations disaster, Galgotias University published full-page newspaper advertisements outlining its achievements and special character as an educational institution. The centrepiece of the advertisement was a photo of students staring at computer screens inside a well-scrubbed “laboratory” and the tagline “Galgotia’s Active Learning Ecosystem”. The surrounding text consists of phrases such as “Living Teach Less Learn More Pedagogy”, “Cultivating Job Creators over Job Seekers”, “Highly Experiential” and “Embraces Technological Advancements”.
There is also information about the different ranking systems in which the university has excelled. It is “Top 50 in India in Innovation”, “Amongst #91 in India (Management Category)”, “Top 3rd…for Filling Maximum Patents” and “By NIRF Ranking 2023”. The logo of the Ministry of Education, Government of India, is included among others that are displayed.
The manner in which the advertisement seeks to counter any adverse publicity regarding the bleak level of its students’ public awareness of current affairs and their actual interest in it is notable. It does this through a series of technocratic slogans or banners that, upon further inquiry, may be just as empty of content as the ones raised by the protestors. Bannerism is an important aspect of what now passes as a method of imparting learning skills as well as avenue for acquiring “advanced thinking”. The most critical task of those who administer education is to reflect on combining education’s long-term goals of producing inquiring minds with the concurrent need for producing employable graduates. Bannerism, on the other hand, substitutes this for a series of techno-jargons whose key effects are to make educational administrators look “smart” and produce unemployable graduates. Bannerism lies at the heart of the lack of knowledge displayed by the student protestors. It is something that is part of an unfolding educational strategy employed by many educational institutions.
There is a second aspect to bannerism that relates to the administrative sleight of hand where “critical thought” is reduced to a form of aesthetic activity. Here, the banners and slogans might be about “openness” and “spirit of inquiry”. However, this form of bannerism translates these ideas as an inclination towards the ability to make different lifestyle choices. One might like butter chicken but should not be close-minded towards trying out a ham and pineapple pizza. Consider, for example, the statement by, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, one of the founders of Ashoka University, an institution whose reputation is built upon its “liberal arts” focus. In the wake of a controversy where one of Ashoka’s faculty published a paper that suggested electoral manipulation by the BJP, Bhikchandani spoke against faculty and staff protests that sought to foreground the importance of scholarly autonomy and independent research. “Ashoka,” he noted “is merely a liberal arts and sciences university. It values openness and a spirit of inquiry. It must guard against becoming an ideological ghetto and therefore not very open.”
The statements by Bhikchandani are also a form of bannerism, one that lies at a different spectrum than that in the context of Galgotias University but shares something with it. This form of bannerism consists in being vocal about “fundamental” human values and simultaneously suggesting that “openness and a spirit of inquiry” do not mean a questioning of structures of power or exploring processes of change. Rather, it is about an “openness” of style and a “spirit of inquiry” that is disassociated from inquiring about why is it that things are the way they are and, instead, simply concerned with describing the world as consisting of many different things. It is an aesthetic mode of liberalism, one where everything has a purpose and where we should primarily delight in recognising this “wonderful” diversity of the world. Speaking up against existing structures of power — in order to think of a more equitable world, for example — are not part of this tradition of “openness” and “spirit of inquiry”.
It is these forms of bannersim that might explain the ways in which those we might expect to have a nuanced understanding of social and political life — “university people” — deal with issues of public importance. There are ways in which, at the current time, those who oversee different kinds of universities — the “technological” and the “arts and humanities” focussed — might subscribe to a very similar way of thinking about the world, one produced through bannerism.
The writer is British Academy Global Professor, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS University of London
