It is sad that many of us from this part of the world have become pathetically dependent on Euro-American universities and research centres.
Dec 13, 2024 11:59 IST First published on: Dec 13, 2024 at 08:35 IST
As a life-long student, I have always believed that our quest for knowledge ought to transcend all borders and boundaries. Yet, this cross-cultural exchange of ideas and academic traditions should be dialogic and symmetrical. It is sad that many of us from this part of the world have become pathetically dependent on Euro-American universities and research centres. And this sort of one-way traffic has damaged our self-worth, and caused severe harm to the self-confidence of our academic institutions. It is sad to see young students leaving the country, and moving towards Canada, the US, the UK, Australia and Germany. It is certainly not a matter of pride if, as the statistics provided by the Ministry of External Affairs indicates, more than 1.33 million Indian students are pursuing higher education abroad in 2024. In contrast, as the AISHE 2021-22 report reveals, merely 46, 878 students — mainly, from Asian and African countries — are enrolled in India.
While I have no hesitation in articulating my discomfort with the colonisation of our imagination by foreign universities, I also believe that we need to work on our own academic centres and universities in order to resist this trend. Think of, for instance, our expertise in damaging our own institutions. Rabindranath Tagore’s Santiniketan — a university that once strove for the oceanic merger of cultures, and the interplay of science, arts and aesthetics — is now just another average university tormented by local politics, controversial recruitment of vice-chancellors and poverty of pedagogic imagination. Or, for that matter, we are witnessing how the present regime is determined to write the obituary of Jawaharlal Nehru University that began its journey with great promise because of excellent teaching and research in social sciences, liberal arts, international studies and life sciences. Unless we respect our own institutions, generate adequate funds for teaching and research, and create an environment conducive to academic freedom and dignity of teachers and students, we cannot prevent young minds from leaving India in search of better fortunes.
Further, this obsessive craze for foreign universities cannot be combated unless we — I mean teachers and educators — acquire the courage to decolonise our consciousness, interrogate the hierarchy of civilisations that the likes of Thomas Babington Macaulay propagated, and trust our own worth. Isn’t it absurd that some of our “subaltern” theoreticians who write on the plight of Dalits, Adivasis and minorities prefer to leave India, and settle down in “elite” Euro-American academic centres like Columbia University, or the School of Oriental and African Studies? Isn’t it ironic that some of them would occasionally visit Indian campuses like rock stars, and teach us the sociology of Mahashweta Devi, or Birsa Munda? As these “stars” seduce the young researchers, they too seek to follow the same path, leave India, and further reproduce the culture of academic asymmetry.
During my teaching career in a leading public university in the national capital, I have never seen any leading professor from Harvard, Cambridge or MIT using his/her sabbatical, and engaging in teaching and research in our university. But then, ask an average Indian professor or a student and you will find that the sole ambition she/he cherishes is to visit abroad at any cost for decorating her/his CV. No, it is not a real and symmetrical exchange of ideas. Instead, it is like reproducing the prevalent inequality: Metropolitan “western” universities vs the universities of the “third world”! Possibly, we like to degrade ourselves. Hence, instead of creating high quality Indian journals, we feel proud of publishing in “foreign” journals. Not solely that. A leading “liberal” public university, as it is believed by many, prefers only people with PhDs from “foreign” universities for the recruitment of the faculty. A slavish orientation of this kind, needless to add, demoralises those who seek to work in Indian universities, and try to create a vibrant academic culture.
My discomfort with the obsession with foreign degrees does not mean that I am pleading for the closure of the mind. Instead, I am pleading for symmetrical dialogue and conversation — a respectable exchange of ideas between Indian and Euro-American universities. In fact, to be genuinely educated is to be truly cosmopolitan. Hence, I love to imagine an Indian student pursuing humanities/social sciences from, say, Varanasi or Kochi studying Ashis Nandy as well as Zygmunt Bauman, Bipan Chandra as well as Eric Hobsbawm, or for that matter, Kalidas as well as Shakespeare. I want the leading professors from our universities to start high-quality Indian journals, and acquire the confidence to invite the “stars” of Oxford and Princeton to publish their papers. I want Indian students to question the existing inequality in the academic transaction, and enrich themselves in a way that with absolute pride and confidence they can say: “Well, I am doing my PhD from Delhi School of Economics; or I am applying for a teaching position in Jadavpur University.”
Will it be possible? Or, or are we condemned to exist like academic beggars?
The writer taught at JNU
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