Patriots & Partisans

by Ramachandra Guha

  Chapter Eleven

  Pluralism in the Indian University

  ~

  I

  In 2007, the National Archives mounted an exhibition on the founding of the first modern universities in India. A Kolkata newspaper gave its report on this exhibition the headline: ‘The Other Revolution of 1857’. This was apt, for the founding of these universities was indeed a revolution, and indeed also the ‘other’ to the better known revolution of 1857. Call it by whatever name, a sepoy mutiny or a war of independence, that uprising was essentially reactionary, looking back to a period before the white man set foot on the subcontinent. On the other hand, the revolution set in motion by the universities was essentially progressive, looking forward to a time when the white man would finally leave the subcontinent.

  Founded in 1857, the universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras were the crucible of modernity in India. As the sociologist André Béteille has written, these universities ‘opened new horizons both intellectually and institutionally in a society that had stood still in a conservative and hierarchical mould for centuries’. These universities were ‘among the first open and secular institutions in a society that was governed largely by the rules of kinship, caste and religion’. Thus ‘the age-old restrictions of gender and caste did not disappear in the universities, but they came to be questioned there’.

  The universities were also a crucible of nationalism. It was there that young men and women learnt to question the logic of colonial rule, to hold up, as a mirror to their rulers, the British ideals of liberty and justice that were haphazardly upheld at home and comprehensively denied in the colonies. Gandhi and Ambedkar had their early education under the auspices of the Bombay University, C.R. Das and Subhas Chandra Bose under the auspices of the Calcutta University, C. Rajagopalachari and C. Subramaniam under the auspices of the Madras University. Tens of thousands of more ‘ordinary’ freedom fighters were also educated—in all senses of the word—by their time in these universities or in other universities set up in the period of colonial rule—such as those in Allahabad, Punjab, Banaras and Aligarh. These soldiers of non-violence, who defied their family and sacrificed their careers to fill the jails on Gandhi’s call, came from all sections of society. They were high caste as well as low caste, men as well as women, Hindu and Sikh and Parsi as well as Muslim and Christian and Jain.

  It is not just that the Indian university trained those who led and manned the freedom struggle. It was also that they trained those who led and manned the creation of a modern, democratic nation state. For, no new nation was born in more difficult circumstances—against the backdrop of civil war and privation, with eight million refugees to be resettled, and 500 princely states to be integrated. That a nation was forged out of these fragments, and that it was henceforth governed on the basis of a democratic Constitution, was a miracle—and not a minor one. The miracle was the handiwork of a group of visionary leaders—Nehru, Patel and Ambedkar preeminent among them—aided by thousands of now-forgotten civil servants, lawyers, doctors, teachers, social workers and soldiers, a majority of whom were shaped and formed by the Indian university system.

  That ‘system’ was, and is, based on constituent colleges. The nurturers of nationalism and the nation state were educated as much in these colleges as in the universities of which they were part. Places such as Presidency College, Calcutta; Presidency College, Madras; Elphinstone College, Bombay; St. Stephen’s College, Delhi; Government College, Lahore; Patna College, Patna; and Maharaja’s College, Mysore, have all contributed in ways large and small to the shaping of modern India.

  It behoves us to recognize (and salute) the role played by our universities and colleges in nurturing Indian nationalism and building Indian democracy. But, since we live in the present, we must also admit that the state of our universities (and colleges) is not what it could and might be. I myself live in what is claimed to be the capital of India’s ‘knowledge economy’, yet the university that my city houses is less than distinguished. In this respect, Bangalore University fairly represents the state of universities in the country as a whole.

  II

  I have long believed that while India is sometimes the most exasperating country in the world, it is at all times the most interesting. Which other land can match India in its mix of different castes, classes, languages, faiths, forms of dress, cuisines, musical styles, et al.?

  For the scholar or writer, at his desk or in his ivory tower, the diversity of human forms is perennially interesting. For the citizen living life on the ground, however, it can at times be deeply exasperating. When people of one habit or temperament—or ideology or social custom—are placed close to people of another, they tend sometimes—oftentimes?—to react with prejudice and suspicion, this sometimes—oftentimes?—manifesting itself in conflict and combat, whether intellectual or physical, individual or institutional. Life would be altogether less discordant if everyone around us spoke and thought and dressed and ate just as we did. But altogether less interesting.

  Broadly, there have been two responses to the prevalence or persistence of social and cultural diversity. The first has been to flatten it, to try and make citizens as alike as one another in the ways they think and speak and live. Or at least in the important ways—such as in religion or language or political ideology. The second response has been to permit citizens their own individual ways of living, while crafting institutions that allow them to collaborate and coexist.

  Fortunately, the men and women who built modern India chose the second path. They did not follow Israel or Pakistan in fusing faith with state by granting special privileges to citizens of one religion. They did not follow Germany or the United States by making it mandatory for all citizens to speak one language. And they did not follow Soviet Russia and Communist China in constructing a single-party state.

  At least in theory, the Indian nation state is the most plural on earth. It demands less conformity among its citizens than every other state we know. The practice of pluralism is another matter. At various points in Indian history, vast influence has been exercised by those who would seek to make one religion (Hinduism), one language (Hindi), one party (the Congress), or even one family (the Nehru-Gandhis) dominant over the other religions, languages, parties, and families of India.

  The theory and practice of pluralism in (and by) the Indian nation is a fascinating subject. So is the theory and practice of pluralism in the states and cities of India. Take the capital city of the state of Maharashtra, whose social diversity is reflected most immediately in the different names we know it by. There is, of course, a Marathi Mumbai, but also a Goan and East Indian Bombay, as well as a Hindustani Bambai. But this is also in some part a Gujarati city, also a Tamil city and a Kannadiga city. Every linguistic group in India is richly represented here, as is every religious community and political ideology. At the same time, Mumbai is the capital of a state formed to protect the interests of a single linguistic group. What are the tensions this creates in the lives and labours of the citizens of Mumbai/Bombay/Bambai?

  The linguistic division of India has worked very well—for India as a whole. There has been friction at the edges, conflicts about towns and villages on the border, and about riparian rights, but had these states not been created I believe the conflicts would have been much more serious. Consider the examples of Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the first of which broke up, and the second of which experienced a brutal and bloody civil war. If a single language had been imposed on all of India—as the Hindi zealots wanted—this massive country might have been torn apart into fifteen or twenty states at war with each other.

  So, without question, linguistic pluralism has strengthened Indian unity. But how does this diversity of language groups play itself out within a state, rather than in the country as a whole? As residents of Mumbai/Bombay/Bambai know all too well, diversity has sometimes produced sharp conflicts. If Mumbai is the capital of the state of Maharashtra, some ask, why must so many of the best
or most lucrative jobs be taken by those whose mother tongue is not Marathi? These ‘outsiders’ answer that the Constitution of India grants all its citizens the right to live and work anywhere in the Union. For forty-five years now this debate has raged in Mumbai. It is now making itself heard in my native Bangalore, likewise the capital of a state based on language, likewise a city where the wealthy and powerful mostly do not speak the local tongue. Here, too, the conflict has manifested itself in the city’s renaming, with ‘Bangalore’ becoming ‘Bengaluru’.

  III

  Diversity is a social condition; it is what India is. Pluralism is a political programme; it is a manifestation of what we wish India to be. At the level of the nation, the practice of pluralism poses one set of challenges; at the level of the city or state, yet another. What then, of the university? What are the varieties of pluralism that a university in India must seek to foster? In my view, these are principally of five kinds:

  First, the university must foster pluralism in the student body. There must be students of all ages; from those in their late teens to those in their early thirties (or even beyond). One way to do this is to have, within a single campus, programmes running all the way from BA or BSc right up to PhD. There must be many women students; in the ideal situation, 50 per cent or more. Students from low caste and working class backgrounds must be adequately represented; so also those from minority religions. Finally, a university is made more Indian if it can attract students from other states of the Union.

  Second, the university must foster pluralism in the teaching staff. Like the students, these must be both women and men, who come from different classes, castes, and religious groupings. And—this is even more crucial here—from different parts of India. But—unlike in the case of students—it is not enough that the teachers come from different social backgrounds. They must also have diverse intellectual credos. Some must prefer abstract theoretical work; others, research that is more applied in nature. Since scholars are also citizens, university teachers have political beliefs; but these, again, must be of varied kinds. A university where all the teachers were Communists, or all of them Shiv Sainiks, would be a very boring place indeed.

  Third, the university must offer a plurality of disciplines. It should have at least some—if not all—undergraduate colleges which offer degrees in the sciences as well as the humanities. There must be graduate programmes in the major disciplines—mathematics, economics, history, political science, physics, chemistry, biology, literature, etc; but also professional schools offering degrees in law, medicine, and business as well as, ideally, faculties of fine arts and music. At the same time, the university must have the flexibility—and imagination—to create new departments when scientific progress or social developments oblige it to do so.

  Fourth, a university must foster a pluralism of approaches within a discipline. Its department of economics must have Friedmanites and Keynesians as well as Marxists. Its department of biology should have space for experimentalists who splice genes, for Darwinians who study speciation, and for fieldworkers who live with animals in the wild. A university department where all of whose members were wedded to one particular theoretical—or experimental—approach would be a very boring place indeed.

  As Max Weber pointed out, unlike political parties or religious seminaries, universities are ‘not institutions for the inculcation of absolute or ultimate moral values’. Put less politely, universities must not be allowed to become vehicles of indoctrination, promoting a particular political or religious point of view. They teach the student ‘facts, their conditions, laws and interrelations’, serving in this manner to ‘sharpen the student’s capacity to understand the actual conditions of his own exertions …’ However, ‘what ideals the [student] should serve—“what gods he must bow before”—these they require him to deal with on his own responsibility, and ultimately in accordance with his own conscience’.

  This pluralism of methodological and theoretical approaches must be promoted at various levels: that of the university as a whole, in each of its constituent departments, and by each individual teacher as well. A century ago, in words that seem strikingly contemporary, Max Weber deplored the tendency of some professors ‘of educating their students into certain political beliefs and ultimate outlooks’. He was himself clear that the university teacher ‘is under the sternest obligation to avoid proposing his own position in the struggle of ideals. He must make his chair into a forum where the understanding of ultimate standpoints—alien to and diverging from his own—is fostered, rather than into an arena where he propagates his own ideals.’

  (If I may interject a personal note here: I was myself taught sociology by a committed Marxist, Anjan Ghosh, who in this respect was a first-class Weberian. Within the classroom, he suspended his political beliefs while introducing his students to the works of the great classical sociologists—Durkheim, Marx, Simmel and Weber himself—all of whom he treated with equal seriousness and empathy.)

  Fifth, a university must encourage a pluralism of funding sources. It must not rely only on state patronage, but raise money from fees, from its alumni, and from private corporations. By diversifying its portfolio, so to speak, the university reduces its dependence on a single source of patronage, while also engaging with (and making itself relevant to) a wider swathe of society.

  Stated in this straightforward manner, these ends seem self-evident. Surely any self-respecting university will always be plural in all these ways? Not, perhaps, in India, where one cannot say with confidence that any of our universities have met these ideals wholly or consistently. However, at various points in history, one Indian university or another has been plural in one or other of these ways. As André Béteille has noted, it took six hundred years for Oxford or Cambridge to admit women, whereas Calcutta and Bombay universities admitted them from their inception. They also provided avenues of upward mobility for the lower castes: in the traditional system, an Untouchable like B.R. Ambedkar would have been condemned to a life of illiteracy. Those from minority religions also got, and took, their chances—some of the finest scholars and teachers in the history of Mumbai University have been Parsi and Muslim.

  Likewise, there have been splendid examples of Indian universities promoting diversity in the social background of their teachers, and of these teachers in turn promoting a diversity of intellectual approaches. Determined to make Calcutta University more than a home for Bengalis, Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee appointed C.V. Raman and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan to chairs when they were young and unrecognized—which Sir Ashutosh did not care about—but also talented and hardworking—which he appreciated. Raman and Radhakrishnan eventually moved on to other pastures, but a contemporary of theirs who stayed in Calcutta was the Malayali from Merton, Kuruvilla Zachariah, among whose students at Presidency College were many future leaders of free India.

  Third, many Indian universities have been inclusive in a disciplinary sense. The pattern was set by the three founding universities, which all had departments of science and social science, as well as a faculty of law and a school of medicine. Thus in the 1930s and 40s, Bombay University was perhaps best known, on the research side, for its School of Economics and Sociology; while for the past half century that honour has consistently been held by the university’s Department of Chemical Technology.

  Fourth, the best university departments in India have promoted a variety of intellectual approaches. The long-time head of the sociology department in Bombay University, G.S. Ghurye, was a bookish conservative; yet among the students he sent out into the world were the superb ethnographer M.N. Srinivas and the Marxist theoretician, A.R. Desai. Srinivas, in turn, bestrode the Delhi University department of sociology like a colossus; like his teacher, he did not impose his methodological preferences on those he taught or guided. Srinivas had little interest in comparative sociology, or in the industrial working class, or in the Sanskritic tradition; yet three of his distinguished students were to make these subjects their ow
n.

  It is with the fifth kind of pluralism that the record is most disappointing. The Indian university has relied too heavily on subsidies and handouts from the state. Middle-class and even rich students pay the same fees as the poorer students; in effect, almost no fees. There has been little attempt to tap the generosity of alumni—even the most prosperous ones. Few universities cultivate active links with the private sector or with philanthropic foundations.

  Pluralism is one important ideal of the Indian university; it is not, of course, the only one. A university must also have an institutional cohesiveness, which allows it to reproduce itself regardless of the particular individuals who lead or staff it. Again, a university must have a particular and recognizable character, which encourages its students, staff, faculty and alumni to identify with it. And it must set standards of academic excellence consistent with those in the nation and the world, and it must continually strive to maintain them.

  These ends might not always be mutually compatible. Thus, in one particular case or another—say the recruitment of students from under-represented social groups or the appointment of a new dean—pluralism might conflict with institutional efficiency, or efficiency in turn conflict with academic excellence. Compromises have to be made, judgement calls taken. It would be foolish not to recognize that a public university serves multiple ends, and that these may sometimes be in conflict. That said, the varieties of pluralism enumerated above are, I believe, among the most important ends an Indian university should strive to fulfil.

  IV

  In the history of the Indian university, the forces favouring pluralism have had to contend with the opposing forces of parochialism. These are ever present, often powerful, and sometimes overwhelming.