Universities
are the swiftest elevators to social standing; they provide students with the
academic wherewithal to find a place for themselves in the world. Higher
education also unlocks opportunities: in the professions, academy, high
councils of society and the state. A college education for the poor and the
working class is a release from daily-wage survival; for the middle class, it
offers a vaulting opportunity to achievement and accomplishment; for the upper
class, it’s an endorsement of wealth and status.
In
the West, especially in the United States, universities have long been
propagators of knowledge, innovation and progressive ideas on society and culture.
They tend to be busy centres of reform movements that often dovetail into
larger groups campaigning for civil rights, women’s liberation, gay rights,
environment protection and human rights.
In
India, universities have been what a US professor, my graduate guide, once
called “elite selection programs” in which bright students quickly learn that
performance and conformism can help them vault to choice corporate and civil
service jobs or to universities abroad. They have served also as ritualistic
ashrams for long-suffering young people shepherded onto the right path by
authoritarian family structures. Such graduates become part of middle
management in the private sector, university teachers and self-employed agents
of business and financial services. Universities also play a somewhat unsavoury
role as factories for misfits who become the cannon fodder of political
parties, trade unions and lower civil services.
The
word university is not easily applied in the Indian context because it’s drawn
from the Latin root meaning “whole”. Whatever else they may do, universities
here do not provide a holistic experience, fragmented as they are by caste,
religion, ideology but mostly by poor teachers, irrelevant coursework and
cursory examinations. They do not offer the kind of insights into the
humanities or exposure to the sciences as do their counterparts in the West.
Nevertheless,
universities in India have changed from enclaves of elites to highly
politicised islands in a society that has been in upheaval since the economic
reforms of 1991. A growing consciousness of rights and entitlements, coupled
with higher incomes and better opportunities, have transformed the landscape
outside varsity campuses. With people demanding instant pieces of the pie, an
environment of growing lawlessness and crime posed major political challenges
which governments found insurmountable. Between 1996-2004 there were six
governments.
Ten
years of the UPA government (2004-2014) saw unprecedented and sustained
economic growth. The size of the national pie increased dramatically and with
it, the number of claimants. Bruised by a no-holds-barred battle over the US
civil nuclear deal in 2008 with its own Left ally, the UPA government began to
let things slip. Though it was re-elected with a bigger majority in 2009, the
bond that provided the base strength, the understanding between the government
and the Congress party, began to fray.
In
the event, the opposition parties succeeded in rabble-rousing their way to
power. In May 2014, the first majority government in 30 years took office; the
first one backed by the RSS, an unelected and shadowy group that neither
participated in the freedom movement nor accepted the Constitution and its
symbols including the flag and the national anthem.
Though
it describes itself a ‘cultural’ organisation, the RSS has an overtly political
agenda. It’s spurring the BJP government to eradicate all traces of the liberal
nationalism that won the country freedom from British colonial rule, and
replace it with a Hindu majoritarian order. In practice, the plan is to shred
the thinning sliver of civility that has won this country much admiration.
India is an example of how despite poverty and a hundred socio-economic ills,
it has preserved a liberal democracy that cherishes freedom, rule of law and
universal adult franchise.
Whatever
their faults universities are crucibles of liberal values. True, they tend to
be illiberal on a spectrum of economic issues. But on all matters of equity,
justice, compassion, they stand out as islands of liberalism. Over the past
decade, the RSS’ student wing ABVP has made its presence felt on campuses to
take Left student organisations head-on. It is at the forefront of the current
controversy. In seeking to further its agenda, the RSS probably feels
universities are both strongholds and weakest links.
To
win support, the saffron clan seeks to pin tags on universities: bastions of
left liberals, covens of anti-national elements, fornicators, beefeaters, what
have you. Meanwhile, the BJP government thinks it has stalled all opposition to
this by tying it up in legal knots, where the litmus test is: do you approve of
anti-national groupings?
In
the end, without resorting to authoritarian rule, the BJP is on a losing
ticket. The world over, in constitutional democracies, universities and
students have always come out on top in confrontation with governments. To
understand that, though, you have to read history, not forever try to revise
it.
(An edited version of this post will appear in http://http://www.educationworld.in,
March 9, 2016.)
