Here, here. Quick questions:

Why does the state let the state universities die? Why, universities, being the centers of learning for all the strata of a society, are constantly being neglected? Why is the much-needed importance of our centers of knowledge and research not paid enough? What is the underlying message the state has been giving through these consciously guided actions? Who is at loss? Who is being profited? And most importantly, how is the state getting away even after openly eroding away the most precious of knowledge-rearing sites of our society?

We, The Nation of Idiots.

I am from Andhra and was a university student, and I am left with no other option except to be baffled by the way our universities are being desolated with every passing year. Universities are the sacred sites where the much-needed light of society, which in turn has to fight so much darkness, is supposed to be manufactured. Universities are to promote the empirical form of thought, and some scientific and humane vigor through their work, which include not just teaching and research, but also participating in public debate and discussion. From these universities, one is expected to find the enlightenment which was promised at the turn of the mid-twentieth century, at the time of independence. They are equipped with the duty of promoting the values of humanism, social equality, egalitarianism, secularism, and most importantly, scientific temperament.

In a land like India – which is ancient and does not let itself come out of the clutches of the darkness this long past projects on the future – scientific temperament and humanism are almost a respiratory system for the newly imagined country to survive. The tendency to go back to the roots and the same (so sorry) primitive cultural attributes is so strong in many sections of this society. Majorly, it is a dream of the upper castes to bring back to life the strictness of caste, religion, rituals, and God. Sometimes they go beyond what was even in the past. They are envisioning a Utopia, which incidentally is a religious and sectarian dystopia.

Who fights all this? Who can manufacture the antidote to the poison that brews in a fundamentalist’s mind?

When rape happens, beginning from commoners to ministers, everyone goes into a rage to blame the girl for being seductive, and we see that every day. Recently, an ongoing case of murder has shaken the country. A girl was murdered and cut into dozens of parts and was thrown away all over Delhi, by his boyfriend. A respectable minister came forth and blamed the girl for denying her parents’ protection and being with a guy. Would that not be the same if she was married? Or what would be the issue with the girl that marries this guy? What would be the justification then?

To this day we go back into the house if a black cat finds us while we are going out, we would go into a frenzy to demolish the sacred sites of other religions if someone said a mythological figure was born there, we believe in the promises of protection made by politicians who actually are the ones brewing all the goondas everywhere, we believe in the impurity of birth and hesitate to give a commonly used water-glass to our maids, and we (secretly, in our hearts) believe that Sati – the self-immolating act through fire – was awesome, chaste and really glorious.

Hm. We could muster up enough courage to kill our own daughters and sisters, not for marrying a guy, but because he is of another caste.

Oh poor nation.

We, idiots.

The Inauspicious Fall:

The fall of a temple, which is considered as inauspicious, is nothing compared to the fall of a university. Once, long ago, temples were centers of learning, local politics, economics and commerce. With the fall of a temple, the whole locality loses education, social thought and trade. That was why they were important. they were the houses of Saraswati, Lakshmi and whatever. But this day, all the duties are to be exclusively done by the universities, but only in a much better way.

Universities, importantly state universities, are meant to be holding huge repositories of knowledge, and also to be a platform for intellectuals to meet, discuss and formulate the societal theory. They are to be places that are the face of the ideals Indian’s have sworn seventy-five years ago: secularism, equal opportunity, and kindling of scientific temperament (in short, progress). They are to be accessible to all varnas of the society, irrespective of the class and caste barrier.

The change was meant to be beginning there.

This day, the fall of universities, withering without enough professors to teach, without enough books to read and research, and without funds to conduct any kind of infrastructural advancement, are in a very pitiful state. In Andhra, almost no university has a complete staff. With that, the number of students keen on joining the universities is dwindling. That. That is a very ominous sign.

With the fall of state sponsored universities, the encouragement to private universities grew higher and higher – the management of which are indirect beneficiaries of politicians in many dubious ways (and vice-versa). They are willing to overflow their libraries with books, their halls with continuous seminars, and produce impeccable research work, which seems like an almost impossible task for the struggling, decapitated, fractured state universities.

With such a fall of the state and a raise of the private, the privatization of education is already hauling high. The economically stronger sections can make it up to good values, good exposure, and hence, better enlightenment. Not just better opportunities concerning jobs, but also regarding academic achievements and respect are being drawn towards the private. In state universities, they (most of them) are all discussing who is going to win the next election and how the reservation system is being unfair to them!

Bullocks!

Social differences do not always rise up from economic differences, it also about withholding knowledge and opportunity. Just like how it happened once in India, with all the religious scriptures and scientific advancements locked only in between the tight knuckles of one single community to bring them power, respect, and opportunity, this day, the economically and socially oppressed might sought out their luck of climbing up here, in the state universities, and they are faced with upsetting scenarios.

Steeper falls are dangerous. With each university closing, or with each department of a university closing, we need to understand how it is affecting one body of knowledge, suffocating, with no way to be spread out into the society, with no way to enhance the lives of the people. We also need to retrospect if we are progressing or regressing. With time we need to add bodies of knowledge to our understanding and improve the ways to fetch more of it. If we are killing or letting bodies of knowledge die, are we really moving forward or backward?

Education as Investment – Selling out the Nation!

A few years back, when I was still doing my P.G. at my university, they closed the department of Archeology. There were only eight or so regular students in the last batch and I guess there was only one regular professor. It had to die. The department used to be attached to ours – English – and we saw it being shut down.

The feeling of something being killed.

The feeling of someone dying.

It enveloped me. I remember that clearly.

I met with Ravi, the topper of the last batch, the gold medalist, and completely deserving, and he talked to me about his department being closed. He explained to me the wonders of archelogy and how enlightening and adventurous his subject was. He went for field research with a few leading archeologists of India and also a couple of foreigners. He visited some curious places and practiced excavations and, he was so excited when he was talking about his experience of marine archeology – excavating underwater.

And that was closed. Away from everyone in the region.

Though I was slightly sentimental, Ravi was coming to terms with the fact that only vocational courses – that is, the courses which provide jobs and employment could survive, and so these are meant to be dying, naturally. Something similar to natural selection: the better survives.

That was horrifying for me.

Looking at education as an investment has many side effects, one of the most important being the treatment of knowledge as ‘worthy’ or ‘unworthy’.

The fact that all facets of knowledge make up the world we are living in is being sidelined and new theories are taking root in the mind of all classes of people. This is dangerous. This makes one oblivious to society and fills the mind with stigmas and stereotypes about history, politics, and also society. This, in turn, encourages them to have a life that is detached from real society, always filled up with romance of various kinds, which excludes them from society, and hence makes them socially irresponsible.

What they’ve asked for is a job, and they get that, and they feel there is no give and take with society.

I have dozens of friends who work in Bangalore, Hyderabad, or Chennai, and they would surely not turn out even to vote. They have their restaurants, pubs, and parties. “We are doing our jobs. Is that something to be guilty about?” they ask. I do not know what to say.

And about the migrants, do not ask. They have India only in their nostalgia, nowhere else. They had worked hard to go there, and they did. That is all. Society has given them nothing, so, they are not liable for giving anything back. Or, that is the justification, I guess.

With such a mindset, there is no use for humanities like history, journalism, polity, public administration, literature, philosophy, sociology, and even economics. It is hard to believe that many of us do not know that there are departments of archeology and anthropology. What a pity!

Such people do not know the paradigms of society. They believe in all popular opinions. If the majority says reservation is bad, they believe so, if it is said that a God is born somewhere, they believe it blindly, and they say there will be a Tsunami if you open the ninth door, they are fascinated, and if they say it is the bridge built seven thousand years, they are so happy and eager; they are afraid of conversions, they are unsettled by STs getting jobs, they are overtly proud if we gain in GDP, they are univocally sad if India ranks low in hunger index, they eagerly discuss cinema, and they patronize cricket, they view the whole universe of this country through the 70mms of their theatres; they clap when a Muslim boasts being an unshakable Indian, and their blood boils when they watch Kashmiri Files, then they watch Kanatara and discuss how mystical their religion is – which was not theirs. They go on and go on and go on – watching this country through screens small, moderate, large, and IMAX. they could be easily thought what to think, how to talk, and which facts to believe.

They are ready.

Finally, they vote. They vote for the worst of all.

Oh poor nation.

We, idiots.

Job of Universities – The Game of Loss and Gain:

There is a lot of hype about ‘jobs at universities,’ but no one seems to bother about the ‘job of universities’. One question needs to be asked: Why are universities established? is it an educational purposes or for employment? Is the university a Steel plant that is established to bring revenue and provide jobs for the local workers?

Oh no, come on!

Educate people!

What universities lack today is participation. They do not participate in public debate. They do not contradict the wrongs of society. They do not teach freely, openly, and to the public. They do not reach out to people. Academicians, cozily, sit back in their armchairs and discuss the most precious books, writers and theories. They are thought among themselves to be aloof, and they comment on society as a drain that cannot be helped. They tend to forget the fact that they are the doctors and scavengers of a rotting and dying society.

This is not a job. This is a duty that demands so much. And retrospection of what the academicians are doing is important.

The ethical and infrastructural values of the universities must be reinstated. The governments should be looking into this keenly if they ever want us to be in a better society. The duties of the academicians in a progressing society like India should be much more strongly emphasized. Universities need to promote their departments and attract students with public appearances. They need to be a platform where arts and science can find a free voice and evolve.

Unemployment or non-vocational attributes of a certain stream of knowledge should not be the death of a university or a department. The thriving of a department cannot just simply depend on the number of job opportunities it can provide after the course is done. You do not do everything for a job. If that is the case, politicians will teach history, babas will teach ethics, and goondas will give physical training. A new system where the essential knowledge of humanities stay equally relevant as vocational education.

The most important reason that we face such a brunt is because of a simple fact: Politicians do not want us to be educated and enlightened for simple reasons. They want the segregation of society to be alive, they want us to be in darkness, they want us to be puppets of their devilish ideologies, and they want us to be extremists, separatists, and fundamentalists. They want to brainwash us with their versions of history, religion, and rituals, they want us to be separated so that we could be ruled and manipulated easily. Anyone can see this. This is happening right now in this country. Secularism is at stake, brotherhood is at stake, scientific evolution is at stake, religious fanaticism is replacing the soulful mysticism of peaceful religions, caste markings are more and more clear this day than were a hundred years ago, corruption is at its best with all the citizens selfishly looking for their own improvement, the state is eager to promote religious leaders, eager to ban books and films, and cancel culture is peaking to new heights. . .

Enlighten us!

Be the bedrock for the progress of this country!

Universities! You need to be the cradles where secularism, humanism, and scientific temperament of this newly born country are to be nurtured and brought up strongly.

Enrich this poor ation.

Let us not be idiots forever.

{Note: All the generalizations do not include the professors who are doing great work in their respective fields. They are impacting the society enormously. I know some of them personally, and I have the highest regard for them.}