The Eagle of Intellectual Latitude
There is found amongst humans a special verve with varying degrees of immaculacy. Its provenance is the human subconscious, dormant in an individual but visible to the astute eye. When man by way of his prudence is cognizant of it, it coalesces with the conscious, where it then finds eternal abode. That verve is the spirit of freedom.
The spirit of freedom, upon seamless resonance with the realm of letters, is but a strapping peregrine, redolent of youthful bloom and naivete, that glides across the realm, desirous of being encharmed as much by ideas as by ideation. It is, by way of temperament, scornful of the formalist manacles of institutions that constrict its glide. Yet, it must periodically descend and express the humble volition to engage, to differ, to imbibe and to impart, for experience is the ultimate preceptor, and a mind home to a profusion of ideas is ever acute; it is a fire of emancipation that decimates the devil’s workshop.
One such impedimentary institution, to our misfortune, is the university. The university, ideally a terminus for epistemically fervid and yet elegant ideation, is in reality too bereft of that vigour which the most perspicacious thirst for. The ambulatory essence of information bequeaths to it unmatched prepotence, which renders it essential for governments to gain a monopoly over narratives, and so customize them as to be adulated and be able to cling to power. Objectivity is the unfortunate sacrifice at the altar of political expediency, and the universities have little choice but to satiate the protuberant conceit of the sloshed powers-that-be.
That every human is an embodiment of a subtly variant genetic constitution apropos of his fellow human is by itself a ground for individual liberty that is bequeathed by natural science. His enlightened self-interest renders it necessary to him to be the emblematic signatory to a social contract, which paves the way to the creation of society. Intrinsic to this process that culminates in the said contract is the stage of intellectual deliberation, as to the shared set of values on which society must be premised. It is therefore, as the noted economist Dr. Milton Friedman said, the people that decide the values, and not the government.
Values, and a discharge of functions accordingly, foster an inevitable hierarchy. Over a period of time, however, hierarchies may calcify, and render the ascension of those dispossessed increasingly difficult. Those at the zenith of success may gratuitously use their influence to keep the dispossessed permanently so. A continuous debate on the value hierarchy is therefore indispensable. The university, albeit not exclusively, is a most felicitous institution for the procession of such debates, so far as ideals go. The students, young and impressionable as they are, are likely to react by way of sentiment.
No educational institution could realistically expect a homogeneity of values in a classroom, for the presence of diversity is a given. The students may thus embody a variegation of values. Parents raise children with such values as they deem fit by way of methodical administration right from childhood, which one may deem akin to indoctrination. Sagacious parents differentiate their methodical administration from indoctrination, insofar as the parents do their best to truly allow their children to discern for their own selves the necessity of values.
A conflict may accordingly ensue, owing to the exposure to different values and the commitment of others to a divergent set. Impressionable students, with their belief structures challenged, may respond defensively, quite in accordance with the evolutionary response to the terrain of utmost vicissitude. So that they may be accustomed instead to equanimous analysis, the epistemic guides, namely the professors, must deem it their province to incubate an environment of intellectual freedom and chivalrous conduct.
Would political expediency, therefore, justify an intellectual acquiescence to the fancies of the powers-that-be? The curriculum may propagate a set of ideas palatable to the ruling elite, but in no statute has the impetus to employ critical analysis and to explore a thoroughly different set of ideas been forbidden. It is gratuitous to deprive a student of the opportunity to imbibe so much of variegation as possible; to subject him to a sole set of values is not education but indoctrination. A university must as well bequeath to the students a medium for free expression as ensure the availability of resources of variegated ideas.
To him who evinces great interest in free ideation, university education, particularly that in India, must appear prohibitive. My observation thus far leads me to attribute the same preponderantly to two reasons. Foremost, students have thus far been acclimatized to a rat-race environment, as many JEE students may testify, and now they must asudden be exposed to what they deem ‘utopian values’ that serve no purpose because they are not materialist enough. The idea that values can sustain prosperity and that there indeed exist business ethics is perhaps an extraterrestrial idea to them. To introduce an anecdotal view, my father has lately been conducting numerous interviews of candidates, assessing them not so much on technical dexterity but on values, and many, though not most, fare poorly at values.
The impact of values must necessarily be psychological, in that one should be favourably disposed to those values at a psychological level. Schematically, one may refer to education itself. It has preponderantly been such as to convince the student of all relevant to his life being an unforgiving competition, and that he must therefore view every other student as a competitor, who is an impediment to his prized seat at a desired university. But he later discovers the significance of teamwork, say in a corporate environment. All of this certainly sounds commonsensical, but one must fathom that one has not so been psychologically disposed; the transition is often difficult. Value education as proceeds today, therefore, is but profligacy with regard to time.
The second reason behind the perceived prohibitive essence of university education is the rather execrable political correctness that seeps particularly into religious education, because it does in numerous cases form part of the value education artifice. This, however, only serves to impel the purpose behind value education, because toploftical utterances of “Satyameva Jayate” notwithstanding, the Indian society is by way of a metaphor, a fundamentally invertebrate society, and the very idea that we must in practice speak the undiluted truth is anathematic to us. Should we be cognizant of the fact that certain values shape our society, we must be prepared to scrutinize such values as are antithetical to our own, and the reasons why they are so. The fear of thereby offending another’s beliefs is manifestly gratuitous; conversation must by no means be stultified. Not only, therefore, is value education prejudicial to one’s time as the foregoing paragraph states, it is also devoid of intellectual rigour.
The unidimensionality of ideas evident in undergraduate political science is of comparable proportions. Quite in consonance with political expediency is the unblemished intellectual corpus that could scarce be said to objectively assay the post-independence ruling elite. That which flummoxes a sincere educationist is the unwillingness to rectify after decades of such institutionalization, for it only serves to perpetuate servitude to the paradigm of a single party, namely, the Indian National Congress. Its interpretation of India is that derelict notion of a philanthropic post-colonial bequest by the Congress to the inarticulate and destitute millions. Certainly, the accomplishments of the Congress are cyclopean — it is no mean feat to instil a national zest against the colonial British power, amongst the impossibly fissured people including the penurious who would otherwise scarce care of the nationality of their nation’s governorship so long as they were able to ensure their next meal. India, however, is older than the Congress.
The idea of caste-based reservations may be cited as an instance. In a manner so vulpine as to consign a fox to the flames of ignominy, impressionable youth are medicated with the pills of “social justice”, “equality”, “emancipation”, “affirmative action” and suchlike impressive adjectives that are core to political science lexicon. Base objectivity, however, would evince to them the metastasis that such affirmative action is prone to. No amount of impassioned literary flourish from political scientists could possibly explain the Indian Paradox of Emancipation: we are all led, quite prudently, to conclude that the birth-based nature of the caste system ensured a long spell of the prevalence of social evil. Yet, the Indian State, as opposed to eradicating the evil, very much institutionalized it with misguided notions of emancipatory justice. The difference is that the progeny of a farmer is no longer condemned to farming alone as the caste system in the past was apt to do. India’s democracy, however, means that the government at the helm is subject to periodic change, and is thus beholden to an assortment of interest groups; caste groups quite prominent amongst them. Shall any of them permit the government to repeal such affirmative action upon “emancipation” of the destitute and the historically oppressed?
So far as I know, the tones of no such conversation reverberate in the sancta of learning. As a side note, this is perhaps also why our student feedback mechanisms are scarce exemplary and exist merely as a matter of formality. So enamoured are we of the preservation of status-quo that in the worship of institutions we find utmost repose. No one truly desires an unmitigatedly honest feedback, unsparing as it is likely to be.
A curious phenomenon that I perceive is the general lack of flair with both the English language and the sophistication of debate. Conversance with English, I suppose, is therefore a probable indicator of deep readership from childhood, minor grammatical errors notwithstanding; English is not the first language of the vast preponderance of Indians. I could only interpret that eloquence therein, particularly Academic English, as an indicator of the ability to discern nuance, to incorporate it in intellectual conversations, as the Anglophone elite beholden to the Congress have historically been wont to do. It would be preposterous to imply a cause-effect relationship; it is very much possible to be devoid of intelligence while simultaneously being conversant with English. So expansive is the reach of English, however, and so many are the luminaries who have undergirded its literature, that such eloquence therein as evinced by a non-native speaker is a probable, if not definitive indicator of assorted readership. It is also a formidable medium through which one may express oneself. No wonder that Ratan Sharda chose to write his “RSS 360: Demystifying Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh” in English, notwithstanding the renewed emphasis of regional languages and pride in them. Students and even some professors on occasion do not appear acclimatized to rather basic English, let alone sophisticated articulation. There is thus little rigour to such discussions as may, as a matter of exception, proceed. It is a judicious symphony of articulateness and incorporation of nuance that render a conversation rigorous. I would not expect all professors to morph into a Dr. Jordan Peterson or into a Dr. Milton Friedman, but there is a case to be made in favour of amelioration.
So long, perhaps, have common Indians been mocked at for unfamiliarity with English by the elite, that it has engendered an adversarial passion amongst them towards English, so much as to lead some of them to renounce it altogether. Spare a moment, however, to dwell upon the question: “If indeed conversance with English is not necessary at all, why have tests such as IELTS or TOEFL gained relevance?”
It is safe to say, therefore, that university education satisfies neither the conversational rigour nor nuance that a perspicacious student, himself an edifice of intellectual latitude, may be desirous of. It is expedient that we and posterity rectify all this incrementally. The eagle of intellectual latitude can only grow to peak health with ideational nutrition.
