Aussie Racism and Subservient Indians, shame on us

Rhapsody Singer in his blog had cross-posted my take on Aussies and their racism. Psych Babbler had cautioned me to think squarely while crying wolf. While I respect her opinions yet would like to draw attention to the fact that she advises us to accept the culture of the country. This is the very same thing that the money-hungry Indians now settled in Australia advise our students. Babbler and her ilk miss the point: we need not be subservient to any other race whosoever. When an Indian settles abroad for good, s/he sends out a message loud and clear:

my own country isn't good enough, I want to live on your charity and by God, I shall accept your floggings. Just count me in, please!

I find it ironic that many of our post-colonial theorists who made a name for themselves as great intellectuals live (d) abroad and pontificate about our nation. Of course, when cornered they site how Joyce could become a Joyce only when he left Ireland. That's all bunkum for none of them have/had the breadth and talent of Joyce. They simply sold their souls to the First World and made their nation a commodity to be bartered for their own academic acceptance in the West. And of course, the good life.

Hiatus, Books and doing away with class X exams

I did not have the time to write here for some very personal traumatic times. Now thankfully, they have passed. And I have been awarded a two-year fellowship to complete my PhD by the UGC. Now my college sits on it so that I go a-begging to the authorities for a rapid release. This is professional jealousy and red-tape-ism at its best.

In the meanwhile I have finished reading three books: Koji Suzuki's Ring (horror), Nancy Maguire's An Infinity of Little Hours ( Carthusian Spirituality) and Karen Armstrong's A Short History of Myth ( Comparative Mythology, but a much lesser work than Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces) . I have started on Phil Rickman's The Cure of Souls ( horror) .

So the pending discussion list now includes all these books plus the ones I had promised to discuss before 3rd June.


Now for some gossip: Mr. Kapil Sibal has decided to do away with the class X board exams. I think he is absolutely right to do so though many are miffed at him for the following reasons:

a) the pan-Indian private tuition racket which thrives on harassing and coercing kids will be hit. We are talking big money here. Thus none wants the class ten exams to disappear.

b) Folks with scholarly pretensions are eager to point out how regional priorities cannot be emphasized in any uniform syllabi of subjects like history and geography. They forget that already the ICSE etc. do that. Their syllabi is inclusive and yet not shallow. Such arguments are tripe for they only heighten various regional biases.

c) Our Middle-School babudom must be terrified of losing their stranglehold on students and their parents. Let them be shifted to other departments and made more accountable to the people of this country.

So, cheers to Mr. Sibal and and his proactive measures.

What's Wrong with our Higher Education?

The Times of India has a very frightening report about the condition of our universities. It seems we figure nowhere in the list of ace Asian varsities. Our so-called centres of excellence too do not make the cut. This makes me wonder about my role as a college professor in India. Have I been educated in such dud universities that I hardly know my Bacon from Shakespeare? If this is so, then what shall I teach my own students? And so the vicious circle goes on.

Possible areas which are plaguing us in the Higher Education sector:

a) A bad bureaucracy which gags professorial creativity. I have myself applied for an UGC fellowship and my experience with the powers that be is enough to make anyone puke. For the papers to move, I have to constantly call their regional office and then be chided like a kid for my Fellowship to fall through.

b) While in the States a Catholic University will hardly take a pro-abortionist, here the picture is different. Here what often counts is the obsequiousness one shows to the top brass rather than what one would be professing. Eg. I know of an autonomous institution here which refused a brilliant application for a Lecturer's post because the Rector of the College prefers to have women around him...

c) While autonomous colleges in India often function as bonded labor camps, Government colleges are often more liberal and respectful of their teachers' intellectual freedom. But here too it is now well nigh impossible for non-political candidates to get jobs. The various Service Commissions have become recruitment agencies for political incumbent with well defined loyalties. Scholarship goes for a toss here!

d) There are simply too few teachers for overwhelming numbers of students. I have to examine more than a thousand scripts each year. Last year I corrected more than 1500 answer scripts under tremendous pressure to submit the marks in impossibly small time-periods.

e) There is palpable pressure to pass academically weak students. Too many failed scores reflect badly on universities so they want us to pass very weak students at the graduate level.

f) Stereotyped questions are set year after year to fend off possible protests by private tuition-dependant students. No University in India can afford to allow students to be quizzed in depth about any subject. The student is thus encouraged to regurgitate crammed noted got for money at their private tutors'.

g) Massive politicization of Higher Education. All our major political  parties recruit their followers at the college level. Again, studies go for a toss. As it is , most students know that studies don't matter so much for even academic jobs if one's dad knows the right people.

These are some of the things destroying our education and till we own up to them, no amount of HRD ministerial reforms will be of help. Period.

Schedule for this week

a) The promised review of Stephen King's IT.

b) Some Japanese Horror discussion; Spiral & Loop by Suzuki Koji. These two books have been acquired.

c) Some Third Reich discussions. I am interested in the Reich.

d) A comparative study between Andersen's Fairy Tales and Indian tales.

And also my usual rants against or for the system when time permits. Wednesday and Thursday I have exam-duties which I take as a prolonged game. Periodically shouting "hey" & then making stern eyes at some errant student. Till date I have not expelled anyone for cheating. I take their answer-scripts from them promising half an hour of no-writing. Then I return the script after max 2/3 minutes.

I have finished reading Cheryl R. Reed’s Unveiled: The Hidden Lives of Nuns

Foreign Scholarships & Racism

Our students mostly don't want to be scholars. That's too nerdy, they feel. And studying core subjects don't pay much in India. And even if you study say Literature, Culture Studies or Pure Mathematics here and top your university at the Masters Level, then too a bilayat-returned B-grade student gets the plum academic job here. The proverbial colonial hangover prevents us from respecting homegrown scholars. So our moneyed class and generally discontented intellectuals seek out doles ( called scholarships) from various foreign universities and rush there to cram what they easily could have done here only if their greed were checked. The result: Australian racists bashing our poor exiled students.

I am not much surprised at these attacks. Even a cursory glance at colonial studies will show how people of colour have been regularly brutalized by the Whites. They are deplorable but nonetheless a fact of history. It's bound to occur like the bull-bear cycles of the equity markets, somewhat like Eliade's myth of eternal return, like Nietzsche's transvaluation of values. I am sure you have got the hang of it...

Amitava Ghosh says somewhere in The Shadow Lines how we have no right to eat off the fat of developed nations when we never made their houses and streets. Rather we should make our own country developed. That ain't gonna happen if we have cowards running away from our troubled nation.

Foreign Universities in India

Kapil Sibal was talking to Karan Thapar yesterday: does Sibal foresee trouble getting foreign universities started in India? Sibal appeared gung-ho and ready to counter protests head on. The proposal is certainly good but here are a few questions for the HRD ministry:

a) Will poor students have access to these foreign universities? Theoretically it is possible for rural and/or poor students to get in these new institutions through Government Legislation. But the ground realities are going to be a show-stopper. Firstly, poor students will not know enough English to fit in there. Secondly, they'll hardly be courted by the administration if the latter is forced to accept them at reduced fees.

b) Who will teach here? Will internationally reputed scholars lecture here regularly? If they don't and we have only ourselves lecturing here then what is the point in getting say, Oxford University to open a branch at Chennai? The idea should be to have greater choices available to students and exposure to global scholarship.

c) Will these universities ever teach core subjects like History, Myth-studies, Zoology et al? Or they'll keep on churning MBAs, IT professionals? While MBAs are needed we as a nation need world class sociologists, ethnologists, political scientists and literary critics.

I hope Mr. Sibal addresses some of these touchy areas before he goes full throttle in allowing foreign universities in India. Let him ensure that marginalized students don't feel threatened, linguistic discriminations be checked, core subjects compulsorily taught and foreign regular faculty periodically come here to deliver lectures. If these can be ensured, then surely the HRD's ambitions will bear fruit. Otherwise we'll only have rich people buying fancy degrees for ridiculous sums of money.

Cheers! Indian Academics

Yesterday was good for Indian academics. The UGC has decreed that without either a PhD or a NET/SET one cannot teach in higher educational institutions in India. Not only this, the real sweetener is the laying down of norms for doing a PhD in this country. One has to be meticulous and original, finally submitting all work to a national database where plagiarists can be easily ferreted out. One felt sick hearing nerds complete PhDs with more quotations than personal critiques.

It is common knowledge that often nepotism, political favoritism wins over merit in the race for academic posts in India. Unfortunately some of my colleagues are apathetic at best. Hopefully some of these things are going to change.

I have a few more suggestions for the HRD and the UGC. While it is going to get tougher getting a PhD in this part of the world, yet if one reviews the NET syllabi for various subjects then it becomes clear that initially passing the NET is more important for a future Professor than only rooting for a PhD. The NET includes quizzes testing the psychological competence of a teacher-to-be. This is important for a great scholar with a PhD and Post-Doc degree may be a lousy teacher impatient with the queries of an eighteen year old grad student.

Typically, the NET syllabus in any subject demands a wide ranging inter-disciplinary knowledge on the part of the candidate. While a PhD by demanding super-specialization limits the scope of a neophyte's knowledge, the national competitive exams ready a candidate for teaching in the real classroom scenario. First let a prospective teacher clear the NET and later do her/his PhD. This way the candidate will be better equipped for intensive international quality research and be prepared to teach any topic at the college level. Our departments often run with very few permanent teachers. These few have to perforce teach beyond their own specializations. Till this is corrected, let the chief criterion for selection to permanent college jobs be the NET/SET and then let there be a set time frame for the selected candidate to finish her PhD. Then we'll have the real scholars in the field. Most importantly, we'll have folks who love teaching.

Indian Academics and Abjection Studies

I am also reading IT and fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen. Rather I am rereading them. Last I read Andersen was when my mom bought Lady Bird books from a salesman who came to her office selling books on loan. Yes, my mom couldn't afford to get her son the best books in the market. Yet she had to get them for me. So for many years she wore the same old saris to office. I got my books though.

Now returning to IT and Andersen: IT by Stephen King is a Dickensian read. You have Mr. Pennywise the Clown with the leer and the balloons. Only thing is, if he gets to you, you are dead meat. Literally, he tears you into pieces and chomps on your dear ones while you are hypnotized by his moon face. Stephen King is neglected in our country. I think that's because most of our academics are fed on established fodder; the usual suspects: Milton, Shakespeare, Faulkner etc. The very daring universities teach cartoons as cutting edge literature. But none will touch horror and theodicy. We have all sorts of -isms taught here. Whatever my colleagues do in the West, my students and peers learn and return. Most probably, none in the West is doing literature and religion too much. so we don't see evil and literature taught. Or for that matter, we don't have courses exclusively focussing on Gothic Literature. It's all the run of the mill stuff here. King should most definitely be taught as part of any Literatures In English syllabus here. I shall do a full review of King and IT within this week.

As for Andersen, I think there's much there for comparative studies with Indian folk-tales. For all his European setting, the characters have affinities to timeless tales told by our writers. So Andersen needs another post.

I have finished correcting the Third Year(Part III) Honors Papers. Most did not fare too well. they did not answer the set questions but just went off in a tangent. This happens so often here for students mug private tuition notes.

The Mists of Avalon & when the Principal ain't there

Today was a good day by all counts. My principal was not there and there was a sly calm on the campus. The old fuzz comes on his rounds during exam time. If any of us are sitting and just letting things be (or gossiping amongst ourselves) he says “Move freely in the room”. Imagine being told this by a 58 year old guy who hasn’t given one duty in the last seven years!

I hollered to a few kids to stop craning their necks to read the others’ scripts. One cheeky fellow said I plucked his answer-script too rudely. I asked him to write to the Vice-Chancellor of the University.

Now it is raining.

I am now reading the Mists of Avalon. I am just past the Prologue. Nothing great so far though I have high expectations from this one. Firstly, I read rave reviews in Amazon and second, it cost me quite a bit to get it online.

The Mists of Avalon is the Arthurian legend told from the perspective of the women in King Arthur’s life. As a grad student I loved the medieval Romances, especially the various Sagas and Cycles of European royal exploits. Their love, violence and sex can definitely be reworked as box office Hindi movies.