THE HINDU EDITORIAL : October 7, 2017
THE HINDU EDITORIAL : October 7, 2017
Symbols of a deeper stirring
The old and historically important university at Varanasi is passing through a significant moment. Educational institutions seldom serve as precise mirrors of historical change because pedagogic and administrative rituals keep their inner life tightly under control. Banaras Hindu University (BHU) is no exception. Rather, like Visva-Bharati, established by Rabindranath Tagore, BHU has maintained a veneer of normalcy governed by sacred customs and rituals that have nicely preserved an empty shell of a special inherited identity. The architecture too conveys a sense of permanent normalcy, like that of a temple. The decline in its institutional pride and standards had begun in the 1960s. Barring brief episodes of precarious recovery, descent into the shared hollow of higher education in the Hindi belt has been consistent. The recent sequence of events at BHU has an element of surprise because it points towards a new kind of assertion and attempt to claim institutional rights. The administration seems unprepared for this turn of events. Its reflexes constitute the time-tested moves to minimise, pacify and press forward. It does not seem to realise, and may not accept if it does, that it is faced with an unfamiliar kind of protester who refuses to be seen as a client. The young women who paid the price of mass protest by getting brutally assaulted and injured have already become symbols of a deeper stirring than the officials of BHU have the wherewithal and imagination to gauge.
Different visions
BHU was the second university to be set up in the Hindi heartland, the first being Allahabad. The two institutions were quite different from the start. Allahabad University was created by the colonial government, initially as an examining institution like the other three set up in the mid-19th century. Only later did it acquire a unitary character. Once known as the Oxford of the East, the university’s architecture and courses conveyed the British dream of creating a knowledge society after its own image in India. BHU, on the contrary, was intended to symbolise India’s pride in its heritage of knowledge. Its financial independence from the colonial state and its residential character signified an assertion and a search. The colonial model of affiliating universities was essentially that of a bureaucratic mechanism to examine, certify and thereby maintain legitimacy of the distribution of eligibility for government jobs. Above all, BHU represented a vision — one of many competing visions in early 20th century — of what India’s freedom might mean in the sphere of education. The monumental effort mooted and sustained by Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya to set it up was part of an intellectual struggle that did not last long after Independence: the struggle to engage with colonial subjugation through education. The engagement covered basic issues and choices in language, knowledge, and the pedagogic ethos. Allahabad signified no such exploration — although it was located in a city with pioneers in academic publishing and a literati that radically changed the dominant idiom of Hindi literature. BHU, on the other hand, provided an academic base where Hindi’s development as a modern language would benefit from archival and analytical research. Although student activism has an older history, its eruptions intensified in the mid-1960s, disturbing the annual routine of life in many universities. The issues that triggered street processions and sit-ins were often localised, even trivial, but the restive spirit was real. Many national and provincial leaders felt that campus disturbances indicated that the idealism of the freedom movement had waned. Some of them viewed youth discontent as a sign of deeper idealism. They were right in this estimation. To the generation born after Independence, just about everything had begun to look wrong. One of the first things to cause dismay was the calibre of people who became vice-chancellors. Those recruited to teach were the next major source of disillusionment and cynicism among the young.
Growth of access
Layers of disillusionment have sedimented. For the BHU Vice-Chancellor to attribute the recent turmoil to ‘an incident of eve-teasing’ is an insult to students. They belong to a new provincial ethos, subtly transformed by radical increase in access to school education over the last 25 years. It has changed the social composition of the campus population, imparting it far greater plurality than what prevails in the teaching faculty. Recruitment of teachers now provides reservation for the lower and middle castes, but the dominance of upper castes and competition among them continues to shape the campus ethos. In this matter, BHU and Allahabad, despite their very different origins, have become identical. The same applies to male-centric ethos and policies. Young women are tired of homilies by university officials and political leaders who talk like grandparents. Equally tiring to the current generation of female students is the supervised freedom offered to them as a favour. Their public fight is currently directed against gender discrimination. There is plenty of it to fuel their struggle. It is there in hostels, in admission procedures, in classrooms and laboratories, and in life outside the campus. But their anger is also about the role of caste in the selection of faculty and positions carrying public responsibility. Both Allahabad and BHU are festering pools of caste politics. The colonial roots of the former have proved just as weak to withstand caste pressures in everyday functioning as the idealistic roots of BHU have. As new arrivals in the arena of higher learning, BHU girls are noticing a stench that boys do not, accustomed as they are to the many advantages that upbringing in a patriarchal ethos offers. The city itself is steeped in caste-centric rituals; even the language of daily use, including its abusive variety, carries caste messages. The young women of BHU have studied courses on gender and its association with caste. Some of them cannot resist applying this knowledge to their personal lives and their supervised campus lives. Having been sent back home after facing a lathi charge, they will no doubt receive sobering counsel from their elders, many of whom may not have been to college. When they return after the semester break, they will notice how many more CCTVs have been installed to make them feel safer.
WORDS/ VOCABULARY
1) Precise
Meaning: Marked by exactness and accuracy of expression or detail.
Example: Precise directions.
Synonyms: Exact, Accurate
Antonyms: Imprecise, Inaccurate
2) Pedagogic
Meaning: Relating to teaching.
Example: They show great pedagogic skills.
3) Veneer
Meaning: An attractive appearance that covers or disguises someone or something’s true nature or feelings.
Example: Her veneer of composure cracked a little.
Synonyms: Façade, Front
4) Barring
Meaning: Except for; if not for.
Example: Barring accidents, we should win.
Synonyms: Excepting, excluding
5) Descent
Meaning: An act of moving downwards, dropping, or falling.
Example: The plane had gone into a steep descent.
Synonyms: Drop, Dive
Antonyms: Ascent, Climb
6) Brutally
Meaning: In a savagely violent way.
Example: He was imprisoned and brutally tortured.
7) Wherewithal
Meaning: The money or other means needed for a particular purpose.
Example: They lacked the wherewithal to pay.
Synonyms: Money, Ready
8) Gauge
Meaning: A means of estimating something.
Example: Emigration is perhaps the best gauge of public unease.
Synonyms: Measure, Indicator
9) Heartland
Meaning: The central or most important part of a country, area, or field of activity.
Example: Wildlife sites in the heartland of Russia.
10) Colonial
Meaning: Relating to or characteristic of a colony or colonies.
Example: British colonial rule.
11) Unitary
Meaning: Forming a single or uniform entity.
Example: A sort of unitary wholeness.
12) Heritage
Meaning: Property that is or may be inherited; an inheritance.
Example: They had stolen his grandfather’s heritage.
Synonyms: Inheritance, Birthright
13) Affiliating
Meaning: Officially attach or connect (a subsidiary group or a person) to an organization.
Example: They are national associations affiliated to larger organizations.
14) Bureaucratic
Meaning: Relating to a system of government in which most of the important decisions are taken by state officials rather than by elected representatives.
Example: Well-established bureaucratic procedures.
Synonyms: Administrative, Official
Antonyms: Simple, Relaxed
15) Legitimacy
Meaning: Conformity to the law or to rules.
Example: Refusal to recognize the legitimacy of both governments.
16) Mooted
Meaning: Raise (a question or topic) for discussion; suggest (an idea or possibility).
Example: The scheme was first mooted last October.
Synonyms: Raise, Broach
17) Intellectual
Meaning: Possessing a highly developed intellect.
Example: You are an intellectual girl, like your mother.
Synonyms: Intelligent, Clever
Antonyms: Stupid, Illiterate
18) Subjugation
Meaning: The action of bringing someone or something under domination or control.
Example: The colonial subjugation of a country by means of brute military force.
19) Pedagogic
Meaning: Relating to teaching.
Example: They show great pedagogic skills.
20) Ethos
Meaning: The characteristic spirit of a culture, era, or community as manifested in its attitudes and aspirations.
Example: A challenge to the ethos of the 1960s.
Synonyms: Spirit, Character
21) Processions
Meaning: A number of people or vehicles moving forward in an orderly fashion, especially as part of a ceremony.
Example: A funeral procession.
Synonyms: Parade, March
22) Sit-ins
Meaning: To be present in a meeting or class, watching it but not taking part in it.
Example: There will be a school inspector sitting in on your class this morning.
23) Provincial
Meaning: Of or concerning a province of a country or empire.
Example: Provincial elections.
Synonyms: Small-town, Rural
24) Calibre
Meaning: The quality of someone’s character or the level of their ability.
Example: They could ill afford to lose a man of his calibre.
Synonyms: Quality, Merit
25) Disillusionment
Meaning: A feeling of disappointment resulting from the discovery that something is not as good as one believed it to be.
Example: The high abstention rate at the election reflected the voters’ growing disillusionment with politics
26) Cynicism
Meaning: An inclination to believe that people are motivated purely by self-interest; scepticism.
Example: Public cynicism about politics.
Synonyms: Scepticism, Doubt
Antonyms: Optimism
27) Sedimented
Meaning: Settle as sediment.
Example: The erythrocytes were allowed to sediment within the syringe.
28) Turmoil
Meaning: A state of great disturbance, confusion, or uncertainty.
Example: The country was in turmoil.
Synonyms: Confusion, Tumult
Antonyms: Calm, Peace
29) Subtly
Meaning: In a manner that is so delicate or precise as to be difficult to analyse or describe.
Example: The script subtly shifts in tone from comedy to tragedy.
30) Plurality
Meaning: A large number of people or things.
Example: A plurality of critical approaches.
Synonyms: Lot, Diversity
31) Prevails
Meaning: Prove more powerful or superior.
Example: It is hard for logic to prevail over emotion.
Synonyms: Win, Triumph
32) Homilies
Meaning: A tedious moralizing lecture.
Example: She delivered her homily about the need for patience.
Synonyms: Sermon, Lecture
33) Discrimination
Meaning: Recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another.
Example: Discrimination between right and wrong.
Synonyms: Differentiation, Distinction
34) Festering
Meaning: (Of a negative feeling or a problem) become worse or more intense, especially through long-term neglect or indifference.
Example: Below the surface, the old antagonisms festered.
Synonyms: Rankle, Chafe
35) Stench
Meaning: A strong and very unpleasant smell.
Example: The stench of rotting fish.
Synonyms: Stink, Reek
36) Accustomed
Meaning: Customary; usual.
Example: His accustomed route.
Synonyms: Customary, Normal
Antonyms: Unusual, Unfamiliar
37) Patriarchal
Meaning: Relating to or denoting a system of society or government controlled by men.
Example: A patriarchal society.
38) Steeped
Meaning: Surround or fill with a quality or influence.
Example: A city steeped in history.
39) Abusive
Meaning: Extremely offensive and insulting.
Example: The goalkeeper was sent off for using abusive language.
Synonyms: Insulting, Rude
40) Sobering
Meaning: Make or become more serious, sensible, and solemn.
Example: His expression sobered her.
Synonyms: Relax, Soften
