Consider the case of the young lawyer who sued his old College for a million pounds in damages on the grounds that poor teaching for the Indian Modern History 'gobbets' paper had led him to getting a slightly lower degree classification which affected his subsequent earning power.
Had this young man been as stupid as shit and lacked any intrinsic interest in the subject, he would have gamed the system by writing up a dozen templates which could be used interchangeably with different 'gobbets'- i.e. extracts from documents. No doubt, a little judicious flattery or strategic gifts of the odd bottle of whiskey would have enabled him to outsource this onerous task. All that would have been required of him would be to add some idiosyncratic or antagonomic touch. In this case, since the young man in question was of South Asian ancestry, this could be easily done by quoting some obscure biography of a co-religionist or vernacular ideologue, so as to suggest intimate acquaintance with the text in question. Since no more than ten minutes were to be devoted to actually writing one's response, it would be relatively easy to throw a false light upon one's engagement with the field.
Consider the following gobbet-
“In our view it is desirable, in order not only to carry out the spirit of the Declaration of August 1917, but to promote an increased feeling of camaraderie and equal sense of responsibility between British and Indian members of the Service, that a proportion of 50-50 in the cadre of the Indian Civil Service should be attained without undue delay and that the present rate of Indian recruitment should be accelerated with this object.”
(Report of the Royal Commission on the Superior Civil Service In India, 1924, Cmd. 2128)
The Superior Civil Service no longer mattered and this was already obvious to people like Motilal Nehru who had a nephew in the ICS and thus didn't pressure his son to take that exam almost a dozen years previously. The 'inferior' Services did matter. They were the 'steal frame' holding everything together by a complicated process involving everyone gleefully picking someone else's pocket or lugubriously itching to do the same.
K.P.S Menon and Sir Raghavan Pillai, having gathered up all the glittering prizes Oxbridge had to offer, joined the most Superior of Services around this time. But it was a more humbly born Nair, V.P Menon- an eighth standard drop out who joined the Civil Service as a typist- who rose highest (despite being viewed as a Congress plant) under the Raj. After independence, of course, it was the Oxbridge ICS brown sahibs who ruled the roost. But, during the Raj, they had little power- though, no doubt, they could get away with murdering a maid servant if the communal situation in their Province was sufficiently volatile.
I've no idea what the correct answer to this gobbet would be. Since Judith Brown was the Department Head, I imagine it would be some leftist shite insisting on the importance of Oxbridge wallahs. But that sort of thing is eminently gameable- which is why so many sociopathic Indians gravitated to it in the first place. Come to think of it, David Washbrook (whose having been overworked at the time when he tutored the Claimant for the relevant 'gobbets' paper was the legal basis for the legal action) was once a young lion attacking Brown for her attachment to the old 'Westernised elites' trope.
Returning to the gobbet in question, here's how to game it. Start with an irrelevant quotation from Gramsci and, if you are an Urdu speaker, end with a couplet from Akbar Illahabadi. The thing practically writes itself because the meat of the sandwich involves just the bare chronology for which you have already coined phrases suggestive of a cold fury which brandishes dates and quotations as a sort of displacement activity preparatory to a leap for the jugular.
Returning to the gobbet in question, here's how to game it. Start with an irrelevant quotation from Gramsci and, if you are an Urdu speaker, end with a couplet from Akbar Illahabadi. The thing practically writes itself because the meat of the sandwich involves just the bare chronology for which you have already coined phrases suggestive of a cold fury which brandishes dates and quotations as a sort of displacement activity preparatory to a leap for the jugular.
Here is another gobbet- featuring Nehru
“When I heard that you had called off the civil disobedience movement, I felt unhappy … I was prepared to reconcile myself to the withdrawal of civil disobedience. But the reasons you gave for doing so and the suggestions you made for future work astounded me.” (J. Nehru to M.K. Gandhi, 13 August 1934).
The context is Gandhi's ditching the Socialists- land-reform and all that sort of thing- so as to permit Congress to take office and recruit itself financially. A stupid as shit student- one unconcerned with what precise shade of pink differentiates Washbrook from other useful idiots- wouldn't simply regurgitate generic Leftie shite because people like Washbrook take an unhealthy interest in what shade of pink your shite is. So, what I'm saying is, you've got to go brown for top marks on this.
How?
Fasten on a word in the original and translate it into the vernacular. Then gas on about how the vernacular usage subverts the Imperial language.
In this case, I pick on 'astound'. A 'silk' pretends to be astounded by the brazen nature of a swindle and seeks to awaken a like emotion in the breast of the hegemon. The subaltern, on the other hand, is astounded by the miraculous nature of hegemonic heteronomy- the fact that the idol has feet of clay makes it that much more impressive that those same dirty feet stabilise the Earth in its proper orbit. Thus, when I express astonishment, to my upper class cousins in Hampstead, at the fact that they have toilet paper, not the proverbial lota, in their loos I am careful to mitigate my Brahminical sphota with this dehati dhvani- to wit- surely, Dosco alumni don't have arseholes that need wiping but simply are arseholes that need wiping out?
More prosaically, astonishment is a mystical state on the journey to recognising that the Pir or Guru is greater than God despite being an obvious fuckwit.
Since Gandhi thought of himself as precisely this sort of Mahatma, he took Nehru's bitter missive as a condign tribute to his own super-wonderfulness and thus shrewdly foresaw Nehru's future trajectory as a Socialist who would show Socialism was yet more mischievous than mendacious Gandhian mendicancy.
Sadly it seems, reading the judgement in the case of this young lawyer who sued his University, not all students of History- even modern Indian History- are as stupid as shit. Thus, some fail to game their exams and, in consequence, go on to develop psychological complexes because they failed to secure Firsts in a Subject, and from a Department, determined to render utterly Third rate, any young mind that falls to its maw. Which is not to say that they can't go on to lucrative careers in, if not the oldest, then still some of the longest established professions in the City.
Washbrook comes out well in the Judge's account. His testimony held up under cross examination. His ex-student, perhaps because he was a lawyer, did very badly. It appears that his mental health was damaged by the pressure to excel academically placed upon him by his family. However, visits from relatives spoiled his exam preparations- a story familiar to many South Asians. This had been going on even in High School.
Perhaps, rather than go to Law, this student should have challenged his ex Tutor to 'antidosis'- i.e. an exchange of professions. Clearly the younger man could have developed into a rabid 'subaltern' type identitarian jumping on 'Black Lives matter' or 'Rhodes must fall' type bandwagons and thus gaining fame as an 'engaged' public intellectual or 'woke' Savant. By contrast, long years of pedagogic drudgery in the salt mines of our snowflake generation, had left the Professor with far greater forensic capacity- albeit of a purely defensive, procedural, sort. If people like him weren't such goddam pinkos they could be VeeCees still pulling in the big bucks and jewel encrusting their golden parachutes while the whole Credentialist Ponzi Scheme collapses around their ears.
There is a lesson here which, as the Mahatma was wont to say, all who run may read.
There is a lesson here which, as the Mahatma was wont to say, all who run may read.
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