Saikat Majumdar on BHU vs JNU

Saikat Majumdar- a startlingly illiterate novelist and Prof. of English- writes in the Indian Express-

Two news items jostled against each other on the front page of Tuesday’s (November 19) Indian Express. 

One, the JNU protests: “A visually challenged student said he was trampled on, an ex-student received five stitches on his head, a teacher said he was kicked and hit with lathis despite identifying himself.”

Two, at Banaras Hindu University, the protests over the appointment of Firoze Khan as an assistant professor of Sanskrit. “On Monday, a ‘hawan kund’ was set up and around 20 SVDV students were sitting on a dharna outside the Vice-Chancellor’s residence protesting his appointment. The protests have been on since Khan’s appointment, for the only reason that he’s a Muslim.”
At this moment, the two faces of student protest couldn’t be farther apart from each other. No denying that they are vastly different in scale and intensity, to say nothing of the fact that any activity in JNU is always on-camera nationwide in a way no other university in the country is.
But the fact remains that in both instances students are protesting measures taken by the vice-chancellor and the university administration. One against fee hikes that will drive students from weaker sections of society away from the university. The other against the appointment of a qualified Muslim academic to teach Sanskrit.

The JNU protests are against fee hikes. These students pay about 1 % of the cost of their education while students at Delhi University pay about 13 %.  The hike in fees won't apply to Below Poverty Line students. The students aren't saying the wealthy should pay more. They want a benefit meant for the poor to be received by them regardless of their economic standing.

The BHU students aren't protecting that a Muslim will teach Sanskrit but rather that he has been appointed to teach Hindu Priestcraft- a subject of which he knows nothing.

 The BHU agitation is peaceful and can be easily resolved by appointing the Muslim to the Ayurveda Dept or the Sanskrit Dept of BHU. The JNU protest isn't peaceful at all and can't be resolved because sooner or later the students will have to pay more for their education. They must not be allowed to leech off their poorer bretheren who work and pay taxes.

So much for a “singular” politics of student movements. For those whom student activism conjures up the mist in the eyes, the image of Berkeley in the Sixties, Paris, 1968, or, for that matter, Calcutta in the 1970s, welcome to the brave new world, India, 2019.

BHU saw massive student agitation in 1965. Why? A Muslim minister decided that the University should no longer have 'Hindu' in its name. That agitation was successful. The Nav Nirman student movement in Gujarat in the early Seventies was highly effective. It too owed more to the 'Sangh' than to the Left. India, it seems, entered this 'brave new world' before the author was born.

As I write, BHU student groups have come out in support of Firoze Khan’s appointment, and #StandWithFiroze is trending on Twitter, but so is #ISupportBHUStudents, which opposes this appointment.
Differences indicate a robust democracy. Are we to conclude, then, that in its staggering diversity, student politics in India is in rude good health?

No. Indian Higher Education is hugely dysfunctional. Universities appoint whom they like regardless of the welfare of the students. Which cretin thought it a good idea to hire a Muslim to teach aspiring Hindu priests? The proper place for a Sanskritist is the Sanskrit Department, not a Department which specializes in inculcating the Hindu Faith and Priestcraft.

Suppose JNU taught worthwhile subjects. Then it would be irrational for students to hold up their own education for a month so as to avoid a small hike in hostel fees. As things stand, most of them are no worse off for not attending lectures given by people as stupid and ignorant as themselves.

Who knows? But diversity is one thing, and hostile polarisation another. The ironic juxtaposition of headline news from JNU and BHU reveals, more than anything else, the brutal distances that severe and separate us today as a nation.

'severe (not sever) and separate us'- would you believe this guy taught English at Stanford?

To say nothing of the ever-widening gulf between the nation and the university.
While teaching at Stanford, I once served on a Search Committee for a Confucius Chair in Classical Chinese Poetry. While the search was on, I heard a senior Chinese scholar, originally from the mainland, say that the Chinese government would like to see a white person in this position over someone who is Chinese or even of Chinese origin. Struck by that claim, I had asked why.

Majumdar is being naive. A Chinese origin professor who could speak Mandarin would interact with Chinese students and influence them ideologically. A round-eyed devil would just make a fool of himself.

“Because it looks good on China when white people do their culture,” he had said. “It sends the message that we’re so big that it’s not only Chinese people who teach and research our culture. The whole world does it.” Especially white people.

Also White professors of Chinese have a history of gullibility and willingness to be manipulated by the regime.

I still have childhood memories of an India where the Gorky Sadans and the American Centres fought a relentless culture war against each other. It was a bipolar world, and since the war between nuclear-armed nations was a Beckettian Endgame, the whole vigour of the un-fought battle exploded in the field of culture (and outer space). It’s a phenomenon widely and globally known, with funding from the CIA coming to prestigious periodicals of art, literature and culture, including the Partisan Review. And then the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and everything changed.

But China has taken over from where the Soviet Union left off. Majumdar may not have noticed but everybody else has.

It is a lesson at least as old as colonialism. If you want to rule, make sure your culture does too. Domination in the economic or military base would never last without domination in the cultural superstructure. Marx would know. Soft power following hard power. Shashi Tharoor knows it too.

This is sheer nonsense. The British established their dominion over India before Western 'culture' was known to any but a handful of Indians. It was only after a sizable body of English speaking graduates came into existence that the Freedom Struggle got off the ground.

Marx said the economic substructure would determine the superstructure. Communism gained a hold over large portions of the Globe despite never exporting the language or culture of its Super-power. Soft power does not follow hard power. Rather it waxes or wanes purely on the basis of supply and demand. Either it pays for itself or it is useless. Kids in Manipur are learning Korean to watch Korean soaps and sing along to K-Pop stars. Why? It is for the same reason a lot of people in the former Soviet Union grew up watching Raj Kapoor or Amitabh Bacchan. Being denied access to a better quality product they have to settle for what they can get. Ask Shashi Tharoor's constituents. They should know.

A white American teaching Chinese in California. An Indian Muslim man teaching Sanskrit in Benaras. Perhaps the scenes don’t get along with each other well.

A white American, who does not know Chinese, teaching Mandarin to Chinese people in China. A Muslim teaching Hindus in Benares how to become Hindu priests. These scenes are analogous.

Unlike gravity, power likes to climb up. It fulfils China’s mission to see its culture spread to the world.

Nonsense! It fulfills China's mission to overtake America in STEM subject research. It gains nothing even if the whole world takes to doing Kung Fu and eating with chopsticks.

In the Western world, meanwhile, the hesitation comes entirely from the other direction.
There is reluctance on part of excellent and well-meaning white academics to enter into the domain of African American scholarship.

Clearly this guy has never heard of Rachel Dolezal.

What do you know about this people? What can you say? Can you write black as white, woman as man, queer as straight 

The answer has to be- no. A testimony to lived experience as a member of a discriminated against minority can't be written by a member of the majority. It has no probative value. It is merely speculative.

The same holds true of testaments to sharing a particular Faith. Religious instruction, for those aspiring to be priests of a particular denomination, should come from those of that faith who shared a like aspiration.

Dominant fields, in the reverse, have willed to welcome minority exponents, while failing to flush out ancient prejudices. “You’re black,” they’ve said. “What can you say about Shakespeare? Shouldn’t you rather talk about rap?”

This is a matter of marketing. If a widget manufacturer in Norway wants to sell widgets to Nigerians, he hires Nigerian marketing executives who use Nigerian spokespersons and Nigerian models and so forth.

In the end, progressive will has won. As Jonathan Gil Harris has shown us here in India, Shakespeare studies is a richer field for having Bollywood films in it.

Richer for whom? Gil Harris himself? His students? Are these guys seeing such a hike in their emoluments that the Finance Minister finds tax revenues have increased substantially? I don't think so.

Firoze Khan’s appointment to the Sanskrit Department at BHU can be a dream moment of Indian pluralism.

But that is precisely what the students want! They say employ him in the Sanskrit Department or the Ayurveda Department or any other Department. Don't employ him in the Department for Hindu Theology which trains Hindu priests.

The trouble is there have been plenty of Muslim Professors of Sanskrit and Hindu Professors of Arabic and so forth. The first Muslim woman to become a Professor of Sanskrit did so back in the Seventies. Indian pluralism's 'dream moment' came and went long ago.

For the language and culture of Sanskrit.
“All my life,” he says, “I learnt Sanskrit and I was never made to realise I am a Muslim, but now when I’m trying to teach, suddenly it has become the only subject.”

This was the fault of the BHU administration. They hired him to teach Sanskrit- which he was qualified to do- but tried to palm him off on the Hindu Theology Department. Now, I suppose, they'll put him in the Ayurveda Department because there is no vacancy on the Sanskrit faculty.

Be taught. But don’t try to teach. Be indoctrinated. But to what doctrine will you take us if you dare to teach? Who dare trust you?

A Muslim is welcome to learn how to become a Hindu priest. It is even possible that his Gurus are so pleased with him that they order him to teach aspiring Hindu priests. But some guy who knows Sanskrit is no more qualified to teach Hindus how to be priests than I am to teach Anglican Theology to aspiring clergymen on the basis of my knowledge of English.

Ironically, it was also a dream opportunity for the nationalist champions of Sanskritised India. Chinese ishtyle.

Why not Gangnam style? Has Chinese hard power softened Majumdar's brain?

Both opportunities are being cast away.

Very true- opportunity to have Hindu priests trained by a Muslim is being cast away. How will our Religion survive if Muslims don't teach it to us? Look at China. They are importing illiterate Guatemalans to teach Mandarin in their primary schools. That is the secret of their success.

Meanwhile, JNU burns.

No it doesn't- more's the pity. Still, we can live in hope.