Professor Randhir Singh (1922–2016): Worldview of Radical Change

An Organic Teacher

As a teacher, Randhir Singh was engaged primarily with Delhi College (now Zakir Hussain National College, University of Delhi), Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Department of Political Science, University of Delhi. An organic teacher who synthesised the classroom with the actual world, he was an ‘anti-neutral’ or ‘anti-disconnect’ teacher. The idea of anti-neutrality and insulated classroom rooms was rejected by him since he believed in teaching as a ‘non-alienated life’ and he truly believed that a non-alienated life-rejected insularity.

The organic teacher transformed the classroom radically. New pedagogy was infused with reality. The classroom was imbued with epistemic cosmopolitanism; there was inspiring diversity. In his classroom interdisciplinarity was crucial and there had to be interdisciplinary participation across the board. This made classrooms ‘live’ and altered the relationship, normally rigid and hierarchical, between teachers and students. Before the arrival of the fad of interdisciplinarity, he emphasised the need to establish a relationship between disciplines along with a recurrent exchange of ideas. This approach helped in two ways. At one level, organic development took place and, second, social science took an organic shape wherein the reinforcing of each other’s specialties took place.

Not only did the epistemic realm acquire a significance in Randhir Singh’s classroom but his students became a core component. Indeed, ‘his student’ became a catch phrase through which numerous meanings could be derived. The term was understood in vivid ways—the impact of his teaching was that metamorphic. He interacted with three types of students. In the first category, were those who would come to attend his classes directly. Biswamoy Pati, who was a student of history, now with the Department of History, University of Delhi, attended his classes on Hegel and Karl Marx. According to him: ‘The logic that was in his passionately prepared lectures was rather simple to understand and presented in such a way that students would discuss his teachings long after his classes.’

Then there were those students who never attended his classes but interacted with him intensely, they formed the second category. Hilal Ahmed, a student of political science, now with the Centre for Study of Developing Societies, recalls: ‘He never taught me directly in a formal university set-up yet he was my teacher. I had various opportunities to share and discuss with him my take on religion and modernity.’ Thirdly, he was also the teacher of those large number of people who had neither attended his classes nor communicated with him directly but heard him in various seminars and conferences. It should be emphasised that students from the third category outnumbered the combined number of the two other categories.

One would think it would be inconceivable that there would be three generations of students who could claim him as their teacher. But teaching as he did over a span of four decades this was entirely possible. Here was a thinking teacher who believed in communicating with students instead of ‘educating’ them. His classes were sites of learning of struggle and a constant exchange of ideas. His lessons were inside class rooms and outside the formal walls of the university and everyone was a participant.

Due to these beliefs, Manoranjan Mohanty, another distinguished teacher who was his student and colleague at Delhi College and Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, tells us: ‘Randhir Singh proved that teaching can be also a revolutionary activity’. Savita Singh, a student of political science, now with the School of Gender and Development Studies, Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi, adds:

As a teacher, he alerted me to a basic fact about political theory: to recognise the complexity of issues in a classroom itself; and the gender formation of Indian society as a starting point. I am really fortunate to have been taught by him, as I essentially learnt the principles of political theory only in his classroom.

Study of Politics

Randhir Singh’s approach of interdisciplinarity metamorphosed the study of politics. Political Science till the 1970s primarily focused on three areas. First, a description of the evolution of political institutions predominated. (Eventually, constitutionalism and comparative politics were also added.) Second, voting behaviour and a modernisation thesis (the input–output–feedback) became crucial components. Third, the ‘ancient wisdom in a modern republic’ was a core ‘non-heretical’ formula through which uncritical and unexamined treatises and thinkers of the past became leading signifiers. Generally, whereas the first two areas were considered vulgar behaviouralism, the third was an unscientific ‘reclamation of the past’. These were the hegemonic discourses presented before the student of political science. Any critical inquiry, like Marxism, was an anathema.

This poverty of political science made other disciplines prosper. Few examples would suffice. For political scientists of the 1970s, historical materialism was a part of the discipline of history as was nationalism and communalism; and dialectical materialism was given to the Department of Philosophy. Marxism was construed as a ‘vulgar body politic’ the aim of which was the politics of subversion. In this way, the study of political science was materialising sans actual politics thus limiting its growth.

Randhir Singh analysed all three prevalent streams through using dialectical materialism as a crucial vantage point. This experiment did not go uncontested. It was a crucial departure from what was actually happening within the realm of political science all across India. Behaviouralism, constitutionalism and ancient wisdom in modern republic were hitherto uncontested terrains within the discipline of political science. He made a noteworthy intervention through Reason, Revolution and Political Theory: Notes on Oakeshott’s Rationalism in Politics (1967). According to him, Michael Oakeshott’s ‘book is significant, not only for what it says, and what it omits today, but also for how he says it’ (Singh, 1988: 7). Oakeshott maintained a profound distance from reason, rationality, Marxism and theory. His dislikes were based on the ‘twin principles of empiricism (to expose and demolish) and traditionalism (to defend and preserve and, perhaps build)’ (Singh, 1988: 3). The predicament of European politics was due to rationalism which, for Oakeshott, should be countered through politics based on tradition. Randhir Singh perceived this trend as a great danger to the discipline of political science itself.

Concerning politics, there were serious problems with Oakeshott. He first turned the study of politics into a kind of language. The study of politics was nothing more than a language exercise.

Once politics was turned into language thereafter what was left was a mere explanation of language.

Randhir Singh was the early academic who recognised the danger of this formulation.

There was one more crucial intervention by Randhir Singh. Earlier, political scientists used to work on the study of political science through history. In other words, teaching history in contemporary times, with some allusions, was construed as the study of political science. This history was nothing but a description; a description that was beyond purviews. Randhir Singh did not reject history but brought out the relevance of dialectics and analysis. For him, the description of events was not sufficient but the unfolding of events was crucial. Three issues, communalism, extremist movements and democratic rights, for him, threw important insights in this regard. For him, communalism was not an event-based description or a sheer empiricisation. It also could not be reduced to nationalism. ‘Criticism of revivalism, fundamentalism and communalism are actually criticism of the society which gives not only birth to these but also make it necessary and possible’ (Singh, 1990: 15). Identification and location of communalism are important. ‘Furthermore, with its implicit treatment of Hindus as one undifferentiated mass, this concept virtually makes a gift of all those who regard themselves as Hindus to the communal politics of the ruling classes’ (Singh, 1990: 20).

Regarding extremism, he rejected thesis of ‘the Ribeiro-Girilal Jain-Bipan Chandra line’ (Singh, 1987: 1440–42). The study of the ‘near total alienation of people’, ‘continuing the fractured identity of the Punjabis and a nationality’ and ‘virtual collapse of bourgeois politics’ were intrinsic components to comprehend extremism in Punjab (Singh, 1987: 1440–42). He was inclined to focus on a systemic struggle. For him, communalism was not a law and order problem but a structural one. ‘A nationwide selling of terrorism’ and ‘lawless violence of the state itself’ made democratic rights very important (Singh, 1992a: 281). Despite much ado about constitutional nationalism, legal democracy, sovereignty and legitimacy of the state, laws were in fact implemented against the people and not against the state. In fact, the institution which implemented laws was itself free from the law.

A Marxist Par Excellence

Randhir Singh’s two favourite normative reminders were, ‘Where do you speak from?’ and Goethe’s rejoinder, ‘One must, from time to time, repeat what one believes in, proclaim what one agrees with and what one condemns.’ He spoke from the Marxist vantage point and repeated its significance in human liberation. His activist-Marxism included an association with the CPI and CPI (M) to the participation in the democratic rights movements and the publication of journals like Enquiry, Socialist Digest, The Marxist Review and so on. His contribution to the India’s teacher’s movement was irreplaceable. According to Prabhat Patnaik, ‘Professor Randhir Singh was not just a legendary teacher who inspired generations of students; he was also a Communist activist who played a stellar role in building up the progressive teachers’ movement in Delhi University.’

This period in the intellectual history of Marxism can be called ‘the Randhir Singh Phase’. He focused more on ontological questions rather than taking mere cognisance of appearances. He preferred the dialectics over the analytical in Marxism. In the post-USSR era, his writings on Marxism reflected not only his commitment but contained sharp insights on many crucial questions. His Marxism was weltanschauung—world view—which had a historical responsibility to human emancipation. He realised and pointed out the crisis of socialism (or betrayal) in the Post-Lenin era. ‘How come they failed to see what the poet [Bertolt Brecht], who was a communist, too, saw so early and so clearly, namely, the awesome alienation of the people from their rulers’ (Singh, 1992b: 1625). However, his, ‘notes of commitment’ remained sanguine about the future of Marxism.

A Marxist par excellence, he constantly stressed for Left unity. His three suggestions were apt in this regard. First, ‘[p]eople will of course continue to fight. If they do not fight the right battles, they will fight the wrong ones—and this will be yet another tragedy for them and for the communist Left in India’ (Singh, 2009: 119). Second, ‘If we cannot do the impossible, we better prepare to face the unthinkable’ (Singh, 2010). Third, ‘Today, you have to establish your democratic credentials, otherwise you are making a gift of the people to dictatorship and capitalism’ (Singh, 2013: 179). A truly ingrained left unity and a robust left struggle would be a befitting tribute to this dedicated intellectual-activist.