Abstract
Being one of the largest and most complex systems of its kind in the world, Indian higher education is packed with contradictions of numerous kinds. Amidst a series of profound changes and tremendous expansion over the course of last century, Indian universities continue to enroll a record-high student population, employ a large labour force and operate through numerous institutional networks and alliances. As the discourse on ‘world-class university’, ‘innovation university’ and ‘entrepreneurial university’ begins to gain prominence in India, the questions of unevenness of quality, support and structure re-emerge. As pointed out by many, the expansion of higher education in historic proportions has also brought along several moments of crisis. These overt contradictions have perhaps contributed to the growing scholarly interest in universities in recent years. Andre Béteille’s book Universities at the Crossroads does add to the conversation about the changing imagination of institutions of learning. It is a timely intervention that takes us through many significant epochs in the life span of Indian universities.
The essays offer a sense of familiarity and continuation, for one gets re-acquainted with Béteille’s intellectual investment in institutional analysis. Written in a rather conversational spirit, the essays also present a continuation of his liberal democratic positions on many contentious questions. Public institutions in India have been at the centre of Béteille’s scholarly engagement for long. As he correctly acknowledges, the new public institutions entered the Indian social landscape with a (relatively) open and secular structure, which differed from the exclusively kinship-based social organisations. Given that universities have been a necessary part of the Indian project of modernity, how do we make sense of these superimposed structures? How do we understand the heavy-handed bureaucracy, regimentation and regulation that govern our universities? In many ways, Béteille returns to the questions of equality, openness, inclusion and the very purpose of higher education. Capturing the changes in Indian higher education is a massive project. Béteille gives some screen time to ‘quotas’, ‘caste prejudice’ and the ‘limits of equality’. As far as the tenor of his arguments goes, however, reading the essays (which were mostly delivered at various institutions) shows how hard it is to imagine socially just universities.
The essays take stock of the gradual expansion of public institutions, particularly the ways in which universities and colleges have been elemental in creating democratic spaces for access, action, participation, individual and community mobility. From first generation learners to first generation white-collar workers, then to first generation transnational flexi-workers, the presence and experience of higher education is closely tied with the struggles around aspirations, middle-class values and migration of different kinds. In his charitable reading of the history of universities in India, Béteille highlights the open character of Indian institutions and notes, ‘Dalits, Muslims, and women were not debarred from entering the universities as their counterparts would have been till the middle of the nineteenth century in Oxford and Cambridge’ (p. 17). Given that the rapid expansion of Indian universities took place in the 20th century and the access to higher education for dalits and Muslims is low ‘even today’, one wonders what the point about ‘open access in principle’ serves.
The point is not an anecdote in isolation. It sets the stage for Béteille’s larger argument, which rests on the premise that Indian universities have been open enough and it is time now for them to be more selective. For instance, the University Education Commission’s observation, ‘Intellectual work is not for all, it is only for the intellectually competent’ is mentioned frequently in the book. For what seems like a not-thought-out-filler, lacking in analytic or research basis, the above quote is used by Béteille to draw attention to the rapidly changing demographics in higher education and the dwindling standards. The two, according to Béteille, are causally connected. For him, social inclusion should be the mandate of universities, but only to a certain extent and it should be subsidiary to the pursuit of scientific scholarship.
Reservations have been at the heart of much of the anxiety about the role and functioning of our universities. The subtle and explicit manifestations of casteism, caste-assertion and caste-blindness all get played out in education in many ways. A quick glance at the history of higher education in India allows us to see the ways in which upper caste men sought to inhabit institutions of higher learning in the 19th century. Possibilities of government employment and social prestige were the immediate motives behind the investment on the part of the upper caste elite, who went on to occupy administrative, political and intellectual leadership roles. To my disappointment, Béteille does not consider the nuances of the making and spread of higher educational institutions, their relationship with political power and the reasons for strategic investments and claims on these public institutions by various groups. Instead, he looks at the compulsions of higher education within the over-familiar frames including caste-based quotas, social inclusion and academic standards. What is more intriguing, Béteille chooses to talk about ‘caste prejudice’ (not casteism) and ‘quotas’ (not reservation), thus opting for a lexicon that reduces structural realities to individualised experiences. Addressing the question of caste, for instance, he states:
Social prejudice based on gender, race, religion, ethnicity, or caste exists in one form or another in most if not all societies. There is at best a difference of degree between India and other countries. It is difficult to agree that the very limited presence of the backward castes in the best university institutions is due solely to the social bias against them. Why has the bias against them remained unchanged or, as some say, even increased when the bias against women in those very institutions has declined significantly? (p. 54)
Comparing the trajectory of backward castes in higher education to that of ‘women’ who are interestingly not marked in terms of their castes is supposed to make us re think caste-based reservations in education. He goes on to state: ‘Where they [caste quotas] have been used on a massive scale, they have contributed to a better mix of castes and communities, but they have also contributed to a steady decline in academic standards’ (p. 57). Unfortunately, neither do we see a substantiation of these claims in the essays, nor do we find an exposition on academic standards.
To reiterate the point made above, Béteille’s essays tell us how hard it is to imagine academic spaces as open and democratic. The changes in higher education can be understood in the context of social inclusion, or alternatively, in the context of social justice. The crossroads at which our universities find themselves are messy, no doubt.