in association with
International Research Network on Religion and Democracy
presents an international conference
‘Are We Postsecular?’ Contesting Religion & Politics in Comparative Contexts
13–14 December 2012 Time: 9.30 am–6.00 pm
Venue: Auditorium, Lady Shri Ram College for Women,
Lajpat Nagar IV, New Delhi 110024 India
To REGISTER, please email at lsr.postsec@gmail.com with your name, affiliation & email ID. Registration is free.
Why
do social sciences in India thrive best outside the university system, asks
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, (‘Rigour in the margins’,
IE, November 15), lamenting that India’s most creative writers and social
scientists (with the honourable exception of history) have been housed in
research institutes cut off from students. Surely this self-congratulatory
myth-making has to stop? This constant devaluing of teaching and the refusal to
recognise the heavy odds that undergraduate and postgraduate teachers work
against while still producing world-quality research, accompanied by mutual
back-patting between a handful of Boys’ Club members that has become common
sense across the media, because the Boys’ Club has clout in the media…
Equally
importantly, Mehta discounts the hundreds of serious scholars produced by
teachers who, through their lectures, have introduced cutting edge philosophy
and social science to students in places in India where even Economic and
Political Weekly is difficult to come by, let alone international journals.
These students then reach Delhi and Hyderabad and Pune and
Kolkata, go on to do doctoral research, publish, and some may even join research
institutes. Research institutes are not produced in isolation.
Second,
if a thriving democratic culture pervades the Indian academy, it is hard won
and daily battled for by thousands of teachers across universities, in constant
conversation and quarrel with their students, in classrooms and outside.
Whether combating religious right-wings or economic neoliberalism, or
patriarchy and sexual harassment, it is teachers and students who drag the
stodgy upper echelons of the academy kicking and screaming in radically new
directions of theory and practice…
For,
despite everything, we know that teaching is what keeps us from becoming
complacent, and it is what keeps us creative. Research institutes are critical
components in the academic field, but only if they see themselves as
organically connected to universities and teaching. There must be a dynamic
exchange of energies between teaching and research — perhaps even exchange
programmes between research institutes and universities in which teachers get
time off to do research while the faculty of research institutes get to teach.
But this kind of organic connection is possible only if people in research
institutes have the clearsightedness and humility to see themselves as a part —
and only a part — of the larger energies constituting the intellectual field. The
writer is a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University ,
Delhi
South Asia Archive Launch - (title unknown) from Routledge India Originals's Facebook Wall by Routledge
India Originals South Asia Archive Launch from Taylor & Francis India Blog
Book
Launch of Devi Prasad by Prof. Naman P. Ahuja at India
International Centre Book
Launch of The Making Of A Modern Indian Artist-Craftsman: Devi Prasad by Prof.
Naman P. Ahuja on 16 September 2011
This
message is generated randomly from a collection of short written statements
taken from the notes, letters, and messages of The Mother. The
process of generating the guidance is the electronic equivalent of randomly
looking up a book to receive an indication or answer. 7:34 AM
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