Re-Markings
Vol. 11 No. 2, September 2012
Editorial
“A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning,” stated
Benjamin Disraeli.
I would like to examine this statement in the context of an event of
considerable importance that took place two centuries ago at Oxford
University, “the oldest university in the English speaking world
[that] has been educating world changing leaders for over 800 years.”
Inspired by intense love for scientific reasoning, a beautiful and
effectual angel, hailing from the protected precincts of an
aristocratic order, dared to sing hymns unbidden in praise of
“atheism.” Yes, the reference is to P.B. Shelly and his (in)famous “The
Necessity of Atheism,” the thirteen-page tract that led to his
expulsion from Oxford University on March 25, 1811.
The
pamphlet argued the lack of evidence for the existence of God and
suggested that God was just a projection of human ideas. The title page
of the tract displayed his avowed purpose in writing it: “love of
truth.” Far from being impressed by his innocent demand for qualified
reasoning, the presiding dons at Oxford – “the men who had made Divinity
the study of their lives” – found his reasoning reprehensible and
asked him in an abruptly summoned summary trial, “Are you the author of
this book?” The impetuous one curtly replied: “If I can judge from
your manner, you are resolved to punish me if I should acknowledge that
it is my work. If you can prove that it is, produce your evidence; it
is neither just nor lawful to interrogate me in such a case and for
such a purpose. Such proceedings would become a court of inquisitors,
but not free men in a free country.”
In a
letter written to William Godwin, his future father-in-law, Shelley
recorded his complaint of college tyranny in no uncertain terms:
“Oxonian society was insipid to me, uncongenial with my habits of
thinking. I could not descend to common life….I became in the popular
sense of the word ‘God’ an Atheist. I printed a pamphlet avowing my
opinion, and its occasion. I distributed it anonymously to men of
thought and learning wishing that Reason should decide on the case at
issue. It was never my intention to deny it.” Perhaps Shelley was
unaware how, even in the heyday of the Romantic age, when to be young
was very heaven, such thoughts were blasphemous.
Strangely
coinciding with the bicentenary year of Shelley’s expulsion from
Oxford University, we may shift our gaze to an event located in the
capital town of the world’s largest democracy. Showing scant regard for
the ideals of “light, liberty and learning,” the Vice Chancellor and
the Academic Council of Delhi University brazenly removed A.K.
Ramunjan’s brilliant and insightful essay, “Three Hundred Ramayanas:
Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation,” from the B.A.
(Honours) History course. The controversy came to the fore in the year
2008 when some activists, inspired by their concern for saving
“Hindutwa,” attacked teachers in the Delhi University’s history
department and demanded that the essay be removed from the B.A. History
syllabus. The matter finally landed up in the Supreme Court which
sought the opinion of an academic expert committee on the issue.
Surprisingly, three out of four members on the said committee voted in
favour of the essay. The lone dissenting voice was that of the fourth
member who, while praising the essay’s scholarship, came to the
conclusion that “it would be difficult for college lecturers to teach
with sufficient context, especially those who weren’t Hindu.”
It may be pertinent to mention here the remarks of Professor Michael Shapiro, University of Washington, Seattle, who, responding to my “Editorial” in the March 2012 issue of Re-Markings, stated:
“I enjoyed what you had to say and agree with you totally. By the
way, your article made me reflect on all the nonsense that’s been
taking place at Delhi University with regard to A.K. Ramanujan’s old
article on the various versions of the Ramayana. There seems to be no end of craziness.”
Such
craziness, however, is not a rare instance in the general atmosphere
of intolerance that prevails in our groves of academe. In very recent
times Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey was
removed from Mumbai University’s literature syllabus simply because it
allegedly contained some “disparaging” comments about “Shiv Sena and
the Marathis.” No less absurd is the logic forwarded by the powers that
be in removing the sixty-year old Ambedkar cartoon from NCERT books.
The price paid by Professor Ambikesh Mahapatra of Jadavpur University
for circulating a cartoon featuring Trinamool Congress leaders is
common knowledge now. Robert Frost’s candid confession that he left
Harvard “to be educated” does make a lot of sense.
Disturbing
events that threaten to destroy the very rationale of intellectual
autonomy in democratic societies do urge us to reformulate Benjamin
Disraeli’s statement to accommodate the express views of Doris Lessing,
the Nobel Laureate: “In university they don't tell you that the
greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.”
- Nibir K. Ghosh
Chief Editor
