When Amitabh Bachchan Made My Day

So Amitabh Bachchan is in the ‘hot seat’ these days for his comments on ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. Having read snippets of his views quoted in the media, and not having seen the movie, I do not think it would be fair to comment on them. I do wonder how many commentators have actually read his comments or seen the movie. In a television panel-discussion one of the panelists, after having fulminated at length on Bachchan’s views did confess (though after repeated prodding) that he had not actually read the comments -- but went on to justify his ire by saying that he had no reason to disbelieve the worthies who had quoted them.

The point is that we are ever ready to jump to conclusions on the flimsiest of grounds. This is what Bachchan laments in a later blog. However, unlike Bachchan who perhaps has been a victim of this tendency, I was once its beneficiary and this, incidentally, involved Amitabh Bachchan.

One morning while going to office in the Himachal University I found the road blocked by the police to allow a film-maker to complete a shot. As a young lad in Shimla I had often been fascinated by such shootings and had spent hours watching actors go endlessly through the same motions till the directors ‘Okayed’ the shot. Something of that fascination returned that morning and as my SPO proceeded to alight from the car to make way for us to proceed I told him, “Let them complete what they are doing and then we can go”. My driver and the SPO were more than happy to oblige because the tall figure of Amitabh Bachchan could be seen at some distance preparing to shoot.

However, this was not to be. A policeman on duty espied the standard official issue of white ambassador replete with red batti, flag, et al and stopped the shooting while frantically motioning to us to pass through. As we drove through the cordon Amtibah Bachchan, I suppose with some irritation, stopped whatever he was doing to watch this bossy official, with his ridiculous officious paraphernalia, jump the queue and drive away. Filled with embarrassment at this intrusion, and in a gesture of contrition, I waved out to Amitabh Bachchan. Surprisingly he responding with a half mock salute. My driver and SPO were thrilled. “Aare Sahib aap inko bhi jante hain?” I responded with a non-committal laugh !!

As luck would have it there was a traffic jam further down the road and I was late in reaching office. Consequently my first appointment got delayed. For one who made it a point to meet visitors at the exact time of their appointment, this was a matter of concern for my staff. However they decided to redeem ‘sahib’s izzat’ in their own resourceful way. I discovered this when the first delegation came in. As I apologized for keeping them waiting they said, “Auspicious day Sir – your morning meeting with Amitabh Bachchan.” This was the refrain throughout the day. I realized that my staff was telling every visitor or colleague that Sahib’s schedule was uncharacteristically running late due to a chance encounter with Amitabh Bachchan who insisted on engaging Sahib in a tête-à-tête. Later in the evening when the Deans came in for the customary briefing session the conversation began with: “Heard you are in a great mood today Sir due to your meeting with Amitabh Bachchan in the morning” By now I had become quite adept at the non-committal laugh.

The next morning as I drove into the University the number of students who waved to me was far in excess to the usual lot. I knew that at least for the time being my stock-in-trade had gone up -- thanks to Amitabh Bachchan.

St Stephen's: Christian College or Church Institution ?

In the midst of populist rhetoric about reservations for 'Christian dalits' at St Stephen's College Delhi some basic facts have been ignored. Media reports referring to the 1992 Supreme Court judgement on admissions to St Stephen's have consistently misrepresented the most crucial part of the judgement that states: "The minority institutions shall make available at least 50% of the annual admission to members of communities other than minority community."

Thus, seats upward of 50% have to be given to non-minority candidates. The remaining seats are for all reservation categories: Christians, physically challenged, sportspersons, children of war widows, etc. The judgement does not give a specific percentage for Christian candidates but leaves it to the State to fix this percentage proportionate to the minority population in that state.

Thus, a Christian institution in a state with a Christian population of, say 1%, may be required to admit minority candidates relative to this figure. If the State does not fix this percentage, then the institution is free to determine this number, keeping in mind that (a) at least 50% seats must go to other communities and (b) some of the remaining seats must be kept for other statutory categories, like the physically challenged, children of war widows, sportspersons etc.

Recent media reports also suggest that the special provision for Dalit Christians is a new idea. Here too the record needs to be set straight. The idea of a preferential approach for those from the dalit background, rural areas or low economic levels was discussed by the Supreme Council of the College as far back as May 2000. However, the matter was not allowed to go forward on the grounds that there were no legally acceptable indices to determine the "dalit" origins of a Christian. The idea of having Bishops certify this was viewed with horror, as cases of false baptism certificates occasionally came to light. Even though there are means of verifying the authenticity of baptism certificates, it was beyond imagination what could be done with so-called "Christian dalit certificates" for which no viable authentication is available.

It was also debated whether the College could create a special reservation category not provided for in the Indian Constitution, given that the College is run purely on government grants and does not get a penny from the Church.

In response to these objections, I as the then Principal, suggested that the College retain the 30% to 35% admission quota for Christians, but use it to grant admission to those from rural background and low economic levels. After all, making reservations available to those from well-to-do families and those who have had the best educational opportunities was not in the larger interest of either the concerned candidate or the community.

While civil society is willing to accept reservations for the deserving, this creates serious social tensions and resentments when given to those who do not need them. As an example I mentioned a letter from a candidate who said that his classmate, (whose father was a civil servant while his own was an office clerk), had been selected while he had been rejected. What pained him was that his selected classmate had scored 15 percent marks less than him and in anguish the young man had asked: "was I rejected only because I am a Sharma and he was selected because he is a Mathew even though I have scored more than him though he had more tuitions than me?" The example failed to move the powers-that-be and the matter was gratuitously closed by affirming the policy of giving preference (within legal parameters) to candidates from depressed backgrounds.

Thereafter, the issue of denial of schedule caste status to dalits who had converted to Christianity became a hot political and legal issue. The Church took the stand that a dalit is only a dalit: to classify a dalit as a "Muslim dalit" or a "Hindu dalit" or a "Christian dalit" is a pernicious political device to deny rights to some dalits on the basis of religion. Therefore, we have the curious situation where on the one hand the Church has the view that there cannot be discrimination between dalits on the basis of religion and on the other hand it proposes a separate reservation category for some dalits on the basis of religion itself!! Such a contradictory approach does more harm to the dalit cause than anything else.

If there has to be a preferential approach to the dalits, and there must be one, the Christian way is to have it for all dalits without distinction of any kind. This is what the College has, in effect, been doing for many years without tom-tomming it. In a meeting of the Supreme Council the Chairman himself had the following recorded: "The Chairman expressed satisfaction over the emphasis laid by Principal on special concern for Christians from the dalit background, rural areas, and low economic level families". This was in the year 2000.

So what exactly is the purpose of this great hype now? If nothing else, this has certainly succeeded in diverting attention from the vexing situation of the governance of College during the absence of the Principal. As a byproduct this also highlights the fact that there is a growing distinction between a "Christian College" and a "Church Institution". A "Christian College" is at the service of humankind-at-large: inclusive, eclectic, cosmopolitan, and ecumenical in the widest possible sense. A "Church institution" is at the service of the power structures of the political establishment within the Church: insular, blinkered, dogmatically sectarian, and concerned only about 'I, me and mine'. Most Christian schools and colleges are being called upon to choose whether they will be one or the other because it is no longer possible to be both at the same time. The history and the constitution of St Stephen's College show that it has, by conscious choice, been a 'Christian College" rather than a "church college". This has been its special distinguishing feature and the source of its educational and spiritual strength. One wonders if this is about to change.

* Times of India carried this on 19 June 2007

Humanizing Homo Sapiens

Humanizing Homo Sapien

A couple of days ago the finance section of a newspaper talked about a buoyant market as a result of the heavy Christmas-New Year spending. People, we were told, have more to spend and the markets have more to sell and this was a perfect setting for the ‘feel-good factor”.

Today, an ‘end-of-the-year’ new-paper report talks about the dramatic increase in alcoholism, aggression, suicides, rapes, road-rage incidents, et al. The ‘feel-good factor’, clearly, is only in the market place and not in peoples’ hearts and homes.

The confusion is, as it has always been, between ‘consumption’ and ‘satisfaction’. We tend to believe that the more we consume the more satisfied we would be. The truth is just the reverse. Excessive consumption is only an indication of the hollowness within. We seek to fill up our emotional, spiritual, intellectual hollowness with odds and ends purchased from bargain stores. I know people who, whenever they feel ‘low’, go off shopping to get over their gloominess. ‘Buy three for the price of two’ functions as a therapy for overcoming hungers that have their origin elsewhere. It works – but only as a placebo, a painkiller, that addresses the symptom not the problem, and leaves one more desperate than before. So we have people who are given to shopping devoid of requirement, to eating devoid of need, to sex devoid of relationship.

I hear that “Kaun Banega Crorepati” is being revived. The original KBC was a huge success – it filled up the hollowness in so many lives through the vicarious delight of seeing someone like themselves being suddenly catapulted into a state of fiscal nirvana. And that, many believe, is the only nirvana there is. I wonder if anyone has tried to find out what happened to the lives of those who won big money at KBC. Once I did come across a survey of people who had won lotteries and the conclusion generally went on to uphold the adage ‘easy come easy go’.

In some ways this situation is reflective of the failure of education. We have an education that refuses to acknowledge the real world and would live in its own ivory tower. And we have another education that only kow-tows to the ‘real’ world with no eyes to see beyond the dollar signs or ears to hear beyond the cash-register, no vision of the ideal, no concern for the need to constantly and continuously humanize the homo sapien species.

Perhaps it is time we began to bridge the gulf between these two educations.

The Guru

“Guru” is a much abused term and has come to connote a person skilled in the art of trickery of some kind. A “Guru” is also an honorific given to god-men and evangelists of all kinds. However in the traditional sense it was a term used for a teacher and it simply meant ‘one who is so weighty or profound that he cannot be shaken’, one who is so deeply established within himself that nothing can affect the complete dedication he has towards his vocation. The dedication the guru-teacher is not to scholarship or to esoteric intellectual pursuits or to promoting an ideology or to personal advancement of any other kind. It is to the process of self-actualization in his ‘shishya’, his student. “A teacher, if he is wise.” Says Gibran, “does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.” Given this approach real and true scholarship will follow.

Now, everyone who teaches is not a “Guru”. If a sense of personal gain or self-promotion comes in the way of this dedication then one is not a “Guru”; one is only a vendor of the information commodity. Obviously as a vendor his approach is governed by the laws of the market place. If on top of this he happens to be an unethical vendor (and such a breed is not entirely unknown) he sells spurious stuff, he under-weighs, he shortchanges his students. Therefore in the Hindu Scriptures we are, again and again, enjoined to select our Guru very carefully. Just as we cannot be carried away by his personal appearance so we cannot be swayed by his oratory – anyone with a bit of effort can turn a good phrase. We cannot be carried away by his show of scholarship – the hallmark of a true teacher is not the show of scholarship but the ability to absorb and internalize his scholarship in a manner that it functions at the level of his most disadvantaged student. Similarly it cannot be his intellect because unless the intellect is totally focused on the value of the student it can become an instrument to confuse and confound.

So how does one identify the true Guru, the genuine teacher? The significant test is that of ‘authenticity’. Does a teacher’s life accord with what he professes? Is he in the pandering business or the elevating mode? In other words how does he understand and express his function as a teacher. This function is not to enable the student to pass examinations just as it is not to teach him the ways of the world – this the student will learn anyway. The basic function is to ‘sensitize’. Does the study of literature sensitize his student to the importance of human emotions and feelings? Does the study of history sensitize his student to the forces that propel human existence and bring misery of happiness in their wake? Does the study of economics sensitize his student to the importance of material needs required for a meaningful existence? Does the study of science sensitize his student to the rhythms and patterns in nature to so awaken his mind to the need to live in harmony with it and his heart to the great mystery of existence? In short, a teacher becomes a ‘Guru’ if he sensitizes – because in doing so he carries out the most important function of education: to humanize.

And this is what differentiates a teacher who is ‘Guru’ from a teacher who is a vendor of information.

Education and the Fear of Freedom

Education, particularly university education, suffers from fear of freedom. To adapt Francis Bacon (and with apologies to this worthy) academics fear freedom as children fear going into the dark. Or else would we have so many universities where courses of study have remained unchanged for decades?! And experience shows that even Zeus cannot save you from the Furies if you have the temerity to start academic programmes that do not have paternalistic sanction.

They tell us that the ‘knowledge age’ has dawned—and yet education and educators continue to live in the eclipse of the industrial age. Note the sacrosanct division of ‘labour’ between the teacher and the student. Note our fear of originality, our veneration of conformity, our concern for the product and equal disregard for the process. In the ultimate all these are indicators of our fear of freedom. We may cry ourselves hoarse that education is not industry yet we continue to be slaves to the ‘sequential curriculum process’ that is reminiscent of the assembly-line process of the industrial age. And so we continue to be content with a learning that is merely ‘taking in information’ (‘survival learning’) and never graduates to a participation in the creation and re-creation of our world (‘creative learning’).

This fear of freedom is particularly evident in our paternalistic prescriptive approach to pedagogy which is then reflected in the manner in which we confuse teaching with learning, skills with knowledge, information with wisdom, degrees with competence, fluency with the ability to think afresh, and marks with merit.

So where do we begin? Perhaps we could begin by affirming that education is a holistic progressive accumulative continuum. We may divide it into various sections for better understanding but we cannot treat these sections as complete in themselves. A sectional, and therefore truncated, approach to education results in a definition of ‘merit’ that too is truncated and therefore highly unsatisfactory. While ‘classroom’ work has to remain an important concern of education, the activity in co-curricular clubs and societies, as also on the playing field, must find equal space on the ‘merit’ chart. Then perhaps our definition of merit may become a little more pragmatic and real. Francis Bacon (he sure is looming large today) divided books into three kinds: those to be simply tasted, those to be chewed, and those to be swallowed and digested. This description applies as aptly to life in college as to books. Some activities are meant to be savoured and passed over, others to be dissected and analyzed while there are those that are meant to be assimilated and internalized so that they remain with us to be mulled over for years to come. Thus there are aspects of academic life that are of immediate consequence while there are others that may not germinate for years after one graduates. Yet these are the experiences that feed the soul and promote critical thinking, interculture sensitivity and civic responsibility. These in turn promote that degree of perception, discernment and intuition that are the hallmark of a truly ‘educated’ person.

But the point is – how does one factor these into a practical and workable understanding of education?

Perhaps the first move could be liberating education from the fear of freedom. This would involve a rejection of the paternalistic prescriptive apparatus and replacing it with creative responsibility coupled to a generous measure of autonomy. As long as this does not happen our educational processes and programmes will continue to be dogged by issues of relevance, quality, and accountability.

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Obsession with success

I have had occasions to sit through the ‘Annual Day’ programmes of a large number of schools all over the country. The Head’s report is invariably a list of ‘successes’ and ‘achievements’ of various kinds. I too have done the same thing while presenting the annual report of my institution. However on every such occasion I have felt more than a twinge of discomfort. This is because somewhere I feel that the idea of success in the world of education must not be, but unfortunately is, the same as it is elsewhere. This is the kind of success that thrives on institutionalized aggression, what we call competition. It portrays the pursuit of status and power as a desirable and justifiable yearning for the Holy Grail. We are a society obsessed with the idea of success but rarely have we paused to question the nature of the ‘success’ that we make our young hanker after. Very conveniently we forget that someone’s success is also someone else’s failure. Haunted by the specter of failure we produce large numbers of students who suffer from, what a newspaper recently called, obsessive career disorders. No wonder we live in a sick society dominated by aggression, hostility, betrayal and injustice. There is little or no societal space for the passive, the acquiescent, for one who is not a warrior all set to conquer the world. The massive insecurity that such a situation creates is both astonishing and highly destructive for our young. One wonders how one can even begin to address this issue, let alone reverse the trend.