The Spectacle that is Liberal Arts

As a Humanities student for five years, I had always wanted to put my thoughts about my experiences on paper. I had been procrastinating it, but Sudhansu Mohanty’s article ‘Humanities in the time of profiteering pursuits’ (9 July, The Hindu) triggered me to do so. This is because while I do not know if Mr Mohanty is a Humanities student or not, he did miss a lot of points.

***

My favourite subjects in school were history and physics. My first love was history, physics my second. But I loved both equally. Earnestly, I wanted to do a dual major in both. There not being a college or university in India that offered it; and not having scored very well in physics and mathematics in my school-leaving exams, I decided to pursue history. The logic was that I should not be naïve and foolhardy and go and do something in which I was evidently bad at even school level. History was something I loved, and knew I could manage without additional help.

First Realizations

In my undergraduate programme in history, there were interesting subjects on Medieval Europe, Japanese History, Russian History and even subjects that tilted more towards biology/anthropology, like prehistory and human evolution. By their own admittance, my professors had never had a degree in medieval Europe or Russian history and so on. Instead, they had done degrees – specializations – in ancient India, medieval India, or modern India. Not that they did not give excellent lectures, but call it inter-disciplinarity, as an eighteen-year-old, my first ‘life’ lesson as a history/humanities/arts student was that even if one continued in academia, one might not end up teaching or practising what s/he had spent years specializing in.

This belief was only to get strengthened as I bided my time, when many professors joked about how when they had started finding out jobs, they were given those subjects to teach that were ‘lying vacant’ (‘khali pade the’). As young and green and inexperienced people, they had protested, telling the recruitment officer that they had specializations in specific periods of Indian history, and were summarily told to scoot if they didn’t want to teach, or teach whatever subject was being offered to them if they wanted a job (‘padhana hai padhao, varna bhaag jao’), they fondly recalled being told so. And they had spent good thirty years teaching something they had not studied in their Master’s.

The second realization was a little more disheartening.

Although the teachers recommended ‘good,’ ‘extensive’ books, it seemed common knowledge among students that they are not meant to be read. I was surprised when I saw that there was a parallel industry in the University of Delhi run by its own professors wherein they boiled down extensive – often-expensive, richly illustrated, mostly written by foreign authors – books into abridged, easily digestible, cheaply printed, drab textbooks for DU exams that were more of exam guides than textbooks. It was just like Gray’s Anatomy became Chaurasia’s Anatomy for MBBS students. I had thought that this industry was limited to school-level books for board exams, so I was shocked at first that this practice was alive and kicking even at the university level.

Those books, though written for the undergraduate level, were appropriate only when the topic was the entire programme, not one paper among 24. It did make sense though, and I realized this the hard way, that it was unwise to read so much and yet gain so little. I had spent two semesters by the time I realized that reading a heavy book in one subject meant you left out the other eight. Reading abridged versions written by DU, for DU or scouting for photocopies of past lecture notes would leave you better off in an exam.

What’s going on?

Of course, not all books written by DU professors were like that, some were indeed exhaustive and well-illustrated. Surprisingly – and I do not know why – the same people who wrote such good books also wrote guidebooks-dressed-as-textbooks, even on subjects remote from them.

For example, imagine my surprise, when in my Master’s I realized that the professor who had written the recommended textbook for prehistory/human evolution for the undergraduate History Hons programme at University of Delhi was a professor of nineteenth century history at postgraduate level at the same university. I am all for people who claim expertise in fields as far apart as possible, but s/he did not even teach one paper on prehistory/human evolution at the postgraduate level, a subject for which s/he had written no less than the recommended textbook for undergraduates!

This meant that a person who did not consider himself worthy enough to teach a topic even to postgraduate students, and considered himself good-enough at the undergraduate level, was writing a book on it for undergraduates. You are an undergraduate student, you have to write a textbook for peers at your own level. Do you have it in you?

If that was just hilarious, consider this: historians dressed themselves up as environment specialists and wrote one book on environmental issues or environmental histories. As if people who have done an MSc in environmental sciences are not adequate.

They said it was to bring an ‘environmental awareness’ in students from all disciplines. How will I become environmentally aware by memorizing a book that boiled down to discussing environmental movements like Chipko Andolan etc. that every Indian schoolkid has anyway studied every year in his school from his third grade right up to his twelfth grade? If you have to kill anyone’s interest in a subject, make him study it as a subject at an Indian school/university.

To understand the motives behind this exercise, I had to over-simplify it, and things became clearer. These professors were the ones who sat in the curricula designing committees for their respective university. So, they fashioned the curriculum in such a way that their textbooks became compulsory readings. Even if they added a ‘further reading’ section in the curricula, it was mere tokenism, because even they, the undergraduate teachers and the students knew that one had to study the DU professors’ books as that is what will come in use in the exams. The question paper was, after all, set by them.

The subject on ‘environmental issues in India’ was one similar case. A bunch of social scientists had written a book on which they had no expertise (environment/anthropology) and had made it mandatory reading. It did not even do justice to environmental issues, as it merely parroted basic things that every Indian school kid knew already. Ask any student at University of Delhi, s/he had bought Mahesh Rangarajan’s Environmental Issues in India: A Reader, because they had to, just for the exams. Nobody had wanted to read the boring, imbecile book. They had thrown it away the moment they passed its exam.

Because their books were compulsory readings, every kid had to buy it. That is how you create demand for a run-of-the-mill product: you make it mandatory. And hey, it’s not expensive, so there’s no reason for you not to buy it!

If you questioned them on it, they’d say ‘No, but we never said our book is compulsory. You can read any book that you like. It’s a free system.’ But the book was cut-out for preparing the student for the question paper in the minimum time possible. Or rather, the question paper was clearly based on the book: you just had to read twenty pages from the book for every question on the paper. You’re beginning to wonder what started what first. Classic chicken-and-egg problem.

The only succour when these things happened was that they must be happening in the science departments too in equal measure.

***

Humanities programmes in universities across the globe tend to be political and politicized. Numerous debates and guest lectures in the college had left me, and many other students, confused about what is Left and what is Right. What the Right said today was spoken by the Left the next day, the arguments the Left gave were later used by the Right to its own strengths. These funny ways were at their height in pre-Election 2014 in the recent memory of our generation, most of whom were born in or after 1990. The only effect of Right v Left was that it left students keen on mastering political theory into a tizzy.

Under-graduation, a fun-filled time, was over before I knew it.

Job Market

When we were in school, we were surrounded with disgruntled BTech students, and newspaper articles about the rise of the Humanities. We had chosen a ‘different’ path, to stand apart from the ‘crowd,’ and develop a much-touted ‘sensitivity’ by studying liberal arts. By the way, saying that Humanities are ‘in fashion’ and that ‘it allows you to stand out from the crowd’ is mutually contradictory. How can I stand apart if I am doing something in vogue in the first place?

Even today, I see articles written by Humanities professors targeting school students on how Arts prepares you for the workplace of the future[1] and maths and science were the bad boys that were being ‘shoved down the little ones’ throats’.

Such ambassadors of Humanities are often seen at career counselling sessions in schools: confidently labelling Indian parents as close-minded who cannot think beyond the usual engineering and medicine tracks, and bind their kids into that; proudly declaring how Western parents are more open-minded and allow their progenies to Major in Drama or Literature. They then proceed to encourage children to think ‘out-of-the-box’ and perhaps even appeal to the children’s and parents’ lack of confidence of English to tell them how lack of proficiency in English can hinder their career development. They never told that mere English proficiency cannot get you ahead in your career if you lack hard skills; if you do not have hard skills and use English to just get ahead in your career, you are a braggart.

Now the time had come when we saw our engineering counterparts, who had been cursing their fate as they did their undergraduation at the same time, get into well-paying jobs. The engineering folks, it seemed had acted smart at least in the short-term: they had spent six-seven years in a way that the Humanities folks had considered too lowbrow for them, and were now calling the shots. We were well aware that BTech graduates too would not necessarily be utilizing any skills they learnt in those four years. We could do those jobs too, some of us were just as good at Microsoft Excel. But we just would not get hired.

Some of us left academia, only to work as content-writers or designing logos and products for fancy merchandise outlets at best. Others worked at NGOs, and I sometimes ran into them distributing pamphlets on animal rights at Law Faculty. There is nothing wrong with that, and they appeared happy. But was this they had set out to do? They could have simply volunteered for this while doing some professional programme. As I said, they seemed happy doing it, but was it that they had just come to terms with this and were compelled to be contended with it knowing it was too late to change the road they were on? I wonder how these Humanities ambassadors will react if their child tells them ‘I want an Arts education that helps me grow as a person in an all-rounded way; after that, when I grow up, I see myself distributing pamphlets for PETA at age 25’. Was this the exalted workplace of the future or were they asking us to do Arts because it will be valuable when we are fifty? The tragedy is that an Arts education often means an Arts-only education; and Departments that provide that are already closing down.

As for Western parents being more open-minded, recently, Times Higher Education came out with an issue entirely on parents whose kids were going to university for the first time[2]. Some of the respondents were also university professors whose kids were now going to university. The issue discussed their role in making a child decide his discipline. In most cases, like much-maligned Indian parents, they too ‘forced’ their kids to go into professional subjects. ‘If s/he gets funding, then she can study Drama or whatever she wants. But if I am paying for the education, then she will have to let me decide’ was the most common reply.

Those who continued in the academic environment knew that it was no place to exercise the sensitivity towards humanities we had learnt – we had to be cut-throat in our publications, criticize the other at the slightest evidence, get some airtime on the radio, or do whatever required to create our own mythology. Evidence? Nobody cared a rap for evidence, anyway we can summon whatever evidence we liked, statistical data is everyone’s friend. Evidence, as it is, only meant something certified by The Hindu or The New York Times or something that bore the stamp of Oxford University Press or Penguin-Random House.

Even those who soldiered on in academia, many worked outside college hours, even if from home (which meant a hostel, mostly) or prepared for competitive exams. Yet, on one occasion, although I did not react, it disturbed me when a professor in my Master’s programme who had gotten a permanent lectureship in 1979 immediately after her/his MA (such a thing is unimaginable now) remarked what a useless bunch of kids s/he had, who were not interested in studying the subject. Some of us indeed were not and were just studying for a Degree, but many of us were sincerely interested. But even the dullest of us knew that even becoming toppers would not get us much.

Studying what we liked, many of us knew, was an indulgence after all. All of us knew that when we go out and hunt jobs, two years after those who did this straight after BA, we would be asked for five years work experience.

That much work experience from twenty-one-year olds who have just done with college and were in school till eighteen? The only way to notch up was to do part-time jobs, unpaid internships and teach at tuition centres etc., so that we had something up our résumés when we stepped out. I wonder how many internships the professor would have done in her/his BA?

Academia

The Master’s experience was disillusioning for most students I knew.

Many of us who continued in academia had their first encounter with jargon-loaded theories that did not make sense, some insincere professors who really did not know a word of what they taught and even sometimes set the same question paper for different subjects, leading many of us to genuinely believe that our undergraduate professors were much more concerned and sincere about the discipline (let alone us) than postgraduate ones.

Hindi medium students had it worse. Most came from small towns, had studied in government schools and had really sweated it out to be here. Now, more than undergraduation, they had to compete with the English-speaking literati that had studied in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata schools. A Humanities degree, they had hoped, would keep them in good stead or at least place them at-par with the English-speaking Humanities students as both sat for UPSC. Most had come here after having unfortunately been unsuccessful in getting a seat in engineering or medical colleges worth anyone’s money.

It was now a Master’s Humanities / Liberal Arts programme, no longer a Bachelor’s, where journal articles spoke in a jargon-acronym-pronouns-loaded English that even English medium students (like me) did not understand and had them searching hostels and xerox shops for seniors’ notes. It, thus, was not a math or a science degree where the Hindi speaking students could breeze through with their mathematical prowess and limited linguistic ability. Tut, tut: English language ability.

We, the English medium students, could not chip in because we too found it hard to understand the English written in articles and books. When we did understand it, we realized it does not really convey much! So, what was there to translate?

The funniest part was that most of us English-speaking junkies who hung out at the poshest bohemian cafés in Hauz Khas and Greater Kailash, wore accessories of Rastafarian colours, had Dylan on our portable music players to show how ‘earthed’ we were, also could not speak one complete sentence in either English or Hindi without committing grammatical errors. Nevertheless, all of us had learnt the right accent that helped us navigate Khan Market or Lodi Road, or exchange email addresses with the who’s-who at India Habitat Centre pretty smoothly. Almost none of us were good at science or mathematics, or we would inevitably have been forced – sorry, sorry, persuaded – by our parents into BTEch or MBBS programmes. What was actually surprising was that even in the Humanities, for which one might think language proficiency was a must, we did not fare much better than many engineering students, for whom the general notion was that linguistic proficiency is an optional.

***

There were multiple papers on gender history, all of which ended up teaching the same thing. Why have so many papers when all of them teach the same thing? It was soon to become clear: scores of people had to make a career in academia. For their MPhil/PhD dissertations/theses, they had to pick up something that they knew existed and they and their supervisor could handle well. And it was often something that had already been written about countless times. They had the onerous task of pumping something new into it as ‘new,’ maybe write with a new jargon, borrow some highbrow philosophical thought by Kant, Habermas or Hume and create their own credo. ‘Ab Gupta Art ke upar aur kya likhoon?’ an art history student was heard to sigh in the corridor. If lucky, they got a contract with Permanent Black.

Equally amusing was how every new generation of professors – and I am sure this happens in all Humanities disciplines – dumped the work done by previous generations’ scholars, only to adopt the work of scholars prior to that. Among many books, I was specifically asked not to read the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan series, as it would make me ‘communal.’ Instead, I found the Bhavan series much more exhaustive than the photocopies we were given to read. Their claims on free speech aside, did they ask me not to read those books as they would have shown the new crop of historians/social scientists really did not have anything new to say? Why did they have to resort to this? Forget Mr Mohanty’s claim on needing to revise the curricula, our professors/curricula were not even faring well on its own yardsticks and values. I have specific examples here, but I will leave it here.

If all this was amusing, then the next thing was downright annoying. It was the continued rant of academia with its fingers dipped in ‘humanities’ that our universities were becoming more dominated by the upper-caste and the university curricula was increasingly having an upper-caste tint to it. A computation of our faculty members’ profile and our syllabi would have told that the most common PhD topics for our professors were gender history, Dalits, peasant uprisings, colonial Bengal and so on. I did not see a single ‘upper-caste’ element in them (other than ridiculing it, of course). The medieval history track was full of Islamic history, as if Vijayanagara or Tamilakam post-1200 or Marathas were just fringe elements. The modern history papers were largely about Gandhi, Ambedkar and Dalits, peasant uprisings etc. Attending a modern history class was like listening to an AIR broadcast from 1970s. Ancient India, which I took, was slightly better and interesting (I know the latter is subjective) with language-oriented papers, but even they were loaded with social history papers all of which parroted the same thing about marginalized sections of the society.

Do not get me wrong, I am all for ‘other’ sections of the society being brought to light in social sciences, though not at the expense of the already existing branches. Anyway, with no professors in the department having changed, how were departments having an upper-caste outlook all of a sudden? They were doing and teaching topics they liked and no one was forcing them to teach a paper they did not like. In our syllabus, as I mentioned above, the ratio of political/military history papers to social history (read: subaltern, gender) papers was easily one-to-five.

Still, if that is the outlook the academics want their departments to have even if to the exclusion of earlier existing strands of thought, I am alright with it, as they are running the department after all. But what annoyed me was that like spoilt kids, they were crying about not being allowed to have their way even when they were clearly having their way.

And a whale of a time, as they also went on international tours (alright, alright, ‘conferences’) even more than IAS officers.

***

Being the only right-wing Conservative student did not make it easier either. One of the professors even called me ‘you brahmin boy, your ancestors were the ones who landed us in this mess we’re in.’ No, s/he did not say this in jest. I shudder to think what would have happened had I said this to a student from another community (I did not even need to compare Muslim students with their ancestors, but only with their contemporaries).

All the streets in DU were lined with posters of ‘Fight against Brahmanical Oppression.’ I used to walk ashamedly as a ‘brahmin boy’ myself thinking of what wrong have I done. It was impossible for us to get jobs in Tamil Nadu. Was Delhi, then, not far now? And, oppression? It was well-off people form non-upper-caste categories that got all the reservations.

There were upper-caste Hindus who relegated an entire class of people to a certain profession. At the same time, it is well known that there were landless Brahmins too. This was never mentioned by our professors. The usual excuse was that it was out of the scope of the syllabus. The same professors sang praises of medieval Indian Islamic architecture. They often called it Indo-Islamic architecture, as if Islamic invaders took to Indian elements very kindly. It was clearly Central Asian architecture, why use the euphemism of ‘Indo-Islamic’? Not a word about the reason behind the presence of Hindu motifs or bells on the pillars of Quwwatul Islam in the Qutb Complex (talk of imbibing Indian elements)[3]. Not a word about African slavery at the hands of Arab moors in the ninth century. Not a word about Tipu Sultan inviting the King of Persia to massacre Hindus so that they could do a joint-rule. Out of scope of syllabus, I suppose? C’mon, I have done that in four lines. Had they introduced all these in equal measure, and then asked students to pick which is worse, it would have been fair enough.

Hindus were supposed to feel guilty and stop their traditional task of memorising and teaching the Vedas, as they posed direct threats to Christianity and Islam. I can personally testify that there are equally poor Brahmins who do cannot avail Reservation. I am also sure there are few Brahmins today who will openly, overtly claim they are enslaving Sudras. But by looking at the atrocities committed by Islamic invaders, I did not find a single Muslim who owns up or apologizes about it or even mend his ways [4][5]. Why the double standard in their treatment then?

***

After five years, I had decided I had had enough. Not because the Humanities had not made me ‘marketable’ in the job market. But because the very people who practiced these exalted disciplines, and wrote peans about it in higher education supplements had failed to be honest towards their own values they advertised. It seemed that they had created those values as alibis only to summon them when they needed to justify their immediate goals, which still elude me. Instead, they had ended up spreading a toxicity that, above all, did not cost them at all.

Earlier, when I used to hear about Humanities departments closing down in universities across the globe, I used to think ‘what is the world coming to?’ But now, when I read such news, I feel happy that this may be a sign of people taking Humanities in their own hands

[1] The Creativity Quotient by Madhuvanti S Krishnan; The Hindu, Monday, 28 Aug 2017

[2] Times Higher Education, 12-18 Jan 2017, No 2288

[3] https://www.quora.com/Is-Qutub-Minar-built-over-premises-of-a-plundered-Hindu-temple

[4] https://www.quora.com/What-incidents-in-India-have-brought-true-national-shame/answer/Abdul-Qadir-328

[5] https://www.quora.com/Do-Hindus-living-in-Muslim-majority-areas-in-India-face-any-problems-or-do-they-live-normally/answer/Arpit-Goyal-15?srid=tnxV

– Ritvik Chaturvedi

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