Mapping Minds, Changing Maps is a research project that Sunandan has been engaged in since January 2002.  Sunandan has been an International Policy Fellow of the Open Society Institute, Budapest and the Centre  for Policy Studies, Central European University from January 2002 to March 2003. Sunandan got a grant from the International Policy Fellowships Program of the OSI to conduct his research. Sunandan’s research is also linked to a larger project called ‘Role of Universities in Social Transformation’ that the Open University in London, U.K. is doing in collaboration with OSI and other institutions like the Association of Commonwealth Universities.

The report can be divided into some sections, namely,

1. Introduction
2. Research on Slovenia and Poland
3. Research on Bangladesh and Pakistan
4. Research on India
5. Workshops, Conferences and Lectures
 
 

1.Introduction

Sunandan’s engagement with this theme is not a recent one. Even when he was a student in Calcutta in the late eighties, one thought that used to be prominent in his mind was, what happen to student activists. He used to wonder, for example, about the lives of the 68 generation in the west and also wanted to compare notes with the lives that student radicals of late 60s in Calcutta were living in early nineties. Later, while editing Sampark Journal of Global Understanding, which brought him in contact with intelligentsia of various countries, he wanted to explore the links between university, idea worlds and national societies. And, it was the cumulative result of these thoughts that he came up with a proposal for the present research.

Sunandan’s attempt in this project has been to explore the links between university and society. One of his principal objectives is to see how university moulds students’ minds and what impact does that have in their roles as public professionals in their later lives. He is also trying to explore idea linkages between university and society in nation states. Initially, the research was planned with a focus on five universities, two in South Asia and three in central Europe. In South Asia the universities in the original plan were Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, India and the Punjab University in Lahore, Pakistan.   He did make some progress in terms of finding out possible interviewees for the Punjab University in Lahore. However, given the rising tension between India and Pakistan, in consultation with mentors, towards the end of 2002, he decided to focus on Dhaka University in Bangladesh instead of Punjab University in Lahore, Pakistan. In central-eastern Europe, his plan was to focus on Ljubljana University in Slovenia, Warsaw University in Poland and Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, Hungary. He has completed his work on the Slovene and Polish university intelligentsia. He did a set of interviews in both the countries and the research paper has also been done. However, he felt that to do a comprehensive study of the impact of CEU on the societies of central-eastern Europe, one would have to interview ex-students who were currently engaged in the academic, political and media worlds or in social activism in these societies. That was not possible in the short period of fifteen months and hence it was not pursued.
 

2. Research on Slovenia and Poland

The Research on Slovenia consisted of interviews done in Ljubljana in January, March and April of 2002. There were some interviews done in November 2002 but those were not of a high quality. The research was also informed by readings on Slovenia and Yugoslavia in the first half of 2002. The important interviewees are listed below.
 

 Iztok Osojnik, Director of Vilenica, an international writers’ meet held annually in Slovenia
 Joze Mencinger, currently Rector of Ljubljana University and formerly minister for economic affairs and deputy prime minister in the first government of independent Slovenia in 1991.
 Antone Persak, currently mayor of a small community and formerly member of parliament.
 Boris A. Novak, professor of comparative literature at Ljubljana University and an eminent poet.
 Vlasta Jalusic, Director of Peace Institute, an independent NGO involved in research, activism and networking.
 Pavel Zgaga, currently Director, Centre for Educational Policy Studies, University of Ljubljana  and formerly minister of education of independent Slovenia till 2000.
 Peter Vodopivec, professor at the Institute of Contemporary History.
 Jani Sever, chief editor of Mladina, the highest circulated Slovene weekly.

In case of Poland Sunandan read up books on the Solidarity movement. The interviews with ex-students of Warsaw University were done in the last week of May 2002 in Warsaw. The interviewees were –
 

 Renata Siemienska, professor at Centre for Sociology, Warsaw University
 Marta Zahorska, professor at Centre for Sociology, Warsaw University
 Marta Fogler, Member of Parliament
 Maria Krystof Bryski, Director, Institute of Oriental Studies, Warsaw University and former Polish Ambassador to India
  Wlodimierz Zagorski-Ostoja, Director, Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences
 Miroslaw Chojecki, Film Producer, TV Presenter, former activist in Solidarity movement
 Irena Woycicka, Head of Social Security Section, The Gdansk Institute for Market Economics, Warsaw Branch and former deputy minister in post-1989 government in the Minstry of Labour
 Jan Lipynski, former member of Parliament in the post-1989 period and activist of Solidarity.
 Andrzej Piasek, Head of Department of Cell Pathophysiology, Institute of Experimental Medicine, Polish Academy of Sciences.
 Koba Wygniansky, sociologist working in the non-profit sector
 Joanna Starega, former deputy minister in Ministry of Labour in post-1989 government and former member of parliament.

In July 2002, almost half way through the project, Sunandan completed a research paper,   called University Intelligentsia in the Making of Maps – Old and New.  The paper focussed on the role that a small university educated intelligentsia, often radical and dissident as students and later on, had in the creation of independent Slovenia and in the creation of non-communist Poland. Entirely a work of oral historical endeavour, Sunandan’s readings on contemporary Slovenia, Yugoslavia and on the Solidarity movement in Poland did inform the paper. Most western academic and/or journalistic scholarship on the changes in central-eastern Europe focus heavily on the collapse of Soviet Union and is generally concerned with forces of global history. The paper’s attempt at exploring the role of a small number of people who are now part of a broad civil society and were dissident young minds in an era of totalitarian regimes may prove refreshing in the world of grand narratives of change from communism to post-communism.
 
 
 

 3. Research on Bangladesh and Pakistan
 

Sunandan has been interested in the intellectual life of Bangladesh since early 1990s. As part of this project, he interviewed ex-students who had gone to the Dhaka University, most of them in 1960s or early 1970s. The interviews were done in Dhaka in February 2002 and the interviewees are listed below.

 Abul Momen, Essayist, Poet, Educationist, Resident Editor of Prothom Alo, Chittagong
 F.R.Mahmud Hassan, former executive director of Gono Shahajjo Sangstha, an NGO that worked in primary education and civil society issues and was active in large parts of the country between 1985 and late 1990s, Dhaka
 Abdullah Abu Sayeed, Writer, Editor, Legendary teacher at Dhaka College, founder and driving force behind Bishwa Sahitya Kendra ( World Literature Centre), which has been at the forefront of creating a reading society in Bangladesh, Dhaka
 Maleka Begum, Women’s Leader on the Left, Dhaka
 Ruby Rahman, lecturer of English in a college, eminent poet, Dhaka
 Tasmima Hossain, Editor, Ananya ( a women’s magazine), Dhaka
 Muhammad Jahangir, Columnist, Media man involved in development media, Dhaka
 Mesbah Kamal, Historian, Activist for the Rights of Minorities, teaches history at Dhaka University, Dhaka
 Sultana Kamal, Lawyer, Women’s Rights Activist, Director, Ain O Shalish Kendra, Dhaka
 
 
 

The interviews and Sunandan’s engagement with the intellectual life of Bangladesh for almost a decade has resulted in a paper called ‘Dhaka University and the Shaping of Civil Society in Bangladesh’.
 

As for the work on Pakistan, Sunandan did quite a bit of background work in terms of collecting names of possible interviewees with the help of people from Pakistan in London when he was there in November, 2002. He has managed to get about twenty names of prominent ex-students of the Punjab University in Lahore. He interviewed two of them in London in March, 2003 and plans to do e-mail interviews with as many more ex-students as possible. The people interviewed are –

 Tariq Ali, prominent British marxist, member of the editorial collective of The New Left Review and a student leader of the 68 movement
 Ayyub Malik, an architect whose work has focussed on syncretic trends in Islamic art and architecture

The interviews, as in the case of other countries, should help him to write a paper on the university intelligentsia and its relationship with state and society in Pakistan.
 
 
 

4. Research on India

Jawaharlal Nehru University, the focus university is located in the capital, New Delhi but students are drawn from all over the country. So, to understand the impact of the university on its alumni (when they were students) as well as the impact of the alumni on their respective societies, the research has tried to have a certain geographical spread of the location of the interviewees. In the second half of April and in the first weeks of May,  2002  interviews were done in Calcutta and Delhi. Some more interviews were done in Delhi in August and September 2002 and also in January 2003. In October 2002 interviews were done in Bhopal, capital of the state of Madhya Pradesh. In January 2003,  interviews were done in Bangalore, capital of the state of Karnataka and India’s Information Technology capital, in Mumbai, the commercial capital and seat of India’s giant film industry and in the state of Goa. To do the interviews Sunandan has gone north, east, west, south and yet the country or the continent that is India is barely covered. The interviewees have been drawn from six different urban locations and yet there are possibly a dozen more that need to be brought in the story to make the research reflective of the grand experiment in higher education that J.N.U. was supposed to be. The interviewees have been -
 

 Gautam Bhadra, professor of history at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
 Sujato Bhadra, prominent civil liberties activist and former Secretary of Association of Protection of Democratic Rights, Calcutta
 Aditya Mukherjee, professor of history, Centre for Historical Studies, J.N.U.
 Avijit Pathak, professor of sociology, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, J.N.U.
 Indivar Kamtekar, professor of sociology, Centre for Historical Studies, J.N.U.
 Saswati Majumdar, President of Delhi University Teachers’ Association
 Manoj Joshi, Political Editor, Times of India, New Delhi
 Manmohini Kaul, professor of east Asian Studies, School of International Studies, J.N.U.
 Siddhartha Dasgupta, lecturer of history, Surendranath College, Calcutta
 Lalit Shastri, Correspondent, The Hindu, Bhopal
 Nasir Kamal, Correspondent, Hindustan Times, Bhopal
 Bhagirath Prasad, Principal Secretary, Government of Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal
 Kalpana Kar, Member, Bangalore Action Task Force, Bangalore
 K.N.Hari Kumar, former Chief Editor, Deccan Herald, Bangalore
 Narendar Pani, Resident Editor, Economic Times, Bangalore
 Bansy Kalappa, City Editor, Times of Editor, Bangalore
 Peter Ronald D’Souza, Professor and Head of the Department of Political Science, Goa University, Panjim, Goa
 Susan George, Member, Indian Revenue Services, Mumbai
 Saumya Chaudhuri, Research Unit, IDBI, Mumbai
 Ajay Brahmatmaj, Film Editor, Dainik Bhaskar, Mumbai
 Sucheta Mahajan, Lecturer, South Delhi Women’s College, Delhi
 Udit Raj, Buddhist Dalit leader, Delhi
 

The outcome of these interviews and the search for an answer to what JNU has meant to its students and to the Indian societies will hopefully be a piece. However, Sunandan wants to write this piece after about twenty more interviews with a completely different cast of characters who would have also studied in JNU but would have come from much more humble backgrounds than the ones that have already been interviewed.  Sunandan would like to find also those civil society actors who have tried to intervene in towns and cities away from the metropolitan India.
 
 

5.Workshops, Conferences and Lectures

5a. IPF workshops – The International Policy Fellowship program brought fellows together in Budapest to attend workshops and training sessions four times during the period from March 2002 to March 2003. For the 2002 fellows, the first three sessions, in March, June and October of 2002 were sessions where most of the time was devoted to training.

 Among the training sessions, Sunandan found particularly rewarding were the ones on internet done by Merrill Oates, the session on public speaking conducted by Jose de Barros, the sharing of experience on the development of think tanks in central-eastern Europe by Ivan Krastev who has been running an active think tank in Sofia, Bulgaria and the one on analysing texts by Des Gaspers.

The IPF workshops also gave an opportunity to understand the way in which the program has been structured and its broad vision. And, most importantly, it helped creating a relationship between fellows from India and Pakistan as also a window into the complex world of post-communist societies in central and eastern Europe, thanks to the interaction with fellows from the various countries of the erstwhile Soviet block and former Yugoslavia.

5b. Workshops connected to ‘Role of Universities in Social Transformation’ project –
The first of these was a two-day workshop organised by the Open University in Vienna on 18 and 19 January. Individual researchers as well as heads of institutions came to attend this workshop where participants discussed the contours of the project, ‘Role of Universities in Social Transformation.’
 Almost a year later in November, 2003 people connected to the project again met in London. This time, apart from the IPF fellows working on higher education – mostly from countries of central-eastern Europe, there were researchers from South Africa, Senegal and Nigeria. Along with the academic input from the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information, Open University and from the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the presence of colleagues from Africa lent a greater meaning to the whole project. For example the enabling force of Marxism in South Africa as opposed to the stigma associated to Marxism-Leninism in the countries of eastern Europe brought forward a very important theme in the dynamic of transformation and relation of higher education, political theory and social change.

Apart from these two workshops, the IPF working group meetings on higher education have been extremely productive as well. The group met in June and October of 2002 and also on March 2003.

5c. Sunandan had the privilege of attending two other conferences during his time as an International Policy Fellow of the OSI.
In November 2002, he attended a conference at CEU, hosted by Yehuda Elkana, President and Rector of CEU. The theme was ‘Epistemology of Higher Education in post-communist societies’ This conference gave an opportunity to meet heads of higher education institutions from different new institutions in central and eastern Europe and also from Russia. There were also participants from the west and the Arab world. This high level conference gave Sunandan an opportunity to get acquainted with and participate in the debates of higher education in a complex world of knowledge systems and their relation with political and economic realities.

In end January and early February 2003, Sunandan participated in a preparatory conference of the planned Asian University for Women. The three day meet was held at Shantiniketan, the university town near Calcutta built by Rabindranath Tagore. The conference where participants came from South Asia and North America raised and debated themes relating to gender relations and the future of societies in the developing world. It also tried to explore structures – ideological and physical – on which a women’s university may be built in Bangladesh where girls from many countries of Asia can find an opportunity to come together in an intellectually stimulating educational environment.

5d. Sunandan also presented his research work as lectures on two occasions.
In October 2003, he gave a public lecture at CEU, Budapest organised by the IPF program.The comments from friends in the IPF program and others knowledgeable about central-eastern Europe were particularly useful in making him think about his work in a more holistic manner.
He also presented his work on Slovenia and Poland at the annual session of the Indian History Congress held at Amritsar, India from 28 to 30 December 2002. It served to keep alive the interest in Eastern Europe among new generation of historians in post-cold war India.