( The text below is the exact proposal that Sunandan had submitted to
the International Policy Fellowships of the Open Society Institute. This
proposal was worked out in June and July of 2001. )
Theoretical Premise
In societies before the advent of western-style democracies, religious leaders and monarchs were the ones who dictated mental ways of people. In societies that were colonised, the imperial masters and institutions (university was one of these) under their influence dictated ways. In societies under totalitarian structures like fascism and communism, the ruling coterie dictated ways. In large parts of the world, these systems have changed or are changing to societies that have various groups which contend for influence in the public sphere. The academia is one such institution along with the leaders of the government, the business elite, the judiciary, the media and the NGOs.
Countries in Focus
An empirical study may be undertaken which will look into the role of
specific universities in five different countries spread across two regions.
The universities are the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, the University
of Warsaw in Poland, the Central European University in Budapest in Hungary,
the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi in India. The first two are institutions
that lived through the transition from communist party rule to western-style
democracies, the third one is a development of new central Europe of the
1990s and the last two are set in two similar societies which have experienced
quite different political systems in the last half century -
Pakistan has mostly been under military dictators whereas India has had
a fairly stable parliamentary democracy ever since the two countries came
into being when colonial rule ended and British India was partitioned.
Issues
The study will try to probe what kind of ideas were in circulation in the Slovene and Polish academic minds in the 1980s and 1990s. It will also try to map how much of the ideas that had gained currency among the students and professors were affecting the functioning of the media and the government in the decade before 1989-90 and in the decade after. The case study of the Central European University will be taken up to understand how ideas of minds from various nations of central and eastern Europe are influencing each other’s perceptions and how a new world is emerging through an interface with an institution that is on the lines of the universities in western-style democracies.
In South Asia, when one would look at the University of Lahore in Pakistan,
one would try to understand whether the university provided upward mobility
in an extremely class divided society, how did it relate to the political
and military elite of the country and what role did it play in creating
a vision for the Pakistani state. In case of Jawaharlal Nehru University
in New Delhi, one would try to gauge the upward mobility issue. One would
also explore whether it has played any role in creating a vision for the
new Indian state and also what has been the relation between the academic
elite and the ruling elite. Change, drastic or mild, has happened in all
the five countries of the regions. We will try to map the role of university
minds in these changes.
In all the countries that the research will geographically focus itself, there has been elites. None of the societies were entirely open societies. There has been communist party rule in Slovenia, Poland and Hungary, there has been military dictatorships in Pakistan, and there has been a mix of feudal tendencies and bureaucratic elitism in India. The central question that the research will pose is, have the universities fed into the status quo or have they nurtured change. And, to what extent and through what mechanisms have they done one or the other. The research would try to map the minds of the students and teachers in these universities set in very different politico-cultural as well as geographical locales and how these minds changed or did not change minds of the millions outside the campuses.
As one does these empirical studies, one would compare between Ljubljana and Warsaw, between the 1980s in Poland, between the level of dialogue of central European intellectuals in the 1980s and that in 1990s and also explore the role of the Central European University in that. The research will compare the roles that student movements have taken in India and Pakistan. And, it will also map the changes in central Europe and map the changes in central Europe and map those in South Asia in the last two decades and compare them. The comparison will also try to focus on the relative status of academia vis-à-vis the government, the military, the judiciary, the media and the NGOs in these societies. It will also try to map the minds of the students of who were in the campuses in various decades.
When one maps the minds of students who were in universities in a particular period and now are professionals in the public world – lawyers, journalists, politicians, social activists, bureaucrats, writers, - one would try to gauge the linkages between ideas imbibed during the university days and the ideas they presently nurture. One would also try to understand the individual’s response at critical moments of one’s life and also at critical junctures of national society. For example, how does an individual’s chain of ideas emerge when he or she has to make a major adjustment in relation to the academic discipline she or he was tutored in the university or in relation to clash between ideas imbibed at university and the order of the day in the particular field he or she is in.
In case of the critical junctures of national political life, one would try to gauge the intelligentsia's response to the Solidarnosc movement in Poland, or when Slovenia went into a short-lived war with Yugoslavia, or when Pakistan started moving towards Islamic theocracy in late 1970s, or when India started moving from a socialist leaning to a more market driven economy in the early 1990s. For Poland, one would explore whether intellectuals were creating a national vision away from the Soviet hegemony and in Slovenia one would ask whether they were laying the foundations of a Slovene nation state as they lived on in the federal republic of Yugoslavia. The entire exercise will try to explore the links between the university and the shaping of the nation state. And, depending on the centrality, the ideas in play in a major university play a marginal or a critical role in the nature of a nation state.
Through all of this, what one will explore is how societies change and
what role ideas play in it and for how much of that role is university
the breeding ground. One would essentially ask, are closed campuses the
seeds of open societies?
Plan for Fulfillment :
March – April 2002 - I would want to be in Budapest and
do readings and access archives and start making e-mail contacts for interviews.
May – June 2002 - I would want to do interviews in Budapest,
Ljubljana and Warsaw.
July – October 2002 - I would like to do the interviews in Lahore
and New Delhi.
November 2002 – February 2003 – I would like to write the findings
of my research and finish the book on the research project.
Impact of the Research :
It will open up dialogue between civil societies of South Asia and central and eastern Europe.
It may give a perspective on the role university plays in the structure
of a nation state.