Let me proffer a few details about myself- I am a Bengali, born and educated in Calcutta and then when I figured out staying in Calcutta beyond my 21 years of age would actually limit my chances of getting decent education and career opportunities, I moved out.
It so happened that I landed up in JNU, New Delhi and after a remarkable two years, got a job.
(my remarkable period in JNU had a lot to do with the kind of friends and experiences I had and maybe not so much the institution itself)
I don't know whether it was by God's design or not but somehow this made sure I get a lot of exposure to communism- in practice and in theory. Interestingly, the practice came before theory and I suspect that is the main reason my derision for this school of thought remains intact. Some of my Delhi friends have a romanticized left-wing view and my guess is that a month's stay at Calcutta would cure them of their disease. They say if you see what the communists are up to in West Bengal, you'd end up either as someone with staunch anti-left inclinations (centre-right or god forbid, the right-wing!) or someone down the drain (extreme left).
JNU is a heaven made for leftists. Many people may not be aware of this but there are competing schools of thought within left-wing ideology. They probably hate each other as much as they hate the bourgeois. All these schools have their representative political parties and these form the core of JNU life- politics everywhere.
My batch was an exception. Most students were from DU and even the CU (Calcutta University) people had restrained fancy to politics and ideology. In other words, wanted to take up the responsibility of their own life and career.
There was one exception. The guy was from Kerala, so he had similar background to mine. But with totally different results. I have had always been politically and socially conscious and my ideas generally emanated from a centre-right perspective. This guy, on the other hand, saw great beauty in communist praxis and had a dogmatic belief in the party; it really did not matter to him who ran the ship.
Many students of our batch, upon coming to JNU got a flavor of something that they have never had in their schools or colleges- unbridled politicking. We all had moments of confusion and self-doubt. But this guy was different. He never flinched in the defence of his great party- as it plunged into one crisis to another.
The guy also gave up his studies. He spent more and more time in politicking, trying to shore up support for the party in the keralite minority, making placards or simply listening to countless speeches and talks that keep happening in JNU.
His clarity of thought and prose made him stay afloat in the absurdly easy theoretical papers but deserted him in the math based ones. There his scores came in binary numbers.
I am hardly the one to judge. I did not do well in some papers. I gave up studies too, to a large extent, disillusioned at first by the politicised pedagogy and immersing myself in placement work later. But in the end, my grades come to 6, while his, I guess hovered around 4.5 -5, in spite of taking easier papers.
He had an explanation as well. He was ideologically opposed to the mathematical treatment of a social science, or some such rubbish. I at least have the humility to say I am aware of my intellectual limitations.
This fellow had aspirations of becoming an IAS officer in the start. In the last sem, when we had pretty much a direction in our lives, the fellow dumped his IAS dreams.
I suspect IAS requires dedication and commitment; to studies, not politicking.
God knows how he got through M.phil without no knowledge whatsoever of Econometrics, Game theory, Microeconomics or math. Well, stranger things have happened at JNU.
And now he cribs to my juniors that I have corrupted their minds- that I have shown them that even JNU students can have a meaningful life.
I have high regard for a lot of communists and respect some of what they have to say. But I have seen the worst of them as well and what they can be capable of; in JNU and in Calcutta.
Subin, you are just like any other shitty communist- all talk!
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2 comments:
Abhirup,
I find it weird that I came across this blog post (a friend of mine happened to chance upon this and sent me the link) after such a long time! Somehow I don't feel as offended as I thought I would. But some clarifications are in order.
Let me start with the minor ones. You said, "He spent more and more time in politicking, trying to shore up support for the party in the keralite minority, making placards or simply listening to countless speeches and talks that keep happening in JNU."
Well, shoring up support for the Left among Keralites is not something that I used to do during my MA days. That job is considered a more difficult one, and was left to senior activists. (After I got through M.Phil., entry into "the team" was natural.)
Political activism in JNU or anywhere else is not limited to making placards or listening to speeches. (Placards are used very sparingly in JNU. We usually use them for demonstrations outside the campus. I have written releases and designed posters, but I've never made a placard myself, till date. :) I feel silly writing all this; but couldn't resist.)
So it turns out that I haven't done two out of the three things you said I was doing. I did listen to speeches, as you said - and I assure you that there was much more to activism than just that. :)
IAS dreams - I have never talked about any "IAS dream" to anyone after my second year in BA. It's not yet clear to me why some people assume such things. (I've found many JNU-ites who have exactly the same complaint.)
But I'm ever more convinced that the dedication and hard work required to be a good academic is far more than what it takes to crack the civil services exam. So if I somehow end up writing the UPSC exam, this would be the reason !!!
"He was ideologically opposed to the mathematical treatment of a social science, or some such rubbish."
Haha, I never said that. All I used to say was that mathematics can be a useful tool, but never an end in itself. Perhaps the most important issue I had (and still have) with "overdoing" it was that it often served to mask the flaws, logical and otherwise, in the arguments put forward by many economists. And many people mistakenly tend to believe that a theory is value-neutral if it was "proven" mathematically. The validity of the assumptions and the logic that underlie it is often overlooked. But precisely due to this reason, some knowledge of mathematics is absolutely necessary for every economist. I remember a conference last year, when a guy had presented a paper that gave the most illogical arguments. I thought the more mathematically inclined people would demolish his arguments, but in the end I had to take it upon myself to do it - which I did quite well. The experience proved once again that "mathematical treatment" is no substitute for logic. Of course, they need not necessarily contradict each other.
I have absolutley no "ideological problems" with papers with a heavy inclination for mathematical treatment. There is no disputing the fact that I was rarely interested in papers like Game Theory or Gen.Eq., or the fact that I did badly in microeconomics and statistics (the grades were not in binary numbers, though, as you allege :D). But when I did get myself to be interested in such papers, the performance was not that bad - I had a decent grade in Growth.
My CGPA was 5.81 - that's much closer to 6 than the "4.5 - 5" range that you suggested. (What was yours, exactly?)
Finally, you have never been a talking point in my conversations with our juniors. Therefore the question of "cribbing" doesn't arise at all. I'm baffled - don't know where you got that "news" from!!!
Regards,
Subin.
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