Freedom is desirable but difficult to achieve. In fact, enough has already been said and written about the boundaries of human agency. The way we think and act cannot be seen in isolation. We are historically located social actors; it is not easy to transcend the circumstances (structural as well as cultural) that define our existence. Yet, freedom is also one of our noblest aspirations. And particularly those who find themselves primarily as thinkers, freedom is impo rtant. Freedom gives a new meaning to thinking; it becomes authentic and sacred. And the thinker becomes honest, courageous and reliable. As we have already said, the goal is difficult to achieve. There are many constraints. In this article we will, however, talk about the constraints inherent in prevalent academic practices. Here is indeed a tragic situation. It is the faculty of thinking which, as academicians argue, distinguishes them from other professions. Yet, the practices in which they engage themselves tend to deny what they seem to be proud of: freedom and criticality.
I
A major obstacle to free thinking is the dominance of the West, the way it colonises our minds. This dominance is seen not simply in the economy and culture. Even the realm of knowledge and ideas get colonised. There are multiple manifestations of this colonisation. For instance, for Indian universities, the reference point is necessarily the West, the way it defines the structure and agenda of knowledge. As a result, we begin to read what they want us to read; we begin to think in a way that suits them. There is always an experience of incompleteness if we do not get recognised by the West. Not to have a foreign degree or publications in foreign journals is to live like an intellectual proletariat in prestigious Indian universities. The anxiety to get recognised by the West is so chronic that even when we work on indigenous resources, we borrow the tools of interpretation from the West. This has led to an absurd situation. An example would suffice. These days many of us are fond of presenting Bankim and Ramakrishna to the Western audience. And we do it by using the categories evolved by Foucault, Derrida and Habermas. We are so colonised that even when we evolve a critique of modernity (something that allows the West to colonise the world), we are not very confident about the critique that emerged in India. Instead, we rely heavily on either the Frankfurt School of Marxism or the recent post-modern assertion. In other words, there is no escape from the West, its categories. There is no freedom of thinking; the mind that thinks has already been conditioned and colonised. It is nobody’s contention to argue that the West is altogether a different land and there is nothing to learn from it. The fact is that ideas do transcend the boundaries of regions and nations. Moreover, cultures are continually overlapping. It is, therefore, absurd to imagine a rigid distinction between ‘Indian’ and ‘Western’ systems of knowledge. The reality of this global character of knowledge notwithstanding, what cannot be denied is the fact of colonisation. Because to fight the colonisation of the spirit is to acquire the courage to have a dialogic spirit, to retain the ethos of symmetry, equality and mutual respect. But seldom do we see such a thing taking place. Instead, we take the West for granted; we imitate its universities - the way these institutes design their departments, courses and even modes of evaluation. We get carried away by all that the West propagates. Its language becomes our language. Not surprisingly, from a postgraduate student to a university professor - everyone is taking about ‘discourse’, ‘contestation’, ‘site’, ‘imagined communities’, ‘constructed categories’ and ‘deconstruction’! This imitation is utterly disgusting, almost life-killing. No wonder then, great innovative Indian minds - Gandhi and Tagore, Aurobindo and Vivekananda - did not belong to the university system. Thank God, they were not academicians!
II
THINKING gets concretised in the form of writing. Publications are, therefore, important. To publish is to engage in a communicative act, to intervene in the world of ideas. But, then, academic publications are not just that; academic publications tend to evolve a logic that is inherently oppressive, that restrains one’s freedom, spontaneity and innocence (spirit of joy in writing, sharing an idea, in telling a story). There are two reasons. First, one is repeatedly reminded that what one writes is not so important; what is important is where one publishes. If you write well, come forward with bright/original ideas, but publish, say, in a little magazine, your presence is denied. Because there is already an a priori assumption: great ideas can be found only in the pages of select ‘academic journals’. The moment one internalises this logic, it is the beginning of the denial of freedom. Naturally, if the ‘name’ of a journal or a publisher becomes the primary criterion, writing suffers. It is not uncommon to see academicians reluctant to publish something (even if they feel for it) that cannot be fitted into the paradigm of these academic journals/publications. One thing they have been asked to believe is that ‘non-academic’ writings do not count. And herein lies the second point. They begin to repress their imagination, their words, their ideas in order to give their consent to a particular logic of publication. Form becomes more important than the publication. Form becomes more important than the authenticity of expression. An example would suffice. Suppose you are a lover of films and think pretty seriously about cinema as popular culture. But the moment you decide to publish your ideas in, say, the journal of Arts and Ideas, you begin to lose all spontaneity and freshness. Instead, you begin to restrict yourself, think of a particular style (a style that, far from revealing the reality, mystifies it further), appropriate notes and references (possibly all latest publications from Europe and America), a set of idioms, expressions and jargon. Form becomes a fetish and truth is denied. The fact that this practice goes on has to be explained in terms of the politics of citation. If you examine carefully who is quoting whom, you realise that this is essentially a closed circle pampered by these journals and publications. They monopolise the domain of academic truth. They think that nothing interesting is taking place outside their domain. The message they convey is that if you want to survive in the academic world, you must play their game. What else can be a more living example of unfreedom?
III
FREEDOM is an assertion of faith - faith in oneself, in one’s ability to look at the world with one’s own eyes. This faith is, however, negated and repressed. A ‘well-trained’ academician knows that his own understanding/realisation is unimportant; it doesn’t count much in the proper academic milieu. Because he has been asked to rely not so much on himself, but on books. Notes and references, he knows, must justify, legitimate and substantiate all that he has been writing and speaking. This excessive anxiety to sound sufficiently ‘knowledgeable’ and give appropriate footnotes and bibliography denies all freshness, spontaneity and originality in one’s thinking and writing. This does not mean that books are unimportant or notes/references are unnecessary. In fact, learning is not just contemplation; it is also a dialogic process. And books do help us to cultivate this dialogic exercise. Reading is an experience of fusion - fusion of horizons. Likewise, notes and references and bibliography become necessary to respect this dialogue, to recall the contributions made by others. Yet, the irony is that this meaningful engagement with the world of books is often corrupted and destroyed. Dialogue disappears. Books, far from liberating the mind, begin to oppress us. Notes and references become a burden. This is like living with terrible fear. If you do not quote, if you do not give appropriate footnotes, you are nothing! You are not sufficiently ‘academic’! With this fear/insecurity nothing original is possible. Not surprisingly, academic publications have become so boring, monotonous and predictable. Take two examples. Suppose a social scientist is writing on intellectuals. It is certainly not impossible for him to write the way he has felt about intellectuals and theorise the practices in which, as he has seen, intellectuals engage themselves. Yet, more often than not, he would deny this original intervention. Because he would feel terribly insecure if he doesn’t quote, say, Gramsci, his categorisation of traditional and organic intellectuals and hegemony. He would be so neurotically cautious to quote appropriate passages from Gramsci that his own ideas would be lost. An intelligent reader would certainly ask: Why should one read such a piece? Isn’t it better to read Gramsci in original? Take another example. Imagine a contemporary social scientist writing on power and knowledge. It is almost certain that he would begin and end with Michel Foucault; his insecurity is so intense that he thinks that it is impossible to exist in the academic world without revealing his familiarity with Foucault. The result is obvious. Seldom do we see fresh thinking and authentic reflection. Instead, we see merely reviews and summaries, we see the exhibition of appropriate quotes, notes and references.
IV
FREEDOM is also an assertion of authenticity. It requires the courage to say ‘no’ (if necessary) to all that is tempting and fashionable. Not novelty, but authentic search is what characterises a free thinker. Authenticity is possible only when he believes himself and the questions he asks are genuinely real to him. An authentic thinker does not bother whether his mode of enquiry or thinking is fashionable or paying. But the irony is that in contemporary academic practices this authenticity is negated and novelty asserted. Let us examine how academicians choose their research themes. An insider knows that there are themes/issues which have got a definite market value and which are pretty fashionable. For instance, these days we see the proliferation of theses/papers on ‘gender’ and ‘culture studies’. Almost everyone begins to show interest in these areas. And this interest is certainly not always genuine. For many, this is simply to say ‘yes’ to what academic celebrations - from French post-modernists to top Indian stars - are doing. This is like getting an entry into an elite club. This has got concrete advantages - from publications in trendy journals to overseas fellowships. There is another disturbing trend. There is also a fashionable position and many tend to accept it uncritically. These days how difficult it is to find academicians talking about Marx. Marxism, for them, is out of fashion. This is the time to celebrate post-modernism/post-structuralism. Or take another example. In India, there are social scientists who would repeat a formula (a fashionable formula, indeed): Ambedkar cannot be wrong; Gandhi cannot be right! This obsession with novelty, as we are arguing, is damaging to the growth of free/authentic enquiry. Nobody is arguing that gender/culture studies, post-modernism/Ambedkarism are unimportant. What we are objecting to is the way of doing it, its appropriation; its reduction into a packaged commodity for academic consumption.
V
THIS does not mean that no meaningful creative work is taking place in the academic world. There are remarkably good academicians. And those who are critical insiders get encouraged by their contributions, their moral courage, their intellectual honesty. Yet, it is not impossible to see what we have seen - the emergent darkness. There are three features of this darkness, this defeat, this betrayal: We grow up with an acute inferiority complex. We lose our language, our words. We grow addicted to everything ‘new’ coming from the West. We become exiles in our own country. Because we have not learned to have faith in our traditions, our contributions to knowledge. The mind is always oriented to the West - the ultimate symbol of secular salvation. It is not difficult to realize why our mobile professors do not want to miss a single opportunity to go abroad. We become terribly insecure. Because in this academic world we possess nothing except some borrowed words, information and books. We do not possess the art of living - the skill to see the strength within. Instead our borrowed existence and our dependence on all that is external (from awards/degrees to books and publications) make us perpetually insecure. Is there any way to overcome this darkness? It is beyond the scope of this article to provide a satisfactory answer to this complex question.