The right to academic freedom is not a fundamental
right but a rationally considered academic right. The right to academic freedom
is a right to be free from the interference of the state and governments and
function to build an egalitarian nation. However, every right conferred upon an
individual or an institution carries with it certain social responsibilities.
These responsibilities give universities and institutions a significant
opportunity to contribute to the qualitative development, intellectual,
cultural and political growth, to interrogate inequities and generate forms of
knowledge to shape the society it serves.
A free spirit of enquiry is mandatory for
intellectual journeys toward discovery and the absence of hierarchic control
reassures the autonomy and dignity of the stakeholders in the process. In over
three and a half decades of teaching, I have witnessed a widening gap between what
a university is supposed to be and the routine practice. The privileging of the
office over the classroom, of administrators over teachers and researchers
resulting from market utility, so beloved of the post-WTO
education-as-service-industry has alienated higher education from its social
obligations in shaping a just, fair and an equitable social order. It is not by
accident that a hierarchic bureaucratic order has been set in place for the
triumph of market statistics through the exercise of power and control. The
nineteenth century utilitarian Jeremy Bentham proposed the panopticon for surveillance whose material manifestation was the
colonial cellular jail in the Andaman Islands. Today many educational centres
including colleges in Patna University are contemplating the use of CCTV
cameras in public areas of institutions and shockingly in classrooms. The use
of cameras in public areas, if used for security purposes rather than
administrative espionage is justifiable, though not entirely desirable. In classrooms
it is a disgrace to the dignity of the teachers and students, participants in
the process of learning and producing knowledge. Teachers are evaluated every
day by students and peer reasearchers and students evaluate teachers once a
semester for official purposes. These official purposes are ill-defined because
in most cases the results are never made public because the system is usually
complicit with ideological and often irrational forms of vested interests. The
deserving might make the undeserving top occupant of the hierarchic order very
uncomfortable although experience teaches that the pachydermatous skills rather
than academic and intellectual attributes are among the preferential virtues.
Transparency in evaluation and authorized recording
of lectures for the benefit of students would be far more effective than this
undignified form of espionage. Again, these covert operations would hardly be
of any relevance if the recruitment were to be fair. Its need critiques itself.
The academia works best when the best traditions of democracy fertilizes teaching
and learning, a true participatory partnership that inspires and motivates the
pursuit of excellence.
University campuses, its public spaces: libraries
and classrooms; teachers, students and employees constitute the ‘public sphere’,
a term popularized by Jurgen Habermas of the Frankfurt School. In the
dichotomous positioning of the state and civil society, the public sphere constitutes
a site for contested public opinion which functions as moderating agency
against ill-conceived exercise of the state’s authority or the violation of
civil codes. Thus the public sphere is plurally constituted and engenders
diverse views and practices while creating space for dissent against
discrimination, injustices and inequities. The growth of true democratic
traditions is directly proportional to the development of the public sphere. In
India, sadly, its educational systems, unable to produce a ‘critical mass’ because
of the suppression of the public sphere has created what Noam Chomsky calls a ‘democratic
deficit’. It is the ruinous lack on part of the state institutions to sustain
and perpetuate democratic principles. Contrariwise, they obstruct the sharing
of opinion and information and actively discourage dialogue and dissent. While
India continues to uphold the colonial sedition law under Section 124A of the
Indian Penal Code, it fails to appreciate the value of enlightened laws such as
Section 43(1) of the British Education Act of 1986 which states ‘ Every
individual and body or persons concerned in the government of any establishment
to which this section applies shall take such steps as are reasonably
practicable to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured for
members, students and employees of the establishment and for visiting
speakers’.
Are we then surprised when intolerance of
diversities and threats to the constitution engender forms of exclusionary
knowledge to which unthinking subscription entitles life and citizenship?
