I realize that years of air conditioned life and paneer n kebab parties and whiskey evenings, has helped many of us gain a neutral and objective view, which many others cannot afford. Especially those who live 10 feet away from colonies torn down by gun shots.
Actually i have been thinking and thinking: what are we supposed to do with our elite academic intellectuals, our drinking class, the juba clad men/women, their beards, earrings, salt and pepper hair, their truth experiments..?
Don't they feel afraid and sick in the head and mad?
Most of us don't complain. Trying to negotiate subaltern studies and ambedkar, partha chatterjee and aloysius, all of us are pursuing a dream of the self, in here.
And we tell each other that academics is not about taking positions, about right and wrong, and about social change. It is the unflinching and dedicated pursuit of knowledge. And this pursuit is more political than anything else. We tell this to each other and after a while we come to believe it.
And the end result is the intellectual who sits and drinks his expensive whiskey, even as he goes on and on about the nuances of nuances. Bull shit.
to the idea that maybe the university is not that divorced from the larger geographical locality around …of which it can be the most important philosophic organ!
Are we doing this in academics? Or are we divorced from the larger geographical locality around? Are we the philosophical organs of our world?
