Indian Nob(e)lity

                                                               Indian Nob(e)lity

Almost all Sunday newspapers carried the proud news of a Kolkatta teen Arunavha Chanda receiving admission offers from seven American Universities- mostly IVY league after acing a perfect score in SAT. An exceptionally bright student, he has been a topper from class II to class XII. With all the  newspapers currently poll vaulting to abysmal depths through publishing  sensational news about acrimonious, boorish and coarse  exchange of words between different political leaders, this success story of Arunavha’s tryst with excellence was really a shot in the arm for the sagging  Indian morale. I was delighted to read about the achievement of the nineteen year old youngster – a delight I shared with millions of Indians who would have accessed this news from the newspapers.

Somewhere along with that delight came a thought of grief as I muttered inaudibly that Ameica’s gain is India’s loss. India’s generosity is legendary and here is one more instance of her gifting to US another Hargobind Khorana, another SubrahmanyanChandrasekhar, another Venkatraman Ramakrishnan to add to the glorious American list of Indian born American desi Nobel Laureates. There has been no Indian born Indian desi after C.V.Raman to get the coveted Nobel prize for Science. The only one who comes closest to him is Pachauri who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel of scientists on Climate Change (IPCC) that he headed, an award he shared with the then American Vice President Al Gore.

In the past, young bright Indians used to take wings after their first degree in Engineering or Medicine and very rarely in Arts and Commerce, but today they all fly just after finishing school. Ten years back as a university teacher, I used to write testimonials for my students who wished to go abroad (with or without financial assistance) and encourage them to experience the Western world of academics with its stress on self learning in contrast to the spoon feeding that we do in our colleges and universities. I wanted them to have an exposure to a different culture and a different way of living that allowed the younger generation to cultivate freedom of the mind, freedom of expression and freedom of action. I wanted them to appreciate and value hard work that is inhered in the concept ‘Earn as you Learn’ and pay their way to university studies. I wanted them to understand the spirit of independence that western education instilled in the youngsters. I was then in my early 30s and therefore I cherished  naïve hopes of these young men and women returning home academically, professionally and personally well trained and educated to serve their motherland as scientists, engineers, doctors and administrators. Those hopes never fructified as none of these bright students came back home. Today the student exodus is not limited to the brightest bunch; the foreign bug has infected even ordinary students because they have no hope of securing admission in the hallowed portals of IITs and IIMs, Medical Colleges and Law Institutes. It is much easy to get bank loans (with parents standing surety and taking responsibility) and go abroad for a MBA or MS and then get slowly absorbed (after a considerable wait) as US citizens. This is because back home it is a battle first to get admission  in colleges, and still worse later to get decent employment after completing the studies. A Commerce student finds it difficult to get into MBA or complete CA (Chartered Accountancy) and prefers the easier route of going abroad even to a second grade university to get the three letters tagged to his name. The few  years of study in US toughens him and he easily saunters into US society ready to do any job that he would have abhorred back home. After all a  dollar is a dollar worth 60 rupees (at today’s rate of exchange) and the freedom to spend it gives him greater joy than a return to a life loaded with responsibility, where to live as you like is either a luxury or deemed preposterous.

As for the talented bright minds, America is the acme of academic excellence. The harsh truth is even the best of Indian universities (that include IITs and IIMs) cannot hold a candle before a Harvard or a Yale or anyone of the IVY League universities in US. It is unfortunate that Indian universities do not have the academic ambience that some of the top world universities have. We have mistakenly equated academic excellence with elitism, a term that is incongruent with the idea of democracy. We are warped in an archaic mindset that refuses to allow the blossoming of merit since it interferes with the democratic right of equity, equality and impartiality.  It is essential that everyone gets the right to education but that should not conflict with the right of the intellectually gifted to special endowments that are needed to pursue quality research and scholarly investigation.  Superior gifts merit superior education, position and esteem even if it conflicts with the egalitarian principles of democracy. One has to recall John Rawls endorsement of elitism- specially intellectual and academic elitism- as it ‘permits people to possess and cultivate superior talents… to benefit the most disadvantaged part of society.’ America provides the right atmosphere to pursue research of high quality that could be transferred to the progress of mankind. No wonder, the best of brains from all over the world are drawn to US and the US, in turn welcomes them with open arms and drafts them into its academic community as elitist American citizens.

Arunavha will be the new member to become a part of this exclusivity – a tempting and well meaning offer to young man from a society that mistakenly prides itself of being non--exclusionist and non-elitist. This is at its worst nothing but egalitarian charlatanism, what Allan Bloom terms as ‘as egalitarian Tartufferie’ (from Moliere’s comedy Tartuffe or the Impostor).

 I am happy for Arunavha and wish him the very best of opportunities to realize his academic and intellectual potential. I wish he returns home at some point of time to make his rich learning and research available to the Indian universities that need to be lifted out of their current singular approach towards practical equality to an inclusive approach to accommodate the right of meritocracy that provides intellectual exhilaration to university education. The return of Arunavhas will signal the end of the famed Indian nob(e)lity and provide   a glimmer of hope for the renaissance of Indian University education whose horizon has become too  narrow and dark to resemble a cave. This article has been necessitated to serve as a timely utterance to give relief to my thought of grief that set in after the initial euphoric joy of hearing Arunahva’s success.