Is there such a thing as an ‘Indian university’? Is there an ‘idea’ of an Indian university? Were universities in India living and breathing products of the soil, or were they conceptual imports from a colonial heritage? What is the relationship between universities in India and the ‘publics’ that have inhabited or are alienated by them? More pointedly, how ‘public’ is the Indian public university?
This volume explores the historical makings of the Indian university as it stands today, by sifting through archives, colonial/postcolonial policies, textual-literary records and political-economic developments. What results is a ‘critical history’ – navigating the force of myth and promise, revolutions and reforms, communities and markets. From the glorification of ancient ‘greatness’ to the riskiness of ‘platform futures’, this book offers a time travel through one of the most exalted and yet most abused institutions of our age – the university.
Debaditya Bhattacharya teaches literature at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Two of his edited anthologies on critical university studies include The Idea of the University: Histories and Contexts and The University Unthought: Notes for a Future. He has also co-edited a volume titled Sentiment, Politics, Censorship: The State of Hurt.
Acknowledgements
Introduction: What is the ‘Indian’ University?
PART ONE: Stories of a Making
Chapter One The Great Ancient Indian Universities: History or Myth?
Chapter Two The Long Nineteenth Century: Caste and Collegiate Life in Colonial India
Chapter Three Pre-Independence Youth Movements (1905–47): The Force of Religion and the Making of a Nationalist Student Subject
PART TWO: Histories of a Re-/Un-making
Chapter Four Post-Independence University Planning (1947–86): The Ideology of Welfare
Chapter Five Reaping Dividends on Discrimination: The Neoliberal ‘Turn’ to the Market (1986–2012)
Chapter Six Towards NEP 2020: The Age of the Platform University?
Conclusion The Return to ‘Publicness’: A History for the University’s Futures
Index