Abstract
The aim of the first “Global Conclave of Young Scholars of Indian Education” held in New Delhi in 2011 was to help build bridges for research collaboration primarily for young scholars of Indian education to collaborate with their partners across borders. This paper draws on an “intrinsic case study” of this “global conclave”. Historically, established scholars from the global North or Western countries have initiated partnerships for research collaboration with individual scholars in the global South or Eastern countries, often for data mining or to test out theories. Within this context of unequal power relations in research collaborations, the concept note of the “global conclave” was a bold attempt by the organizers to create a forum for young scholars of Indian Education to collaborate for research across borders. However, based on the case study, this paper identifies several issues with regards to specific social, academic and institutional culture within India which might actually cause barriers to building bridges for research collaboration, both at the individual level and institutional level. The success of research collaborations can be discussed in terms of solidarity, emotional energy, trust, agency, power, and ethical praxis. Each of these aspects of successful collaboration could be adversely affected because of the differences in social, academic and institutional cultural practices among scholars within India compared with their counterparts abroad. Therefore, this paper suggests further critical inquiry into each of the issues identified as potential barriers for successful research collaboration in order to improve the quality of research collaborations in the future.
Introduction
International conferences are not new phenomena in the economically developed and the developing world. However, instead of “international”, “global” has become a buzz word these days with economic globalization, privatization of public institutions and the birth of transnational corporations. Almost every university in the Western hemisphere now strives to be global. Even those in the developing world are following this lead. Nations and educational institutions around the world are striving to prepare students to be globally competitive as well as collaborative members of the 21st century global workforce.
Being born and growing up in a young India, just 28 years after independence from British colonial rule, in the former colonial capital, Calcutta—the native place of the first Nobel Laureate from South Asia, Rabindranath Tagore—my idea of the “global” was quite different until I came to the USA for the first time in 2005. Tagore established “Visva-Bharati Visvavidyalaya” (literally meaning in English the Global Indian University) back in the early 20th century (during colonial times) with a philosophical vision based on cosmopolitan ideals, inviting and welcoming international students to study along with native Indian students from urban, rural and tribal areas. He thought about this inclusive approach towards education in terms of global peace and prosperity, even when the public discourse of “inclusive education” had still not been defined by any other higher educational institution in the world. Rather than establishing his educational institutions in an urban metropolitan city, like Calcutta, he chose to establish a school in “Sriniketan” and the “Visva-Bharati” University in “Shantiniketan” (abode of peace), a small town near Bolpur within the rural Birbhum district, a remote tribal area of the province of Bengal in colonial India. The goal was to bridge the rural–urban divide in education, and to educate students within an environment of freedom and equality for environmental sustainability and global consciousness (Dasgupta 1998; Ghosh 2012; Ghosh et al., 2010). Tagore wrote, “Visva-Bharati represents India where she has her wealth of mind which is for all. Visva-Bharati acknowledges India's obligation to offer to others the hospitality of her best culture and India's right to accept from others their best” (see: http://www.visvabharati.ac.in/index.html).
Hence, when I came across the advertisement by a university in India about the Global Conclave for Young Scholars of Indian Education, I was curious to know more about it. Why Global? Why Conclave? Why Young Scholars? Is it because India is now experiencing an astonishing demographic dividend? Does it have any connection with the UN declaration of 2010–2011 as the “International Year of Youth”? Is it because of the growing youth bulge in the developing world? Are the organizers thinking in terms of global competitiveness, with India joining the BRICS 1 nations as a new emerging economy, or do they have a philosophical vision like Tagore? These were the questions at the back of my mind when I decided to study the global conclave as an intrinsic case study, following Stake's (1995) method of doing case study.
The context: India in the 21st century knowledge economy
Question: Why does global conclave sound interesting to you? Answer: Even though I thought it was mostly for Indian scholars, (From the interview of a young US scholar at the Global Conclave)
India speaking to the world!
Above, I tried to portray the complex hybrid birth of a young independent nation state with ancient spiritual philosophical traditions which is now aspiring to be “speaking to the world”, as noted by one of my interviewees at the Global Conclave. Although India is a very young modern nation state, Indian civilization has a long tradition of education, creativity and innovation. Some scholars consider that the number 0 was discovered in India, and the numbering system was invented by Indian Mathematician Aryabhatya in the 500 AD 2 . Ancient Indians built some of the oldest institutions of higher learning, such as Nalanda, Ujjain, (in India), and Taxila (now in Pakistan), dating back to the 5th century BC. India also had a rich tradition of a free residential education system in Gurukuls (schools). Over several thousand years this tradition declined with waves of military invasions. The institutions of higher learning disappeared. The rich philosophical tradition of the Brahminical Gurukul system degenerated and became a tool of social oppression in a society which became divided into the narrow and rigid boundaries of caste system, which has now literally become a kind of “class apartheid” as Spivak (2004: 561) would argue, reinforced through the segregated Indian schooling system, where children from the relatively affluent urban middle class have access to better schooling compared with their rural counterparts (predominantly of lower-caste and tribal aboriginal background), who are subject to a pedagogy of rote-learning denounced by the 19th century champion of women's rights and Bengali intellectual Pt. Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, as well as by Nobel Laureate poet, philosopher and education reformer Rabindranath Tagore (Bagchi, 1990; Ghosh et al., 2010; Kumar, 1996; Sen, 1977; Spivak, 2002, 2004).
The modern system of education in India was primarily established during British colonial times to facilitate the reproduction of loyal “colonial” subjects, though it reproduced diverse kinds of subjectivities, and has been studied by historian Seth (2007). Since its independence from colonial rule, the modern Indian nation state has been struggling to build an Indian National Identity through schooling (Yadav, 1974). Globalization and economic liberalization in recent years now pose additional challenges for Indian education. Both K-12 education and higher education in India are now facing crucial challenges (Agarwal, 2010; Govinda, 2011; Nambissan, 2010; Tilak, 2013). Will Indian education be able to harness its rich tradition to meet the needs of its population in the 21st century knowledge economy? Creativity and innovation is all we have, in the face of the accumulating crises of our times, in which financial instability, credit crisis, staggering production, and sudden fluctuations in oil process and in all measures of value compound the larger and long term global problems of environment, energy and poverty. Only new, creative approaches to knowledge, to the organization of knowledge, and the free exchange of ideas can solve these problems. (Peters et al., 2009: vii) The basis for economic and social development in the new global economy is conscious critical thinking and knowledge networks. For more than thirty years, Paulo Freire thought about the revolutionary nature of knowledge. The needs of global capitalists have caught up with his conception of education.
National policy framework for the knowledge economy in India
In spite of the challenges of the education and infrastructure sectors, as mentioned earlier India is experiencing a major “demographic dividend” even compared to other major Asian countries. Scholars have argued that in 2010, the average Indian will be 29 years, compared to 37 for China and 48 of Japan. (Chandrasekhar et al 2006). Hence the former Indian Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, declared few years ago that “India must position itself to “leapfrog in the race for social and economic development” 3 through the formulation of knowledge-oriented focus of development. As a result of this initiative, the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) was established in June 2005.” (see: National Knowledge Economy in India http://ekh.unep.org/?q=node/2221). This initiative ran almost parallel to the publication of a World Bank report, India and the Knowledge Economy: Leveraging Strengths and Opportunities, on June 28, 2005 4 .
Serving as the chairperson of the Indian NKC, Sam Pitroda in his recent article writes about several recommendations made by the NKC to the Indian Government, including an important implementation of the Right to Education Act in order to further the goals of Sarva Shikshya Abhiyan (Education for All). He ends his article with an optimistic vision of systemic change through education:
The case: The Global Conclave of Young Scholars of Indian Education
The concept note on the Global Conclave informed us that: The conclave aims at bringing together young researchers (doctoral, post-doctoral students and early-career faculty) working on Indian education from universities and research institutes in India and abroad. The conclave would provide these researchers a forum to share and to showcase their research;
The Vice-Chancellor of the host university reiterated these pragmatic goals at the beginning of the conclave while welcoming and introducing the inaugural speakers. He further stated the unique role of the particular university organizing the conclave to act as a bridge between policymakers and researchers, since they have been contributing to research by conducting their own research over the past several decades to inform policymakers. He also informed us about the debates they had while planning for the concept of the Global Conclave for almost a year. He mentioned that there was apprehension among organizers about limiting the Global Conclave to only young scholars aged less than 35 years. Some organizers felt that placing an age limit meant that few good quality papers would be produced; this was probably based on mainstream cultural biases about age and seniority in the production of good quality work. Cultural aspects like this resurfaced several times throughout the course of the following 3 days, and was an underlying theme in many of the interviews that I conducted (which will be discussed at length later in this article). However, in spite of the caveat about age and quality of work by some academics in the conference organizing committee, according to the Vice-Chancellor's announcement the result was satisfactory. The committee received an overwhelming number of papers and had to conduct several rounds of screening and peer-reviews for selection. One-quarter of the selected papers were from young scholars studying Indian education in universities abroad.
“Sa Vidya Ya Vimuktaye” (education is that which liberates)
Though the Vice-Chancellor of the Global Conclave began on a pragmatic note, the inaugural keynote by a noted statesman, educationist and scholar of Indian philosophy struck a philosophical note, as his speech began with a quote from an ancient Sanskrit scripture: “Sa Vidya Ya Vimuktaye” (education is that which liberates). This statesman further emphasized in his speech that “Indian education is important not only for India; in some ways for the global society, because our students are going to play a major role in the world that is developing before our eyes.” He reminded the young scholars of the great spiritual traditions of India and educational ideas and theories of indigenous reformers like Gandhi, Tagore and Sri Aurobindo—ideas which, unfortunately, did not become mainstream within the Indian system of education, even after independence from colonial rule.
Thereafter, the speaker called for a planetary consciousness among the young scholars as researchers by asking them to reflect on how education can solve the pressing problems of poverty, over-population, global warming, religious fundamentalism and anarchist terrorism around the world “because any education that does not address the major problems we are facing becomes a theoretical academic exercise—intellectual gymnastic without any immediacy without any impact.” As a member of the commission who drafted the important UNESCO report for education in the 21st century “Learning the Treasure Within” 6 , he carefully chose examples from ancient Indian history and tradition to explain how the four pillars of 21st century education (“learning to know”, “learning to do”, “learning to live together”, and “learning to be”) are embedded in the ancient traditions and culture of India. He also pointed out how the very concept of “learning the treasure within” is a very Asian concept.
Throughout the later part of his speech, he reiterated the wisdom of ancient Indian thought and philosophy and tried to show how it aligns with the global discourse about education in the 21st century as enshrined in the UNESCO report which he co-authored. There was also a note of caution in his speech, about trying to use a Western theoretical lens to analyze educational problems, especially in India. He emphasized the need to inculcate inter-faith values through education, and quoted from great poets, philosophers, Muslim Sufi saints, Sikh gurus, Hindu saints and even the English ascetic Catholic poet Francis Thomson, to clarify what the four pillars of education in the 21st century meant. Towards the end of his speech, he sharply critiqued the current global trend of commodification of education, and proposed the four pillars of the UNESCO report embodying the spiritual dimension as an alternative.
Major challenges for Indian education and the labor market
The second keynote speaker at the conclave, who was an Honourable Minister of State for Human Resource Development, highlighted the major challenges facing Indian education. “We have a population of 110 crores and 12 crores children are going to government-aided schools. We have a world within our own country”. She raised several challenging questions bothering policymakers: Do we have the infrastructure to support the Sarva Sikshya Abhiyan (Education for All) program? Are we making education interesting for the children to come back to school? Are we allowing our children to ask questions? Is this atmosphere conducive to our children? How can we make them globalized citizens?
Referring to the Kothari Commission report on Education (1966) (See Agarwal, 2007), 7 the speaker noted her regret that policymaking has been mostly driven by political forces and electoral compulsions. She called for the need for validating traditional skills and wisdom within the country. Finally, she ended her speech by again raising questions for researchers: “How do we put into practice a qualification framework? How do we bring respect into vocational education? How do we create a multi-entry, multi-exit policy?” These are major challenges indeed for a very young nation, as highlighted by the Honourable Minister of State for Human Resource Development. India's growing youth population is its biggest resource, not just for India but for the world, as the first keynote speaker emphasized, especially since the population of developed Western countries is aging. However, educating and providing necessary skills for this young workforce to meet the demands of the labor market in the 21st century knowledge economy is a major challenge, since the mainstream public sector education system still bears the colonial tradition of education geared towards preparing students for white collar colonial bureaucratic jobs as civil servants, and the private sector education system often treats students as cash-cows without providing the necessary training and skills needed for the job market. This has increased the numbers of educated unemployed youth over the years, while creating a major skills shortage in the job market, as has been noted by scholars (Agarwal, 2010; Altbach, 1993; Tilak, 2013).
The above discussion makes it clear that the challenges ahead for Indian education can only be solved through successful research collaborations among scholars within India and abroad. As the Vice-Chancellor of the host university and one of the main conference organizers stated during our interview: You see India needs consolidation of research that is happening…lot of work that happens across the world about Indian education, but personally I find lot of writings are not necessarily fully well-informed about the Indian context…People write many things. They may be very profound in their expressions but not necessarily sound in terms of the context….That is the reason I thought we should have this global conclave so that our scholars can inform scholars abroad about the context and can also collaborate in research utilizing sophisticated methodologies.
A theoretical framework for successful research collaboration
Ritchie (2007) discusses the success of research collaborations in terms of solidarity, emotional energy, trust, agency, power, and ethical praxis. Each of these aspects of successful collaboration may be adversely affected because of prevailing social, academic and institutional cultural practices. These challenges or barriers will be discussed in the following sections of the article. However, prior to that it is important to understand how the aspects of solidarity, emotional energy, trust, agency, power, and ethical praxis in research collaboration identified by Ritchie (2007) have worked so far among education researchers and collaborators.
It is to be noted here that though most of the contributors in Ritchie's (2007) volume on research collaborations are predominantly in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the USA, the nationalities of several contributors give an even wider international representation to provide a generalizable theoretical position on successful research collaboration. This was important for me personally as a researcher in adopting Ritchie's theoretical framework for analyzing data from the Global Conclave, especially since the opening keynote speaker raised a caveat about applying a Western theoretical lens to analyze educational problems within India. Ritchie's (2007) case studies of research collaborations reinforced his tentative position about relationship and praxis in research collaboration, and also threw open additional dimensions of such activities. He summarized these perspectives as follows, and called for further interrogation of these propositions empirically in collaborative research programs (Ritchie, 2007: 232–233):
Within collaborative research teams, researchers' intersubjectivities are made available to the collective for possible subsequent actions as practices are produced and reproduced. During successful face-to-face interactions within teams, researchers experience positive emotional energy and facticity, and build solidarity. Solidarity within collaborative research teams can be stratified according to the interactive patterns within the research team. Relationships between collaborators can change over the course of a research project. Working with and for collaborators in a research team can expand individuals' agency and their productive capacities. When collaborative researchers practice solidarity they demonstrate trustworthiness, and this strengthens the bonds between them and deepens their trust further. Successful research collaborations are those in which difference is recognized and accepted, and are marked by the emergence of solidarity.
Based on the triangulation of research data from this case study of the Global Conclave of Young Scholars of Indian Education, several themes emerged. These themes were broadly clustered under the categories of social, academic and institutional cultural practices. The data reveal significant differences in each of these sets of cultural practices among young scholars based in universities abroad and those scholars based within Indian universities. It is important to understand these differences in cultural practices, which might act as barriers for successful research collaborations in the future. Early deliberations and reflections on these social, academic and institutional cultural differences might be useful in finding strategies for overcoming these barriers, to find common ground for solidarity, emotional energy, trust, agency, power, and ethical praxis—the six main domains for successful collaborations identified by Ritchie (2007). It will help to facilitate intercultural dialogue among research collaborators, to prevent misunderstandings, for respectful exchange of knowledge and research collaborations across borders; “learning to know, learning to do, learning to be, and learning to live together as equals with others”, as outlined by the UNESCO report for education in the 21st Century “Learning the Treasure within”, referred to by the first keynote speaker of the global conclave.
Major barriers
In this section of the article, I will focus on the differences in cultural practices among young scholars of Indian education within India and abroad with illustrations from research data, to reflect on possible barriers in building solidarity, emotional energy, trust, agency, equal power relations and ethical praxis for successful research collaborations.
Institutional barrier: Research ethics and integrity
The first major barriers appeared to be related to issues of ethical research practice, especially with regards to research involving human and animal subjects. In most universities in the Western world, certain ethical legal practices have been institutionalized over the years, since the malpractice of early scientists utilizing vulnerable human and animal subjects for research. Researchers (even when they might come from the developing world) within higher educational institutions in most developed nations are trained in research ethics and integrity. They have to follow a strict research ethics protocol so that no human subjects or institutions involved are harmed as an outcome of their research intervention. This cultural practice has evolved essentially to protect the human and animal subjects of research. However, when I, as a researcher, arrived with all my ethics paperwork and sought help from research organizers in informing all participants of the Global Conclave that I would be observing and interviewing them for research, and getting their signatures on legal paperwork, I was advised by the conference organizers that this kind of ethical practice might actually prevent me from getting data useful for research. I was told that since I have a letter of permission from the conference organizer and cooperating institution, this was enough. The head of the conference organizing team openly informed me that: You see this is not how we do it here. Of course we trust you and we know you will anonymise data wherever necessary while reporting. I have already signed and sent my letter of permission for you to study the Conclave. You do not need to individually seek permission from everybody. If you try to do that people will be scared and run away from you. You will not get the data that you need.
There are, of course, entrenched sociocultural, historical and political reasons behind such behavior of research participants. The coloniality of the power-knowledge relationship with all modern institutions, such as legal paperwork, is probably entrenched within the consciousness of the native Indian people, as Foucault (1979) would argue, especially since issues of trust within traditional Indian societies were often based on the value of spoken word. “Bhadroloker kathar daam” (the value of a gentleman/woman's word) as they would say in local Bengali language, or “vachan dena/zubaan dena” (to give a word to someone) as they would say in Hindi-Urdu, or similar local phrases in other languages of the Indian subcontinent still occupy the psyche and the experiences of the lived social world of most people in India. Respect within ethnic Indian societies is often defined by whether persons keep to their spoken word of promise or not. Issues of legality are often seen as a breach of trust, as Western institutions of discipline and punishment as Foucault (1995) would argue, when trust based on the spoken word as promise is broken.
Therefore, the legal protocols for research ethics and integrity can become a major issue which can act as a formidable barrier for each of the domains identified by Ritchie (2007) for successful research collaboration. While legal ethical paperwork within Western academic institutions helps create a sense of solidarity, emotional energy, trust, agency, equal power relations and ethical praxis, within the Indian academic setting and social environment it can create the reverse impact. Eventually, the practice of research ethics and integrity following the protocols of Western academic institutions may work against successful collaboration, as research collaborators and institutions abroad may become worried about research malpractice.
Corruption is not a unique phenomenon within India; it is a global problem. It is to be also noted here that in spite of all the elaborate research ethics and integrity protocols in universities abroad, research malpractice occurs. During my own research ethics training within universities in the USA and in Australia, I learnt about cases of malpractice. However, due to the greater transparency and accountability embedded in the process of conducting research and knowledge creation, researchers know that such malpractice can ruin the career of an academic researcher.
This act of ethical self-discipline as a “technology of self” (Foucault, 1988), is something about which responsible researchers learn while getting trained as researchers within the universities abroad, as an act of care for one's own “self” within the academic community. From personal knowledge of being trained both within the Indian system and systems abroad, I know that such training does not yet exist at the institutional level within Indian higher education institutions. The modern Indian systems of higher education were not built according to either the models of ancient Indian institutions of higher learning such as Nalanda, Ujjain and Taxila, or in the Humboldtian model of European and American universities as Anderson (2004) would argue. Modern Indian universities were set up primarily as testing centers to administer tests to recruit native Indians as civil servants for governance during the British Raj. Massification of this colonial system in the postcolonial era and the competitive testing-based colonial system coupled with neoliberal pressures to increase research performance without proper training has bred more corruption in the system (Bhargava, 1987; Garg, 2012; Neelakantan, 2008).
Rabindranath Tagore sought to break the colonial mould of modern Indian higher education by setting up “Visva-Bharati” University, following ancient Indian traditions of higher learning and the Humboldtian model of European enlightenment (Ghosh, 2012). However, this model has not yet become mainstream within the Indian system. Tagore's school and educational experiments during the early 20th century British Raj remained at the periphery of the system. Moreover, under the neoliberal trend of increased corporatization, universities in Europe and also in the USA, as Readings (1996) would argue, are struggling to hold on to their Humboldtian enlightenment tradition of higher learning and research as seekers of knowledge. They are becoming increasingly corporatized degree-packaging industries for mass production of graduates and paper-churning mills, undermining the quality and excellence of higher learning. Therefore, it can be argued that the issue of research protocols for ethics and integrity is as much an issue within India, because of its colonial heritage, as it is for universities in other countries under the global neoliberal corporatized regime (Altbach, 2010, 1993; Chattopadhyay and Mukhopadhyay, 2013; Peters et al., 2009; Rizvi, 2013; Rizvi and Lingard, 2010). Further detailed investigations would be necessary in this area to foster healthy and meaningful research, not just for young Indian scholars in collaboration with their peers abroad, but also for the larger scholarly community to solve global problems, as urged by the opening keynote speaker at the Global Conclave.
Academic barrier: Knowledge Exchange and Professional Ethics
Several interviews with Indian scholars and scholars from universities abroad revealed the barriers of the knowledge gap and lack of proper infrastructure on either side of the spectrum for intercultural dialogue in facilitating successful research collaboration. While scholars abroad face serious challenges with regards to the knowledge of local Indian languages and cultures for culturally relevant interpretations of research data, scholars within India, trained for high scores in examination, often face a knowledge gap with regards to enquiry-based learning and sophisticated research methodologies, especially in the social sciences, where little exchange has happened so far in research collaboration compared with science and technology. There could be great synergy for research collaboration here if some kind of institutionalized “ice-breakers” (a term used by a research participant from the USA) could be created for these scholars, to facilitate intercultural dialogue and overcome these hurdles of language and research methodology barriers.
Access to valuable meaningful data from the field and indigenous knowledge for better understanding of the research problem is a major challenge for many scholars abroad; as one scholar from abroad stated, “I wanted to be able to feel a little more authentic about what I do. Lots of the research I do is on South Asia and South Asians abroad. So I want to be able to have better context.” On the other hand, access to research databases and training in advanced methodologies is a major challenge for many scholars within the Indian system. Some kind of institutional intercultural facilitation could help research collaborators within India and abroad overcome these academic barriers and knowledge gaps. Southern theory and indigenous knowledge, as Connell (2007) would argue, can immensely improve the quality of academic knowledge creation both in the global North and the South.
Moreover, as one of the Indian research participants said, with great insight, during our interview, “If we look at ourselves as problem solvers then this conclave has emerged because there is a problem to be solved. Indian society is unequal society and education can bring a kind of change.” This idealism was particularly noticeable among most young scholars from India, and it resonated with the idealistic note raised by the first keynote speaker at the Global Conclave. By contrast, professionalism and professional interest were key drivers for young scholars (Indian and non-Indian) who were participating in the Global Conclave from abroad. Most of them expressed that their participation in the Global Conclave was part of their professional practice and training, as they have been looking for the “possibility of publishing” and the “opportunity to network and make new contacts”.
Again, there could be great synergy in research collaboration here if this innate idealism and activism of most young Indian scholars could partner with the professionalism of most scholars abroad. Each can learn from the other, and grow in idealism and professionalism to make the process of conducting research and knowledge creation more meaningful to really solve pressing global problems, enhancing mutual understanding and respect as emphasized by the inaugural keynote speaker of the Global Conclave. However, once again there is the need for some kind of institutionalized facilitation process that would help to foster solidarity, emotional energy, trust, agency, equal power relations and ethical praxis, especially since several young scholars from abroad expressed a sense of frustration because of a lack of appreciation of the specialized knowledge they are bringing, and the tendency of many facilitators at the conclave to talk down to the young presenters as if “mentoring and some kind of pedagogic project”, as reported by a research participant, rather than facilitating critical dialogue on their research-related work. This leads on to several major social barriers, which will be discussed in the next section of this article.
Social barrier: Postcolonial and indigenous hierarchies
India is a very young postcolonial nation, and postcolonial nationalism is deeply embedded within the masses of the Indian population, who have been not just economically exploited by their former British colonizers but also insulted deeply because of the cultural misunderstandings of the colonial policymakers. Most notable among them was Lord Macaulay who wrote the famous “Minute on Indian Education”; as Spivak (2004: 551--552) writes: Iswarchandra Banerjee, better known as Iswarchandra Vidyasagar, a nineteenth-century public intellectual from rural Bengal, was twenty when Macaulay wrote his “Minute on Indian Education.” He fashioned pedagogic instruments for Sanskrit and Bengali that could, if used right (the question of teaching, again), suture the “native” old with Macaulay's new rather than reject the old and commence its stagnation with that famous and horrible sentence: “
As it has been observed by scholars such as Spivak (1999, 2004), Rizvi et al., (2006), Rizvi (2007), and Hickling-Hudson (2009), neoliberal globalization has further intensified these cultural misunderstandings and perceived superiority of one race over the other, sometimes internalized by the native indigenous populations of the global South, as observed by postcolonial Martinique critic Frantz Fanon in 1952. This unequal power–knowledge relationship between young Indian scholars vis-à-vis their counterparts abroad was observed in many of the interviews, which also includes Indian scholars located in universities abroad. This power imbalance could act as barrier for building solidarity, emotional energy, trust, agency and equal power for ethical research praxis. While young Indian scholars embedded within the hierarchical Indian system expressed great eagerness to learn, some also reported the exploitations they faced within the system due to their caste/social class background; their counterparts from universities abroad were more assertive about forging professional networks and knowledge dissemination; as one Indian scholar stated: “I won't say I came here to disseminate my work but to learn more about what others are doing”.
Indians have been experiencing the phenomenon of neoliberal globalization within less than 50 years of independence from exploitative and insulting British colonial rule; hence a mixture of eagerness along with reticence was observed among young Indian scholars, who mostly congregated among themselves, and there was actually little meaningful exchange with their counterparts abroad to forge any proposal for future research collaborations. The perceived superiority of English within the postcolonial Indian context, and lack of knowledge of the Indian languages among scholars abroad, also prevented many scholars from forging any dialogue with each other. Moreover, data from interviews and observations also revealed issues of internal hierarchies of language, age, gender, caste, religion and social class which could also pose challenges for successful research collaborations, not just with scholars abroad but also within India.
A male participant from abroad observed during our interview: I found many of the male discussants are very patriarchal…It is almost hyper-patriarchal. More than I would ever imagine. And the way they have shared their information as discussant, seems to be very non-academic. It is not a scholarly discussion. It's just you are wrong and this is what you need to do. To me actually this is disenchanting in a way. I think it would hold back Indian scholarship as it does not allow academic discussion. Sometimes even the women are embodying the patriarchal paradigm instead of trying to break the mould.
In addition to gender, language and social class and caste-based hierarchies appeared as major factors which would probably act as barriers and hold back young Indian scholars. The following vignette from a conversation with a Hindi-speaking participant at the global conclave, who later started addressing me as “Didi” (elder sister) during the rest of the conclave as a marker for respect, following local custom, gives an image of the interconnected web of complexities in establishing successful research collaborations with Indian colleagues and the chasms of language, gender, social class and rural–urban divide that need to be bridged. It is also reminiscent of the observations Elder (1999) made after studying Hindi and Tamil textbooks: “…in a more subtle way, beneath the decolonized surface, the Indian textbooks transmit to their students an awareness of a West that is still technologically superior, still to be blamed, still to be emulated, and still to be sought for approval” (p. 219). Ajay: So you do not drink alcohol even after living abroad. That's quite impressive. You did not give up your culture living abroad. So how long have you been in the US? You have family there? Me: 6 years. No I am alone. All my family are here in India. Ajay: So there you must be hanging out with boys quite a lot late in the night. That is what they do there right? Are you married? Me: My answer is “No” for both your questions. What people choose to do depends a lot on their personality and background. There are girls here in New Delhi too who hang out quite late at night with boys. And, what is wrong with it? What about you? Ajay: I am from a village near Agra. Our culture is not like here. My parents got me married after college and I have two kids now. So what can one do to go to the US? How did you go? (I sensed a sense of eagerness in voice) Me: You should go to the US-India Education Foundation at the American Center on Hailey Road to find out. They are very helpful. I had several reactions from audience here telling very aggressively… I mean not aggressively but very clearly that I should publish carefully, because it is going to have very adverse effect politically… It was important for me to have those local contextualized responses with a larger number of Indian audiences… The fight of showing that Muslims have secular demands is not yet won. I mean everybody is not convinced yet. If I come too early with this research people would say that it's all nice and well but we shouldn't say that in public yet. It is very important they first need to understand Muslims are secular people as well. The Conclave definitely has a retreat-like overtone to it. I think part of the purpose was mentoring young students of their Universities becoming scholars. For instance, in a couple of sessions that I attended with the chair and discussant giving input about how to talk and how to present… that is also part of the agenda… mentoring and some kind of pedagogic project. Teachers continue to be teachers and students continue to be students even outside the classroom.
Conclusion
While returning to the United States after participating in the Global Conclave in India, at the port of entry the US immigration officer asked me the reason for my trip to India. After I shared with him the purpose of my visit to India, he made a very profound statement: “You see reform is always Janus-faced. You never know what the outcome will be.” This resonated with what the Vice-Chancellor of the host university organizing the Global Conclave remarked during our interview. While talking about the novel idea of bringing together young scholars of Indian education across the world, he said: You see if you want to crystallize some ideas and make it functional to show that it is possible to do, you need to really take some risks. Otherwise, new ideas don't emerge. If new ideas have to emerge you need to take risk. What the outcome of this intervention would be for young scholars of Indian scholars and for reform of Indian education is yet to emerge.
Moreover, rather than being totally ignorant about possible barriers, better knowledge of these cultural barriers can help to identify ways in which intercultural dialogue could be initiated to overcome hurdles, in order to come to a mutual consensus for successful research collaboration. Therefore, as a young Indian scholar located abroad, I would like to end this article recalling indigenous Indian education reformer, philosopher and Nobel Laureate poet activist, Rabindranath Tagore, who was the author of the Indian National anthem, and who has been also honored by UNESCO in 2011, as one of the world poets, along with Pablo Neruda and Aimé Césaire, for upholding high standards of humanist values (UNESCO, 2011). It would probably not be an exaggeration to recall the humanist educational philosophy of Tagore to foster the characteristics of solidarity, emotional energy, trust, agency, equal power, and ethical praxis among partners for successful research collaboration as identified by Ritchie (2007). As Tagore (1934) wrote: University is there to offer us opportunity for working together in a common pursuit of truth, sharing together our common intellectual heritage, to enable us to realize that artists in all parts of the world have created forms of beauty, scientists discovered secrets of the material universe, philosophers solved the problems of existence, saints made spiritual truths organic in their lives, not merely for some particular race to which they belonged, but for all mankind. When we understand this truth in a disinterested spirit,it teaches us to respect all the differences in man that are real, yet remain conscious of our oneness, and to know that perfection of unity is not in uniformity, but in harmony. – Tagore
7
, “The Ideal of Education”, Visva-Bharati News, January 1934, p.5
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
This research was conducted in 2011 following a research ethics protocol approved by University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign under the supervision of Robert E. Stake and a generous travel grant funded by the Indian Government and local hospitality administered by the National University of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi.