Sunday, September 21, 2025

Four Learnings from Gautam Bhan

Gautam Bhan is one of the foremost academics advocating how environments on the Global South need their own theory. Over the last two years, I have had the opportunity of dabbling into a lot of discussion on knowledge production within the Global south, as well as the urge to decolonise education in this region. In my effort to give meaning to what "decolonise" means in academia, and how does one think of performing it, I indulged myself in Bhan's talks, from one of which, I got some very tangible ideas for academic practice. Here they are:


The ability to translate

Academics are not able to translate their language in different scenarios/situations and therefore they feel silenced. Academics speak in largely academic situations/settings because they are almost sure that it is (going to be) the space from where the validation of their language comes from, and thus are trapped in the "seduction of the academica"


Automatic Modernity

Bhan points out how the project of modernism gives an automatic direction to aspiration - and to aspire has to come to mean to be modern. This conceptual relationship between modernity (read modernity coming from the West) and the desire for progress and the engine of aspiration needs to be challenged. That is the culture work academics have to collectively undertake, Bhan suggests.


On Insularity of Academic Voice

Bhan says that no one stops academics from writing, intervening and performing in domains outside of academia. Therefore, academics cannot afford to stay within the bubble of knowledge production of academia and lament that the world outside is not listening to them. The must actively find audiences and write in their language to make their knowledge and findings about the world more accessible.


On Theory from the North

Bhan says that we need to "particularise" Northern theory - meaning, theory coming from the north is not universal theory, and that it must be assigned a status that it is a theory of that place - and therefore, it cannot be "the" way of doing/thinking things everywhere, rather, "a" way in which things happen somewhere, and therefore all ways of doing things hold value and knowledge because they are inherently embedded in certain values of a place.



Wednesday, September 17, 2025

On Existentialism

 एक गोष्ट


"मी जन्माला आलो नसतो तर किती बरं झालं असतं," ब्राह्मण म्हणाला.


"का रे, बाबा?" मी विचारले.


"कारण," तो म्हणाला, "गेली चाळीस वर्ष मी अध्ययन करतो आहे आणि मला वाटतं, हा सर्व काळ फुकट गेला. मी जड द्रव्यातून बनलो हे खरं; पण विचार कोठून निर्माण होतात याविषयी मी अद्यापही अज्ञानी आहे. मला हेही समजत नाही की, माझं आकलन माझ्या चालण्यासारखी वा माझ्या पचनक्रियेसारखी सहज प्रेरणा आहे, का मी हातानं एखादी वस्तू धरतो तसा डोक्यानं विचार पकडतो... मी खूप बोलतो, पण ते संपल्यावर मी जे बोललो त्याची मलाच लाज वाटते."


त्याच दिवशी त्या ब्राह्मणाजवळच राहणाऱ्या एका वृद्ध बाईशी माझं बोलणं झाले. मी तिला विचारलं, "तुझा आत्मा म्हणजे काय आहे? आणि ते तुला माहीत नसेल तर त्याचं तुला दुःख होत नाही?" तिला मी काय म्हणतोय हेच मुळी कळलं नाही. तिने आयुष्यात क्षणभरसुद्धा भल्या ब्राह्मणाला छळणाऱ्या गोष्टींचा विचार केला नव्हता. तिची विष्णूच्या अवतारांवर श्रद्धा होती आणि गंगाजलात एकदा स्नान करायला मिळालं, तर जन्माचं सार्थक झालं यावर तिचा विश्वास होता. तिच्या सुखी, समाधानी वृत्तीनं प्रभावित होऊन मी तत्त्वज्ञानी ब्राह्मणाला म्हटलं, “तुझ्याजवळच एक वृद्ध बाई कसलाही गहन विचार करीत नाही आणि सुखासमाधानानं जगते आहे, याची तुला लाज नाही वाटत?"


"तू बरोबर आहेस," ब्राह्मण म्हणाला, "हजार वेळा मी स्वतःला सांगितलं की माझ्या शेजाऱ्याप्रमाणे मी अज्ञानात राहिलो तर सुखानं जगेन; तरी पण तशा सुखाची मला इच्छा होत नाही."


ब्राह्मणाच्या उत्तरानं कशापेक्षाही मी अधिक प्रभावित झालो.


- व्हॉल्टेअर




Translation / English

An Anecdote

"How better would it have been had I not been born," Brahmin said.

"Why do you say that?" I asked.

"Because," he said, "for the past forty years I have been studying and all this while has been wasted. The fact that I am made out of a solid material, but I am still unaware about where thoughts are created. I do not even understand if my analysis is as involuntary as my walking or the process of digestion, or whether I hold ideas knowingly like I hold something consciously in my hands ... I speak a lot, but I myself feel embarrassed of what I have said eventually."

On the same day, I got a chance to speak to an old woman who used to live near that Brahmin. I asked her, "What is your soul? And if you do not know what it is, does it not trouble you?" She did not seem to understand what I was even saying. She had not thought even for a fraction of her life about things that may be bothering a Brahmin. She had faith in the incarnations of Vishnu and believed that if she could bathe in the waters of the Ganges once, her life would be worthwhile. Impressed by her happy, contented attitude, I said to the philosophical Brahmin, "Aren't you ashamed that there is an old woman next to you who doesn't think deeply and lives happily?"

"You are right," said the Brahmin, "a thousand times I have told myself that if I remained in ignorance like my neighbor, I would live happily; yet I do not desire such happiness."

I was more impressed by the Brahmin's answer than anything else.

- Voltaire