In Pursuit of Scholarship A Vain Endeavour?
Kushal Deb BEING involved in teaching sociology in a regional university with mofussil affiliated colleges, one shares Hiren Gohain's concern ('In Search of Scholarship', EPW, January 4-11) about the drugged incuriosity and intellectual paralysis which seem to mire the atmosphere of many regional universities in India. But instead of diagnosing the reasons behind such a state of affairs, Hiren Gohain ends up lashing out at the so-called 'colonial situation' (most forms of knowledge in universities have a western origin); brushes away feminism, Marxism, post-modernism as intellectual fashions whose existence is as ephemeral as swings in market trends and criticises academic disciplines for not being able to solve the country's endemic problems.
