Needed: A Bold Vision

AS SOMEONE KEEN TO SEE THE WORLD of academe in India elevated to worthy heights I am often reminded of the lament-from the 1980s of one of India's most distinguished academics and a former vice-chancellor of Allahabad University. His anguish stemmed from the fact that somewhere along the way independent India had been unable to steer our universities in the right direction. By way of illustration, I can provide many insightful instances but perhaps none would be as telling as that which has Srinivas Ramanujan at its centre and which transpired more than a hundred years ago.

- PROF. DINESH SINGH

As most of us know, Ramanujan's name had been struck off the rolls of Madras University after he failed to clear his English language examination. But by then he had already produced some profound work in mathematics and it was evident to many senior contemporaries that he was no ordinary student. Yet, Madras University had no hesitation in stripping him of his scholarship and disqualifying him as a student. Soon after that shameful episode, G.H. Hardy that outstanding mathematician and humanist at Cambridge University-received a letter from Ramanujan. In no time he got Cambridge University to offer Ramanujan a handsome salary and a formal position. In addition, they awarded him their version of a proper doctoral degree, on the basis of the work he had produced in India. Remember, Ramanujan then had failed to clear the equivalent of the Grade 12 exam at Madras University. Did Cambridge care much about such formal niceties? Not when they understood that having Ramanujan in their midst would greatly enhance research at their institution.

Let us contrast that with the situation that prevails now, all these hundred and more years since Ramanujan's time in India. Had Ramanujan come to me at the University of Delhi when I served as its vice-chancellor (2010-15), I would not have been able to enrol him as a student at Delhi University nor would I have been allowed to award him a PhD degree. Of course, I would have hailed him as a mathematician with divine gifts, but the regulations-not of my choosing or making-imposed upon the university and others by weighty institutions that have charted the course of higher education in independent India would have prevented me from doing what Cambridge University could do for Ramanujan more than a hundred years earlier. To my mind, this more than aptly sums up what ails India's universities.