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Century of forgetting

One hundred years ago, an obscure librarian created what in scholarly terms was a sensation. 1909 was the year in which the first near complete text of Kautilya’s Arthashastra was published. Four years earlier, Rudrapatnam Shamashastry had discovered the palm leaf manuscript that would define h ....Read more

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Reductionism to ReconstructionismBy: Prabhakar Singh | Friday , 17 Jul '09 18:34:18 PM Reply | Forward The article by Mehta is superb. The education system in India has indeed been a victim of what Mehta has pointed out. However, I find the remark on JNU by Shashank untenable. The elite education in India is no more about JNU but has shifted to IITs, IIMs and National law schools...in fact JNU has been now intrumental in breaking the parochial nationalistic and reductionist marxist consciouness. BS CHIMNI for example undone a lot of Marxist reduction by his personal reconstruction of international law from India. one would have thought that the Law schools should have done it and not someone from JNU..but the law schools are busy producing corporate lawyers and MBA aspirants..read singh, what can international law from India in 2:1 Journal of East Asia

ReductionismBy: Naras | Tuesday , 16 Jun '09 12:26:01 PM Reply | Forward Came to this thoughtful essay via Outlook blog. Look at the current education survey running there. Prime example of reductionism. This reaches a climax with their assessment of ROI on college degree investment! Apparently if you divide the average salary after placement by annual fees paid, you can compare the worth of the colleges!

loss and recoveryBy: shashank | Tuesday , 16 Jun '09 10:01:04 AM Reply | Forward How do we resuce humanites from JNU wallahs and Nikkar wallahs. You are too polite to name them, but that is the real source of the problem. we need people like you to creatively intepret our tradition for us.

not to forget materialistsBy: Arvind S | Tuesday , 16 Jun '09 6:10:05 AM Reply | Forward In your list if factors you forgot crass materialists - who have elevated the hard sciences of engineering, medicine and more recently business administration as being the only sort of knowledge worth pursuing. I disagree with the obscurantism of the Sankrit Pundits - sure they are sometimes obstacles in self-learning, but that is inherent in their role as keepers of a tradition that has been preserved through oral/rote learning. I am all for expanding the sphere and importance of the liberal arts, but here is an question which I hope you will answer – would liberal arts education be more valuable later in life? The charm of petty ideologies (Marxist or nationalist) no longer holds after a certain age. Not to mention that the pursuer will have lived more experiences and made contributions in the economic or scientific sphere, thus freeing the mind from the anxiety of making a living. Hence no hankering for jobs, tenure or fellowships

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