Those who can, teach
produced by scholars who have primarily, if not exclusively, been teachers — Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, Suhas Palshikar, T.K. Ramachandran. Equally importantly, Mehta discounts the hundreds of serious scholars produced by teachers who, through their lectures, have introduced cutting edge philosophy and social science to students in places in India where even Economic and Political Weekly is difficult to come by, let alone international journals. These students then reach Delhi and Hyderabad and Pune and Kolkata, go on to do doctoral research, publish, and some may even join research institutes. Research institutes are not produced in isolation.
Second, if a thriving democratic culture pervades the Indian academy, it is hard won and daily battled for by thousands of teachers across universities, in constant conversation and quarrel with their students, in classrooms and outside. Whether combating religious right-wings or economic neoliberalism, or patriarchy and sexual harassment, it is teachers and students who drag the stodgy upper echelons of the academy kicking and screaming in radically new directions of theory and practice. The ivory towers of research institutes have contributed little to this ferment, and certainly no career researcher has faced any risk by taking anti-establishment positions. The majority of teachers, on the other hand, daily risk their autonomy, even their salaries, in protest. They have almost no say in how their institutions will be run and what changes should be brought about.
As I watch in increasing dismay and anger the systematic destruction of Delhi University by the vice chancellor and his bosses,
