Disciplines, Inter-disciplines and Languages Prathama Banerjee This essay seeks to contextualise the current moment of higher education

reform in India, in terms of a longer history of disciplines and interdisciplinarity. History Social science disciplines as we know them today emerged in the early 20th century in India. ntil then, most self!consciously modern intellectuals wrote essays, which free!wheeled through a "ariety of themes, philosophical, historical, literary and scientific. #arly 20th century intellectuals $egan criticising this %&th!century amateurish and meandering style of intellection. 'engali historians, for instance, argued that 'ankimchandra (hatter)ee had done a great disser"ice to knowledge $y proposing that history!writing was any and e"eryones patriotic duty, with the result that e"ery other local literate was churning out unruly narrati"es in the name of history. Social sciences henceforth $egan to $e imagined as a form of knowledge $ased on technical training and specialised skill, distinct from the calling of intellection as such. *nd social scientists $ecame pedagogic figures distinct from that of the general pu$lic critic and commentator. (learly, this was a moment of disciplining of knowledges. This was also the moment when separate departments $egan to $e set up in our uni"ersities + economics and political science seceded from history, "ernacular literature $ecame separate from #nglish literature, and the num$er of )ournals and writers pu$lishing on science and social science, within the same argumentati"e framework, $ecame fewer and fewer. The primary emphasis now was on method as that which defined and delimited each particular discipline. In the post!%&,- decades, the disciplinary format was reconsolidated in a new way. The already well!esta$lished separation $etween the arts and the sciences was now supplemented $y a new distinction + that $etween applied and $asic research. The di"ision of disciplines, thus, $ecame predicated upon the ends to which a particular knowledge!form could $e put. In other words, disciplinary distinctions were no longer simply to do with method, $ecause $y this time, the so!called %

scientific method had colonised all disciplines, including a con"entional humanities su$)ect such as history. This was the hegemonic moment of Indian de"elopmentalism. .igh!end technological and applied research $egan to $e seen as the dri"ing force of nation!$uilding. #ducation policy $egan to emphasise primary education as a $asic de"elopmental index, and neglect general uni"ersity education as that which, from colonial times, had turned India into an unemploya$le mass of low! le"el clerical population with graduate degrees, e"en as it promised to produce good citi/ens. Soon, from within uni"ersities, technical sciences and economics were taken out and housed in new institutions such as the IITs and the Institution of #conomic 0rowth 1I#02. Su$se3uently, sociology, political science and de"elopment studies 1to the exclusion of humanities2 found new homes in what $ecame I(SS4 centres. These $ecame the locus of research and de"elopment, aside of the uni"ersity, which continued to offer general education to the mass of the nation. *ll this produced, as we know, a social and academic hierarchy amongst students of sciences, social sciences and humanities, )ust as it produced long!lasting contradictions $etween research and teaching, pedagogy and policy, criticism and expertise. The %&-0s saw a re"olt against disciplinary regimentation and exclusion. This was the moment of the rise of anti! as well as cross!disciplinary endea"ours, primarily with the coming of gender studies. Su$se3uently, in the %&50s and &0s, postcolonial studies, dalit studies and to a limited extent in India, cultural studies also emerged as self!consciously interdisciplinary fields. This criti3ue of disciplines was grounded in the rise of new political identities in India + the woman, the dalit, the colonised, the minority and so on. 6nowledge $egan to $e rethought through the 3uestion of su$)ecti"ity, recasting method as a political rather than merely an epistemological 3uestion. 7et, these new interdisciplinary fields were typically accommodated in the system through the creation of separate programmes and centres, thus allowing the parent disciplines to remain more or less unpertur$ed, especially in the uni"ersity system. This was also the inaugural moment, it is important to remem$er, of the so!called massification of higher education, with hitherto excluded classes and castes demanding not only de"elopment, literacy and employa$ility $ut also inclusion in the social and intellectual space of the academy. This changed the nature and dynamic of the classroom, making it a more explicitly political and socially fraught space + and re3uiring, at least in principle, a greater 2

degree of disciplining. The domain of research, increasingly distant from teaching and increasingly a domain of expertise, on the other hand, $oasted more and more of methodological flexi$ility and therefore of interdisciplinarity. 'ut e"en here, interdisciplinarity took the form of a methodological eclecticism across archi"al, ethnographic, philosophical, linguistic and literary techni3ues + an eclecticism which mostly remained at the le"el of contingent and indi"idual academic practice and did not emerge as a collecti"e rethink of our education system in general. The current moment The 2000s are a new moment. The de"elopmental take on knowledge has $y now run thin. #arlier, research pro$lems seemed o$"ious + po"erty, illiteracy, underde"elopment, traditionalism, transition and so on. 8ow uncertainties of a different order face us + whether a$out the future of the planet or capital or proliferating technology or genetics or mutating "irus. 9ro$lems, therefore, are no longer self!e"ident, nor easy to diagnose and grasp, e"en $y the expert. (onse3uently, today we ha"e a new take on knowledge + namely, that all forms of uncertainty and risk can and must $e turned into epistemological models, into knowledge pro$lematics. .ence the call for new forms of knowledge and catchwords such as research and innovation 1rather than, as earlier, research and de"elopment2. .ence also terms such as knowledge economy and knowledge worker + symptoms of a new kind of hegemony of the "ery idea of knowledge as such o"er our social and political life. Today, we see two distinct turns in pu$lic discourse. :ne, we see a new emphasis on reforming higher education, instead of )ust focussing on primary or uni"ersal education. .igher education is meant to create citi/ens of the knowledge economy $ut also capitalise the population itself, till now seen as lia$ility, as economic resource. *nd two, we see an official preference for interdisciplinarity, which is nota$le gi"en that interdisciplinarity was till "ery recently an unofficial, radical academic position. .ere I shall focus on interdisciplinarity as such. ;e ha"e two official imaginations of interdisciplinarity at work in todays India. :ne is $ased on a criti3ue of increasing specialisation and fragmentation of <

knowledge as has happened in the last half a century in India. This position, as reflected in the 7ashpal report, argues for complete or holistic education and seeks to $ring together professional training and social science education. ;e ha"e seen some concrete mo"es on these lines recently + such as in the reconstitution of pass courses in =elhi uni"ersity colleges, in the diktat $y the uni"ersity executi"e that all departments should offer interdisciplinary courses, and in the setting up of the school rather than departmental system in new uni"ersities. 1Thus, the *m$edkar uni"ersity in =elhi departs from the earlier >8 school model through the institutionalisation what were hitherto dissenting, cross!disciplinary fields + such as gender studies, performance studies, de"elopment studies, en"ironmental studies and so on.2 *t the same time, we see a restructuring of management and technology curricula with greater components of social sciences in them + marked $y the transformation of earlier ideas of social work 1a la TISS2 into ideas of corporate social responsi$ility, pu$lic accounta$ility and institution of research and dissemination funds $y capital. 8ote that the goal of this imagination of interdisciplinarity is a future unity of knowledge, which seemingly was lost in the professionalisation and instrumentalisation of knowledge $y the earlier de"elopmental imagination. This imagination of interdisciplinarity takes teaching and mentoring as the main medium through which knowledge would e"entually change for the $etter. The other official imagination of interdisciplinarity is somewhat different, and is reflected in an emphasis not so much on teaching as on high!end research. This imagination is "oiced $y the knowledge commission and $y many corporate research initiati"es currently. This is a pro)ect of setting up a research space around a new and difficult o$)ect of research + such as alternati"e energy, en"ironment or genetics + and then assem$ling a di"erse group of intellectuals from different disciplines around it. The idea of inno"ation uni"ersities is precisely this, though this kind of initiati"e has "ery much $een glo$ally the structure of medicinal and science research in the last decade or so. 8ote that this is an a"owedly pragmatic model of interdisciplinarity, where the o$)ect of study itself is meant to generate an epistemological pull, transforming existing disciplines in unprecedented ways $oth in terms of method and intellectual su$)ecti"ity. Indeed, many academics in India too ha"e $een arguing in fa"our of this o$)ect!centric model of interdisciplinarity, especially from within en"ironment and ur$an studies. ,

Interdisciplinarity .ow does one engage with these official mo"es for interdisciplinarity today? * set of 3uestions come to mind. The first set of 3uestions is a$out the institutional form interdisciplinarity assumes. ;ithin the uni"ersity model of teaching, are we looking at a future integration of disciplines + a dissolution of $oundaries and a proliferation of courses under one large and heterogeneous social science ru$ric as has $een attempted $y (entre for Studies in Social Sciences, 6olkata in their @9hil course in the social sciences? :r are we looking at curricular changes within the existing departmental structure, in which e"ery discipline creates a set of interdisciplinary courses from a particular perspecti"e and offers it to students across the $oard, in the process perpetuating a formal distance $etween their core and interdisciplinary courses? :r should we simply consider turning the uni"ersity into a "ast and di"erse faculty, and setting up multiple programmes through different disciplinary com$inations? =o we institute interdisciplinarity at the undergraduate le"el, encouraging specialisation @* onwards, or "ice "ersa? *t which stage of study does interdisciplinarity $ring in greatest returns? ;hat is the way of thinking of interdisciplinarity across sciences, social sciences and the humanities, which goes $eyond the two currently a"aila$le modes + one, the instrumental use of the social sciences to esta$lish pu$lic accounta$ility for the sciences and two, the creation of su$!disciplinary fields such as philosophy of science, history of science and science studies, which is really a sociological take on science? *gain, if we assume that interdisciplinary set!ups must $e esta$lished around new o$)ects of study, are we then looking at an infinite proliferation of centres and institutions of research? ;hat else could $e the mechanisms of incorporating newer and newer o$)ects of study, and institutionally accounting for o$solescence of older and exhausted ones? Ainally, how do we rethink the classroom, the la$oratory and the seminar in context of interdisciplinarity? The second set of 3uestions is more difficult + namely, how do we think a$out the parameters of criticism and e"aluation in context of interdisciplinary research? ;e B

know that historically, disciplines grow and change through the de"elopment of an internal tradition of criticism and e"aluation. :f course, indi"idual disciplines $orrow insights from other disciplines too in order to effect internal changes. *nd yet through all these cross!disciplinary ad"entures, the attempt remains to sharpen the particularity of a disciplines own critical tradition. .istory, for instance, has fruitfully rein"ented itself in the last hundred years through encounters with first economics, then anthropology and then literary studies + and yet $y "irtue of that "ery fact further consolidated its own disciplinarity and indeed, in India, transformed neigh$ouring disciplines such as political science and literary studies $y turning them more and more historical. This is indeed the story of the success of a discipline $ut "ery far from a story of interdisciplinarity. In other words, if we take interdisciplinarity seriously, we must think hard a$out critical and e"aluati"e criteria that are autonomous of criteria internal to the antecedent disciplines. It could $e said that in the model of interdisciplinary set!ups around particular o$)ects of study, the o$)ect itself could $e the ground for generating such critieria. .owe"er, this could lead to a new kind of instrumentalisation of knowledge. *lso, as @arilyn Stratherns important work on audit has shown, e"aluation across different knowledge set!ups necessarily produces the need for a supra!authority, which undertakes criticism and e"aluation, not necessarily $y claiming to $e an academic entity itself $ut through a general and generic audit acti"ity.% In this format, academia is meant to self!assesses and self!regulate, $ut according to what appears as a set proforma. This supra!authority could take, as far as I can see, many forms. It could $e a managerial $ody 1as with funding institutions2 or it could $e a regulatory $ody 1as with other domains of ser"ice such as telecommunication2 or indeed, it could simply $e the notion of a society or ethics, which is seen to offer o$)ecti"e criteria across the $oard such as rele"ance, time! line, outreach, producti"ity, accounta$ility and so on. The point, howe"er, is o$"ious + that such supra!disciplinary criteria might at $est produce e"aluation, $ut hardly e"er criticism. *re we then looking at a context where e"aluation and criticism $ecome two distinct imperati"es? ;hat would $e the implications of this?

Language The third set of 3uestions I ha"e in mind is a$out language. The issue of language has $een most commonly raised in India in contexts of teaching. .ere, language is primarily a matter of communica$ility, gi"en that most higher!le"el teaching happens in #nglish which is not the first language of most students. (onnected to this is the 3uestion of a"aila$ility of reading materials in Indian languages. *s of now, in teaching contexts, language thus comes up as primarily as a translata$ility 3uestion. .ence the recent go"ernmental initiati"e of the 8ational Translation @ission, which howe"er seems defunct $efore e"en taking off. To my mind, the pro$lem here is that we ha"e failed to esta$lish translation itself as a worthwhile academic act + $ased on research, offering employment at par within academic institutions and $ringing formal credit to students specialising in it. *lso, in contexts of research, the language 3uestion is $arely e"er raised. It is presumed that high!end research would happen $y default in #nglish. Indian languages will of course figure in such research if they are social sciences, $ut only as primary materials 1drawn from archi"es, field!work, inter"iews etc.2, su$se3uently cooked in #nglish $efore $eing ser"ed as knowledge, as it were. Ainished products of research then would $e translated $ack into the "ernaculars for purpose of dissemination. It is important to note here that since the %&B0s, translation of regional literature into #nglish, especially under the aegis of the Sahitya *kademi, has $een central to our cultural imaginary. @ore recently, translations of feminist and dalit writings from the bhashas into #nglish ha"e further reinforced this centrality of translation and ha"e impacted social sciences positi"ely. 7et, what this has also done, paradoxically, is create an image of the Indian languages as primarily literary, i.e. structurally resistant to academic articulation + and this, despite the large "olume of intellection that goes on routinely in "ernacular domains, often outside enclosed academic institutions and in the larger pu$lic sphere of essays, )ournals and little maga/ines. In this context, I think it is useful to draw in the language 3uestion within the pur"iew of our thoughts on interdisciplinarity.

Airst of all, we could consider if it is worthwhile to set up translation studies, within or outside uni"ersities, in the shape of an interdisciplinary field + rather than simply presume that translation is either a matter of indi"idual multilingual skill or a su$sidiary field to language and literary studies. ;e must admit that different disciplines ha"e e"ol"ed different languages of thought, and academic translation re3uires a simultaneous engagement with these distincti"e conceptual languages. The 3uestion of academic language thus is tied to $ut not reduci$le to the 3uestion of #nglish "ersus "ernacular or spoken "ersus literary. ;e must ask then whether social sciences share the same conceptual language irrespecti"e of whether they are carried on in #nglish or 'engali or @alayalam? If not, which is most likely, then the interface $etween "ernacular social science domains and the formal, academic domain is not merely that of translata$ility $ut also of interdisciplinarity. That is, the language 3uestion here is em$edded in the larger 3uestion of the relationship $etween distinct $odies of knowledge with different norms, forms, protocols and textual genres. In other words, translation studies must open unto the interdisciplinarity 3uestion + $ecause in context of the social sciences, translation is a matter of $oth conceptual and linguistic translation, of transactions $oth across disciplines and across language domains. Secondly, we can also re"erse the a$o"e 3uestion. That is, we can ask if interdisciplinarity itself should $e seen through the prism of the language 3uestion. In other words, when we put two disciplines such as history and economics face to face, are we actually also looking at two languages of articulation, which can only speak to each other through translation or through the mediation of an altogether different, third language, which gets produced out of the e"ent of coming face!to!face? In other words, do we get any further purchase in thinking interdisciplinarity $y seeing disciplines as different languages seeking to access a common or a shared o$)ect of knowledge, rather than $y seeing disciplines as primarily constituted $y incommensura$ly different o$)ects of knowledge and different methods? Ainally, we can also consider setting up in our academic institutions centres of regional studies + somewhat similar to yet distinct from the area studies model of S uni"ersities. ;hat this does is to su$sume yet critically foreground the language and translation 3uestion within a larger pro$lematic of what is today $eing called the 5

"ernacular domain. These centres, of say Tamil studies or 'engal studies or 8orth! east studies, would call upon all social science disciplines 1including economics, film studies and en"ironmental studies2 to simultaneously engage with the region in India. It will $e within this larger framework, then, that we address simultaneously the 3uestion of language, of "ernacular social science, and of translation. 8eedless to say, this would re3uire a critical rethinking of what it is to mark out regions, without simply "alidating the political $oundaries of the Indian federal space. Det me end here. *ll this has $een only $y way of pro"isional thoughts, seeking out further discussion amongst academics, students and policy!makers. :ne thing seems certain to me, though + that talking higher education today calls for not )ust a discussion on pedagogy and research in the a$stract. ;e need also to raise the 3uestions of disciplines, interdisciplinarity, institutional form, e"aluation and a$o"e all, language + all this in the same $reath. This essay has $een a modest attempt to do exactly that.

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@arilyn Strathern * (ommunity of (riticsE Thoughts on 8ew 6nowledge, Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, %21%2, 200C, %&%!20&.