NY Times: The Right Wing attack on India's Universities

Hellsangel wrote:Left wing politics are a scourge of Indian universities that deserve to be eradicated like a disease.

I must not have seemed sufficiently appalled. Mr. Tripathi tried a different tack. He said, on hearing of my connection to an American publication, “Tell me, can you, being a professor in America, criticize the American government?” Yes, I answered. He tried again. “Can you,” he thundered down the line, “being a professor in America, teach what is against America’s interests?” I remembered a professor at Amherst College, my alma mater, who had once compared George W. Bush to Osama bin Laden. “Probably,” I said. “Well, maybe you can in America,” he said with disgust. “But you can’t do it in India.”

I had one last question. I had seen the vice chancellor recently at a religious event celebrating the university’s centenary, where the presiding pundit had claimed that ancient India possessed the science of gestational surrogacy. “We had these technologies, too,” the pundit said, “but over the course of a thousand years of slavery we forgot them. Or, rather, we were made to forget them.” Mr. Pandey, a man of science, had told me that Mr. Tripathi and his ilk were of the same mind as the pundit and even believed ancient India had possessed aircraft and ballistic missiles.

I had to ask. Did the vice chancellor really believe this? “I still say it,” he said defensively. I asked him to explain further. He said this was not a conversation to be had on the telephone. He would show me all the evidence later. The line went dead.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:it's interesting that taseer, hardly a leftist, and who at one point of time seemed smitten by modi has gradually changed his opinion.

sad what's happening at BHU.

Seva Lamberdar wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:it's interesting that taseer, hardly a leftist, and who at one point of time seemed smitten by modi has gradually changed his opinion.

sad what's happening at BHU.

He might not be a left wing, but he is not very smart. He is trying to put down the long ago founder of RSS as a Hitler admirer, without realizing, perhaps not even knowing, that Hitler at one time (especially prior to WWII) had many admirers, friends and partners all over the world, including leaders in Western Europe and North America who collaborated and made deals with him.

Hellsangel wrote:This is Newton's law at play here. After years of trying to ram left wing ideology down the throats of university administrations, the left wing ranters have to deal with this extreme. At some point it will balance out.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

Hellsangel wrote:This is Newton's law at play here. After years of trying to ram left wing ideology down the throats of university administrations, the left wing ranters have to deal with this extreme. At some point it will balance out.

it's not just the lefties who have to deal with it. righties, centeries, uppies, and downies, basically everyone who attends these universities have to deal with this extreme. the question is -- are people here comfortable sending their children to study at a university where the vice chancellor believes that ancient indians had invented ballistic missiles and gestational surrogacy?

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

Hellsangel wrote:This is Newton's law at play here. After years of trying to ram left wing ideology down the throats of university administrations, the left wing ranters have to deal with this extreme. At some point it will balance out.

it's not just the lefties who have to deal with it. righties, centeries, uppies, and downies, basically everyone who attends these universities have to deal with this extreme. the question is -- are people here comfortable sending their children to study at a university where the vice chancellor believes that ancient indians had invented ballistic missiles and gestational surrogacy?