DU 61 (Education & Knowledge 30)

Gaurav Goel You asked a pointed question that everyone is talking about bungling and nepotism in the interviews and that no one is talking about one's own selection. Did you get the job within 3 years of doing your Masters through some Godfather or accidentally, for a change, the selection committee was fair? I confess that I did get the job accidentally after over one and half a decade of my Master's, as an atheist, I do not have a God and hence did not allow any academic fief to Godfather me, though by doing so, inadvertently caused a social loss by depriving myself from teaching 15-16 batches more. In 1985 with another friend from JNU, Dr. Ashok Raj, we had planned a book on the University appointments, but as both had to earn their livelihood through writing so we could not go beyond the title -- THE GODFATHERS AND THE ....... SONS. The accused are not those who get selected but those, who select. It is not to say those selected with the grace of Godfathers are academically incompetent but the process itself is vicious for a healthy academics. I do not lament about getting it late, but pleasantly wonder on getting it. As an elderly teacher, I appeal to all the young colleagues, to realize the importance of being teacher -- by reminding our students that they are intelligent people; by instigating them to unceasing application of mind instead of fettering it; by helping them to unlearn the acquired moralities and replace them with the rational ones; by explaining them that money is means not the end of the life and that one has only one life time and that the individual good is safest in the collective good; by making them understand that the key to any knowledge is questioning and that there is no final knowledge but is a continuously, ongoing process; by teaching them the pleasure of transcendence of personal considerations and strength of the honesty and the principled life; by acquainting them with the basic fact that under capitalism, only capitalist can accumulate, others can have only illusion of accumulation; by encouraging them to dare to know and have courage to apply their reason; by making them realize that happiness lies not in luxurious life but in realizing one's creative potentialities; and helping them to transcend the identity emanating from the coincident of birth and in creating a work identity. In nutshell by helping them in realizing the importance of justice and of standing up against injustices. And a teacher and a father/mother must teach by example. Preaching has limited effect.