The Ferment Among India's Students

...Its principal causes are these: • The phenomenal increase in the number of students, many of whom come from families or social strata which had for centuries been shut out of intellectual pursuits...

...In the first place, none of the issues is settled...

...Right and the Left (especially the Communist party), remain as dedicated as ever to exploiting frustrated youth...

...Three days later the neighboring University of Allahabad was also closed sine die...

...The Education Ministry's Committee on Religious and Moral Education only very recently prescribed the introduction of religious instruction as the surest panacea...

...Fourthly, and this is the greatest source of uneasiness, the dramatic events at Lucknow and Allahabad only highlight what has been happening on a larger, if not always as spectacular, scale in nearly every part of the country during the last decade...

...On the same day, with the Vice Chancellor's consent, the provincial armed constabulary moved in and took up positions on the Allahabad campus...

...Hindu India had for centuries been based on the caste hierarchy which made knowledge and all intellectual pursuits the monopoly of the Brahmins...

...Islam added to this closed elite system its own group of priests and religious scholars...

...Student indiscipline in India, I believe, is a consequence of this strain...

...The indiscipline of Indian youth is born of its newly roused hunger, not merely for bread but also for knowledge and education...

...Thirdly, all the extremist political parties, both of the The complex issue of student indiscipline has troubled Indian educational authorities for several years and has come into sharp focus with student disturbances in recent months...

...The British introduced India to liberal democratic values, but the colonial system imposed by them made pursuit of these values well-nigh impossible...

...Students tear up their papers in the examination hall on the plea that the questions are too stiff, engage in acts of vandalism, terrorize the more serious students and sometimes even assault teachers who dare to disapprove of such conduct...

...The students replied by calling a general strike...

...At the same time the more developed democratic communities of the West can contribute significantly by making their experience and some of their surplus resources available to India in this testing time of her newly acquired values...

...The submarginal salary scales of the teachers, scales which drive those more qualified to relatively more remunerative jobs and which force those who stay on into supplementary occupations...

...It is not by repressing aspirations or by putting them to sleep (for that is really what these recommendations would amount to), but by developing and properly utilizing resources that the disparity may be reduced—and with it the sense of frustration of which indiscipline is only a symptom...

...Others, including the Union Minister of Culture, maintain that indiscipline could be curbed by burdening the students with more work...

...Youth's indiscipline is born of an aroused hunger for knowledge' By Sibnarayan Ray THE FERMENT AMONG INDIA'S STUDENTS CALCUTTA THE PROBLEM OF student indiscipline in India has come into particularly sharp and ugly prominence in the last two or three months...

...On December 10 last year Lucknow University had to be closed following rowdy demonstrations by students who charged certain teachers with "immoral conduct" and the University authorities with maladministration...

...Consequently, although the first three modern Indian universities were founded in 1857, when the British left India in 1947 the (barely) literate in the country constituted less than 15 per cent of the people...

...The situation became so tense that on January 16 the Lucknow district magistrate issued orders prohibiting the assembly of more than five persons in a public place...

...But it put a severe strain on the available resources, and one for which Indian leadership was hardly prepared...

...The overcrowding of schools, colleges and universities which could not keep pace with increased enrollment due to lack of teachers, books, buildings, etc...

...Secondly, many student organizations in different parts of the country have repeatedly expressed their determination to resist disciplinary measures...

...Events of this nature are more common on the undergraduate level, but neither the professional schools nor the postgraduate departments are immune from such incidents...

...A special committee appointed by the University Grants Commission (the highest educational body in the country) reported on this problem recently on the basis of detailed information on specific cases of indiscipline submitted by about 100 selected institutions...

...Under their leadership the newly independent republic committed itself to establishing free and compulsory education for the whole country—at first on the elementary level—by 1965...

...These factors cannot be washed away nor made to disappear by negative measures...

...The paucity of libraries, hostels, playgrounds, and of opportunities for the students to engage in activities which promote initiative, responsibility and self-expression...

...Here Sibnarayan Ray, Senior Lecturer in Literature at the City College in Calcutta, describes these incidents and analyzes the root causes of the present problem...

...A conference of university vice chancellors and state education ministers will soon consider the report and recommend necessary measures...

...Sustained and concerted efforts are needed by all Indian leaders, including Nehru and his regime...

...Some of the remedies which have been proposed by persons in high authority are short-sighted and illiberal...

...Few, however, would find much cause for comfort or reassurance in this...

...But Western education, though limited, had imbued its beneficiaries with new ideas of human rights and social justice...

...It has now become an almost common feature of Indian academic life to find a large section of students regularly absenting themselves from their classes, organizing demonstrations or going on periodic strikes against educational authorities to coerce them into all kinds of concessions...

...By now the problem has indeed assumed alarming proportions...

...The consequent decline in academic standards and growing cynicism among both teachers and students in their attitude to one another and to education itself...

...After more than a month and a half the two universities reopened—Allahabad on January 29, Lucknow on February 3. On February 15, after a stormy, four-hour meeting, the Lucknow Students Union formally resolved to withdraw their two-months'-old agitation...

...A third recommendation, emanating from the National Service Committee, is to make one year's military training compulsory after final examinations...

...For example, one former vice chancellor has suggested that all unions of students be prohibited...

...Demonstrations in defiance of the magistrate's order led to violent clashes between the students and the police, with many injuries and several arrests on both sides...

...These authorities fail to recognize the the problem of student indiscipline, like a number of other problems facing India today, has been created not by any perversity, but by the very acute and inevitable disparity between India's newly developing aspirations and her very inadequate resources, both material and human...

...This was beyond doubt a move in the right direction...