The Central University of Kerala will require Ph.D scholars in Humanities and Social Sciences to choose from a list of themes that are of ‘national interest’ rather than work on themes of their own academic interest. This is yet another onslaught on fundamental research in favour of market-driven applied research.
Maheshwari Swaminathan is a Research Scholar based in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.
Researchers opting for the Ph.D programme in Humanities across most parts of the nation earlier had the freedom to choose from a wide variety of themes and areas on which they could pursue further research.
This implied that a researcher who was going to pursue her Ph. D would have the freedom and creative agency to choose a theme that he/she would like to research on as long as it fell under the larger ambit of the discipline and there was a minimum agreement between the scholar and the supervisor in question.
This spirit of enquiry and this unconditional freedom on part of the researcher to transform his/her inquisitiveness, eagerness and thirst for knowledge into a proper researchable topic transformed the process of pursuing one’s Ph.D into a serious, exhaustive and meaningful academic act. Such an orientation to one’s doctoral research encouraged research, contribution to the existing pool of knowledge and a vibrant academic culture that matured and prospered with the years. There is no doubt about the fact that in many places such academic responsibility was misused and quality research could not be produced but what we cannot neglect is the fact that such a culture also gave birth to some path breaking work in the humanities.
The recent decision by the Central University of Kerala about providing new Ph.D candidates with a predefined list of themes to choose for their work and compelling them to only choose from this list, is to say the least a denial of academic freedom and a way of narrowing down academic research.
The argument that is being given by the university is that this will enable the nation to omit unnecessary academic explorations and help researchers to only work on themes that are of national interest. This came to light when the Central University of Kerala issued a circular by the VC that stated that such a step was necessary to limit ‘irrelevant research; and choose from topics that are of national interest.
The decision was made by the university by giving the further argument that a lot of research in the social sciences and the humanities were carried out on themes that were academically unfruitful and contributed nothing to the national interest but giving researchers an already ready set of topics to choose from, will make sure that research is carried out on academically useful and themes that are of national interest.
The university has however not yet come up with a straightforward definition of what it implies by national interest. What must be remembered is that this is yet again an onslaught on academic freedom and the growth of research in humanities and the socials sciences in the nation. The crisis in public education and the denial of academic freedom to universities like J.N.U, AMU, HCU and Jadavpur University is all co-associated with the emergent trend of demeaning humanities and only promoting science and technological research that is best tuned with market and industrial interests.
Such a decision by the VC also denies adult researchers the freedom to work on lesser explored/problematic areas that need scrutiny, that fewer people have dared explore and develop adventurous questions beyond the given parameters.
It is different for each discipline within a university to make students aware of the important themes/ research questions/lesser explored areas in their discipline and enable them to understand the broader challenges but it is a denial of academic freedom when we define the questions and discourage the possibility of any out of the defined exploration.
This also goes on to suggest that the nation-state assumes that Ph. D students operate in vacuum and are least aware of what the national interests will be. The decision is likely to affect universities across the nation. This is a targeted onslaught on academic and fundamental research and a compulsive move towards market driven and applied research.
