Bemused by the heavily alliterative rubric? I’m sure what Calvin Candie (played by Leonardo DiCaprio in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained) is saying in this image is what’s resonating in your mind as you see the wacky title. Allow me to elaborate.
Tarantino is one of the best modern-era directors. I hope you got to see at least some of Tarantino’s amazing movies this quarantine-o. Name one Tarantino fan who just doesn’t love it when Sam Jackson shouts the Oedipal polysyllable? (I dare not say it, though. Do Professors read Quirk?).
One often wonders – how does this man have this ability to garner rave critical and audience reviews? Well, we need not look far, for the acclaimed director himself has the answer to this rumination: “I steal from every single movie ever made.”
Yes, Tarantino openly admits to chaapo-fying scenes from hundreds of movies across genres and countries, and using them in his movies. Most are audaciously copied to a T. For instance, the scene in Pulp Fiction where Bruce Wills, who is in his car, sees arch-nemesis Marsellus Wallace on the street and drives away immediately, mirrors a scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Even the seemingly spontaneous, iconic Pulp Fiction dance routine featuring Thurman and Travolta is copied (sigh). Scenes from Jackie Brown are ‘borrowed’ from the movie Foxy Brown.
I can go on and on, enumerating the various sources of ‘inspiration’ (as Indian music composers and directors and Constitutional Law Professors often say) used by Tarantino for his movies. Applying this to Law School context, it parallels our attempts to seek ‘inspiration’ from already-written literature on our project topics, as we race against time to come up with a ‘novel’ project.
But there is a major difference. Tarantino is hailed as a master and an auteur for whom grandiloquent praises are sung. On the other hand, we — the students — whose Turnitin reports faithfully point to unsuccessful attempts at borrowing from internet sources, are in the soup. Teachers look at our Inglourious Turnitin reports, showing us (Death) Proof of our botched attempt at seeking inspiration, and Kill(Bill) our hopes of a great grade — by pointing out each and every line that was ‘copied’ from online sources written Once Upon a Time, without citing them (Huff, that took quite some effort).
Tarantino definitely got lucky, there’s no Turnitin for Hollywood. But there’s more to it than just that. Most of the similarities that I mentioned previously don’t exactly strike us despite watching his movies more than once (just like the answers to any HUF question in Family Law-2). The manner in which Tarantino adapts these sources and smorgasbords them into a wholly different film is a testament to his directorial abilities. Therein, I submit, also lies our ability as researchers, to come up with ‘novel’ projects. You may have heard the idea I’m alluding to here, given that we have all been through the whirlwind that was History-1: it’s postmodernism.
Postmodernism in film-making advocates that everything in the world of art is already there, lying in wait for auteurs to employ in their movies. How does the question of originality still arise? It is when the content already available is compiled and packed by directors in a manner different from existing source(s) of inspiration. Tarantino knows that even if he admits to ‘stealing’ from other movies, his content will be devoured by his fans. That confidence he has is because he takes two and two, and comes out with five: he magically spins out wholly new yarns of storytelling that he has masterful control over, with a paradoxical originality to them.[1]
This ability to take already-existing research material (in the form of books, research papers, articles, blogs, reports, etc.) and process them in a manner different to what was advocated in the original source would, I submit, define how our project comes out. This is the postmodern technique of pastiche.[2] Pastiches are successful in bringing the required element of novelty, because the sources of inspiration aren’t looked at as mere works (or, in our context, texts). Tarantino employs the pastiche-method, by understanding those existing movies, their context, and the time they were made in. Then he weaves a movie in a different time and in a different context altogether, while based on similar ideas or concepts as past movies, thereby bringing out something ‘unseen’ till now.
Law Schoolites, take cue. For us, too, having a humongous library is copacetic, in that we have a lot of legal literature to access. However, it serves as a stark reminder that what you intend to argue in your projects could already be present in legal academia. Impossibility, thy name is novelty.
Consequently, to take a stab at novelty in projects — traversing the postmodern, pastiche road just like Tarantino does — should be a good alternative. You could be a sceptic postmodernist and critique existing literature dealing with your project’s topic, hence reinterpreting arguments the works have propounded. Alternatively, you could examine the criteria which the book/article bases its arguments on, compare material dealing with the same issue, and emerge with unexplored interpretations from a combined reading of existing literature. Therefore, in a postmodern way, by understanding material not just in terms of what the text is, but by trying to understand the context and the intent or logic behind those points already made in existing works, and by subsequently invoking these points in a different manner, in a different context, we can evade the jaws of Turnitin in our projects. We don’t need to be original (according to postmodernists, we cannot), we need to be authentic.[3] And thus, we can emerge as Natural Born Researchers.
Anyway, best of luck for the projects! Work hard in silence, like the D in Django. Let the success (and the illuminating Turnitin Reports) speak for itself. Get back to project (and perhaps postmodern) work, all of you!
[1] It would have been too ironic if I hadn’t cited the one article I was ‘inspired’ from for writing this piece:
[2] There is often a debate about what pastiche exactly stands for. However, for current purposes, it is a technique that imitates motifs present in existing work(s) of art, not by way of mocking it (which is what a parody does), but by respecting, adapting, and honouring that work. Thus, in a way, postmodernism and pastiche get along.
[3] Dipankar Gupta, ‘A Critical Study of Trump, the Postmodernist’ (The Hindu, 30 April 2020) <https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/a-critical-study-of-trump-the-postmodernist/article31466682.ece> accessed 25 August 2020.
]]>This cover picture is from the NewStatesman.
This platform recently published an article detailing the results of a survey that intended to bring to light a variety of mental health concerns that were plaguing the student body amidst the current pandemic crisis. The ostensible agenda of this survey (and the article) was to demonstrate to the magazine’s readers the fact that students’ mental health had, in fact, been adversely affected by the crisis and, while not explicit, that the college administration had somewhat failed in addressing the student body’s needs with respect to the crisis. To the writers’ credit, they focused on a general need for greater mental health infrastructure rather than pinpointing any particular administrative shortcomings. However, this article perhaps represented the culmination of the widespread “grievance-airing” (to put it politely) that the student body has been indulging in since the start of the lockdown.
The (Misplaced) Idea of India
This first began with batch groups grumbling that conducting Zoom classes would be inequitable to the student body, due to disparities in access to stable internet connectivity. (Un)surprisingly enough, this woe-is-me attitude seemed to emanate not from those members of the community that were actually facing difficulties, but from the (usually left-liberal) elites of each batch. These well-meaning individuals took it upon themselves to champion the cause of their cohorts whom they assumed would be grateful to them for speaking out against this obvious injustice being meted out to the lesser, hinterland-dwelling simpletons. In their eagerness to virtue signal and score points in the Woke Olympics, these elites forgot to do one crucial thing – take the time out to talk to their peers, if not one-on-one, at least on the batch group, and figure out how this apparent “lack of internet access” was impacting people. And therein lies the hamartia of Law School’s elite.
If they had, they would have discovered that middle India, contrary to elitist conceptions (which seem to be an essentialist rehash of Orientalist constructions), is not a vast jungle teeming with tigers and elephants, where there is no electricity, water, or network connectivity. Most of our cohorts, author included, are not located in such far-flung locales so as to lack modern infrastructure altogether. Financial access to this infrastructure is surely limited, but this roadblock was quickly lifted by the administration when they offered to reimburse students for data packs. Despite this, we see that the experiences of the marginalised (who are invariably lower caste and class) are time and again co-opted by the elite in order to further their own agenda.
Confronting Privilege
Perceived queer, Dalit, and marginalised experiences appear to be routinely used as talking points in lengthy emails sent out to the administration detailing their apparent apathy towards students, while actual consultation and discussion leaves much to be desired. Here again, well-meaning elites dominate the discussion both on Facebook, on batch groups, and in student representative community space. Passing the mic seems to be something entirely alien to these elite tastemakers, who confidently pronounce to their batchmates what new intersectional issue they should be outraged about today.
The most vocal complainants about home confinement aren’t those students who are from Chitrakoot or Asarganj, whose families have overcome generations of socio-economic barriers to enable them to go to college, but the ones who have cushy, air-conditioned 4BHK homes in Malleshwaram, Nariman Point, or Green Park (sometimes all three!). These individuals write lengthy emails to the administration and to their batches, detailing the intense mental pressure they are under due to having to serve their grandmother 3 meals a day, where their maid would do it before. Woe is me. Of course, we are all cognizant of the different ways in which an individuals’ mental health can be affected, but at least consider not using marginalised communities’ experiences to guilt-trip the administration. Confront your own struggles and ask for leniency on that basis – don’t piggyback off on ours.
It is this tone-deafness of the elite that needs to change. We all know someone with those classic manifestations of privilege – upper caste (and invariably class), generations of parents have been educated at the best schools money can buy, doesn’t need to have a monthly budget, never eats in the mess (it’s just soooo oily, ugh!), goes clubbing only twice a month, but most importantly, never lets go of a chance to talk about how poor they are because they still use *gasp* wired earphones, or the fact that it is soooo unfair that the Aditya Birla Scholarship is only open to the top 20 ranks (“seriously, they should at least allow all us general students to apply ya”), or how they’re probably going to have to “settle” for Singapore for their exchange next year instead of Europe because they have family there.
Enough is enough.
If you’re going to fight for social justice, then begin by confronting the immense privilege you come from, rather than pretending like your experiences are the same as those of your batchmates.
Always the Victim, never an Agent: On Academic Rigour in Trim III
The college’s new Vice Chancellor has been reduced to a caricature by community meme pages and batch discussions – haha, aCaDeMiC rIgOuR, am I right? Public fora seem to be abuzz with outrage – how dare he ask us to fire on all cylinders amidst this pandemic? How dare he think of us as scamsters when we fought tooth and nail to get electives? Fair enough.
It’s also fair to scoff at this outrage when you see those same people posting their reviews of a new Netflix show every other day up until last-last day, when the tone of their social media shifts to “haha, I’m such a baller. I’m doing my projects at the last minute but can’t help but squeeze in a 3-hour binge sesh of The Office. LOL DAE?” And of course, that other breed of I’m-too-cool-for-this-class-and-any-other-class, who openly admit to logging into Zoom in the mornings and promptly going back to sleep. I digress – I’m not here to point fingers at individuals.
The point here is that there is a definite culture of academic apathy amongst Law School students – from the entitled attitude towards extensions, to the dismissal of certain teachers as ‘scams’, to the pride taken in writing projects at the last minute and in dodging plagiarism software. Taking umbrage at these comments and defending oneself through social media diatribes will not make the problem go away. The fact that so many scoffed at the Vice Chancellor’s comment that focusing on academics is a viable way to manage one’s external anxieties goes to show the utter lack of value that our community places on structured academic learning. And no, Isha (the Indian elite version of Karen), your Human Rights professor expecting students to read for class is not ironic. Maintaining a routine and a semblance of normalcy is often calming to individuals prone to anxiety (and who are, more often than not, queer/Dalit folx).
While the value that one places on academics is entirely a personal decision, the answer cannot be to structurally do away with rigour altogether. There will always be reasons to deviate from academic expectations – some argue that this pandemic can be existentially terrifying, causing one to procrastinate. After this, we’ve still got to deal with climate change, with institutional casteism, with the unsustainable inequalities of global capitalism. Reducing the workload – which, if we’re all being honest, is not unmanageable to begin with – is not the answer. Rather, calls for strengthening of mental infrastructure and for the creation of community spaces that value and preserve mental health are the way forward.
Aditya Rawat’s group initiative is a great start. While the issues with online group therapy sessions were detailed in the survey article, it is also important to create spaces by and for marginalised communities as well. Elites cannot be a part of this process – not because they don’t have the right intentions, but simply due to the fact that a vast majority of the Law School community does not feel connected to these urban elites. We do not feel comfortable airing our thoughts and our grievances within that bubble, where an opinion that does not fit in neatly within their world-view is immediately placed under intense scrutiny, and the person holding that opinion castigated. Many of us have generations of patriarchal, caste-dominated, anti-poor, and anti-minority ways of thinking inculcated in us. It takes time to undo these ways of thinking – but elite impositions of right and wrong will not help. Give the marginalised a space to articulate her thoughts. Listen to what she has to say.
Pass the Mic – and Leave the Room
On a more sober note, we’ve been quick to co-opt the institutional murder of a class X Dalit girl (apparently due to a lack of resources and access to online classes) for our own agenda against the Vice Chancellor, implicitly making the statement that many of our own cohorts are in the same situation and being denied empathy by the institution. To this, again, we need ask ourselves the question – are we all really in the same situation as that girl was in?
We see the usual suspects scrambling to think of potential catastrophes that could befall a student during the exam and are quick to vilify the administration for a perceived lack of empathy towards the same. Yet, somehow, the wider community is yet to hear of a single incident of actual laptop / network failure. True, this exam set-up required us all to proceed with caution and not leave submission to the last minute, given the tendency of laptops to start hanging exactly when you need them for time-sensitive tasks. However, it appears that the students who were running from pillar to post concerned about this situation are, unsurprisingly, not those who are actually getting through Law School on a scholarship-funded laptop, but those with the latest MacBook (pardon the crude simplification).
The Law School community, to me, has failed in its social justice goal when we have this repeated romanticizing of the lesser-privileged as nothing more than a victim, dealt an unfair hand by the administration. The fact is that even now, public discourse is dominated by the privileged rather than there being a real platform for the lesser privileged to discuss their situations and grievances.
What do the disabled have to say about this new model of learning and evaluation? How is our compatriot in Kashmir coping – has the admin been responsive? What do the people besieged by Cyclone Amphan need? While it is easy to draw conjecture (see a certain student’s widely shared SBA Noticeboard post) and assume the worst of their situations, the only real way for a community to grow is by listening, not assuming.
A previous article here attempted to draw attention to this, but was sadly dismissed by some as being woke posturing by other elites. Perhaps it is telling that we see discourse that threatens to be more progressive than status quo as merely posturing while anything less so is dismissed as regressive and not even worth a conversation. A lifetime of living (and arguing) online seems to have hardened us all – it seems the only thing that brings us progressives joy is to smugly comment on how someone else’s progressiveness lacks nuance (present company included).
It’s time, then, to not just to pass the mic and give the sub-altern a platform from which she can actually speak, but also to stop seeing the sub-altern as nothing more than a victim of the administration. Robbing her of her agency to express her actual thoughts and feelings about administrative decisions and their impact on her mental health will reduce her to a talking point, an agenda to be championed in the pursuit of Woke Olympic points, but will never actually empower her or make her feel heard and seen by the community. Adding a few progressive buzzwords to your Twitter bio doesn’t make you a champion – and neither does posting smug commentary about how deluded those other champagne socialists are. You are doing nothing to better the lives of the people in your community, so don’t delude yourself into thinking you are. Social media activism is a minuscule echo chamber – instead, let your praxis show how you care about the marginalised.
Give us the space to articulate our thoughts. Let us decide how administrative decisions affect us. Let us decide whether this “academic rigour” is too much for us. In short, let us exist. Not as talking points, not as agendas, but as real, living people with agency.
]]>
[Image Description: The doodle is in the form of a large hand with its middle finger raised to the third trimester. Above the hand are the words “IIIrd trim” and at the bottom is “2024” with an infinity symbol drawn over the 4. Inside the hand are various terms we’ve heard quite frequently this trim – “quarantine”, “protest?”, “rigour”, “mental health”, “usual suspects”, “ED/BT”, “examination guidelines”, “teacher autonomy”, “summary”, “more power 2 u”, “AASP”, “pedagogy”, “LMS”, “attendance (shortage)”, “cold call”, “falling academic standards”, “SBA”, “alienation”, “NIRF #1”, “Zoom”, “mic not working”, “creep”, “cohort”, “25 pages”, “online”, and “Raghav, note their names”. There are smaller doodles within the hand, such as a skull and crossbones with the word “field” written over it, flowers, coffee, emails, and the Whatsapp symbol.]
]]>When I was a child, my neighbour used to feed my brother and me whenever my parents went to the village. She would invite me home for food. I would sit on the floor; her entire family would sit at the table.
Bahujan scholar and poet Omprakash Valmiki described in his biography, his father’s insistence on him pursuing a higher education, despite knowing fully well of the discrimination that his son would inevitably face. A child who had already faced such discrimination from primary school, was hence burdened with the expectation of a higher education, with the belief that it was the only route to ridding himself of caste.
I am a Chamaar. This is not an identity that I have ever shied away from. While some of you would expect me to identify as a ‘human’ first, I want to assure you that the society at large has made sure that I don’t forget which caste I belong to. In my time at Law School, as I have gone from identifying as a Chamaar to identifying as a Dalit-Bahujan, I have always embraced the one part of my identity meant to keep me down. As I write today, however, I offer a small glimpse into a journey, familiar to some and incomprehensibly unfamiliar to others.
Much like Omprakash Valmiki, my parents too, harboured dreams of escaping caste. Escaping, however, comes at a price. The price of an education, was sacrificing a house. To send your son to the best possible school, you had to sacrifice the down payment that you could have made on a home. With each tier of education coming at a greater cost, the sacrifices would mount and my parents would make them; because at the heart of hearts they shared the same vision of Dr BR Ambedkar and Omprakash Valmiki. They (and I) genuinely believe that a higher education is the only avenue for one to rid themselves of caste.
I joined Law School in 2015 but my journey began 2 years prior, when I prepared and wrote the CLAT in 2014. Back then, I had gotten a score which would have seen me enter RMLNLU. Determined to improve and make it to the best possible Law School, I rewrote in 2015 and sat stunned as I checked my results at 2AM in the morning. I had secured an AIR of 333. I was dejected. I really thought I could have done better.
In the morning I rang up one of my closest teachers who had helped me with my preparation and informed him that I had gotten an AIR of 333. Being the supportive man that he is, he was delighted. He congratulated me on my effort and told me it was a result of my hard work. Almost as an afterthought, I informed him of my AIR SC Rank 2. He was ecstatic. He yelled in joy and said my entry into NLS was certain. Here is when I was caught in my first dilemma. I expressed to him my doubts about joining a college based on my SC Rank and instead simply accepting a college as per my General ranking. The words he said then fuel me to this day. He said “If you don’t go, the seat will be offered to a child who might not be able to bear that pressure and drop out. Remember, you don’t go there for yourself, you go there for your people; as a guiding light for those students who can look up to you and follow you in the same footsteps.”
Truth be told, these footsteps haven’t been easy. Each step through Law School has thrown up challenges reminiscent of the inequities that exist outside. But after an unlucky streak of two year losses, it is these words which prevent me from dropping out like so many other Dalit-Bahujans, and kindle my hope of graduating from this institution with all the knowledge that I came to gather.
The pursuit of knowledge here, however, seems particularly strange through the lens of a Dalit-Bahujan man. On a campus that boasts equality campaigners in all corners of its settlement, I continue to witness, with each new batch of students, similar incidents of caste-based slurs, “debates” on why “economic reservations are the solution” (this from those joining our LLM and MPP programs) and a culture of discrimination that only serves to remind individuals of their place in the socio-economic hierarchy.
When Valmiki’s father insisted on his pursuit of higher education, the forms of discrimination that he feared may have been different. But in the second decade of the 21st century one can be certain that the perpetrators, then and now, draw from the very same well. Incidents of discrimination, against an individual, only hasten the collective reliving of a community’s historical inferiority complex – of not speaking good enough English, of not being able to understand complex concepts in one go, of not “fitting in” to elite cliques, of not knowing how to compile presentable projects, of not clearing exams.
In the initial days of college, a group of students sitting in their hostel rooms were discussing the marks of the first test of Legal Methods. In the course of the conversation one of my batch mates very casually remarked “Yaar, yeh SC kaise aajate hain iss college mein?” (“Dude, how do these SCs come into this college?”). One hopes that the men present have changed their views over the years, however, the impact that one such statement has on its listeners can persist for years. After all, we were all just first years who wanted to hang out, but from that moment on we would always be reminded that in their eyes our existence would simply never measure up. One day you are a proud member of India’s premier law school, and the other you are just another Dalit who got in through reservation.
The way higher education is portrayed as a route to salvation, one often forgets that those they meet on this journey are a product of the same patriarchal, brahmanical caste-based society that exists outside. For all those who forget, however, incidents like these serve as a reminder.
When I came here, education was my primary aim. I started to participate in practice debates because I wanted to speak in English and make sense at the same time. I wanted to participate in class so I tried to contribute. Prof. Elizabeth (aka Lizzie) encouraged everyone to engage and debate in class. Even though the first 3 weeks of History were Latin to me, I started to relate heavily to the lecture on “Society and the Individual” from the “What is History” component. It was here when I first tried to speak in class a few times while seated at the back of the side rows, all the while anxious of being made fun of. Over time, I slowly gained in confidence and my engagement in class increased, till one fine day, I got stuck trying to formulate a sentence and a batchmate of mine looked at me and smirked. That was it. All that effort into building myself up, deflated. The said person later joined the Law and Society Committee. Little did I know that in my second year, I would face the same kind of deflation, only this time it would be at the hands of a Professor, who would use his privileged position, to mock me for the class’s entertainment.
Trust me. It breaks you. Being made fun of for struggling with a language you weren’t exposed to because your parents only spoke to you in either Bhojpuri or Hindi. It cuts at your self-esteem and stabs at your confidence. It effectively kills your sense of curiosity and robs you of your ability to participate. And yet. And yet, it doesn’t break you like you may think it does. It may break your heart, but it does not break your spine. One keeps marching forward towards that goal that is graduation, because one does not walk this path for the benefit of caste perpetrators but towards their direct detriment. Once again, one hopes these people have changed, but the fact that the said Professor continues his antics, doesn’t leave me feeling very optimistic. The certainty with which people say “Arey, people develop sense while they stay here” can only emerge from those unaware or intentionally blind to how deeply ingrained this mentality is in our institutions.
Academic achievers, and discourse creators keep discussing how caste-based discrimination has either vanished or radically reduced with the onset of education. As someone who studies at the premier centre for legal instruction in the country, I would like to categorically disagree. Caste discrimination has merely evolved into discrimination by other means. Language, clothing, taste in music or your consumption of pop culture, each act as a proxy for your socio-economic location. While the cliques that form around these may seem banal, they represent a much deeper divide.
When you enter they ask you your rank, and then look at you with pity. When you speak English they mock and they jeer. Little do they know that their “merit” is bought by money and their rank by a historic access to resources. Their spoken English reeks of condescension and their debates uplift none. Their pretence of inclusivity dies when they shoot down someone for speaking Hindi, and again, when their moot courts “groom” and “polish” the pre-polished selected for “grooming” and “polishing”.
The table from my childhood seems to have persisted to my present.
Distant. Intimidating. Unattainable.
The only difference is,
When I was a child, I ate on the floor.
I will sit on the floor no longer.
]]>“Major violation of basic structure”, says Stud Mooter
May 7, 2020 | Anmol Kohli
In a shocking turn of events, the Academic and Examination Regulations (AER) have been amended in light of the COVID-19 pandemic to grant emergency rule-making powers. These have been said to be a “necessary introduction” in order to maintain academic rigour in this unprecedented period of unimportant distractions at home.
Two key excerpts from the amendment read as follows —
- Everything correct is objective. All that happens is correct.
- No change will be allowed to the above changes under any circumstance.
Law Schoolites whose moot competitions have been cancelled — or made virtual, which is as good as cancellation because they don’t get to travel — are now busy interpreting this amendment as a violation of the “basic structure” of the AER.
Actions are being proposed under this new amendment. They include —
- Board Exam Study Trauma — Virtual inmates are to regularly receive PTSD flashbacks of 12th grade final exams. The same shall be achieved through mass hypnosis of the inmates into studying to the point of exhaustion and avoiding all familial distractions. This shall promote a spirit of uncompromising rigour in their online education.
- Luxurious Access to Wi-Fi — The university shall judge an inmate’s Wi-Fi access level depending on the time they spend on social media, Netflix, etc. The statistics for the same will be sent by the Chinese government through Zoom. Sufficient data for online classes shall be created by deleting all distracting apps, primarily news apps, which demoralise the inmates. The administration has assumed power under the amended provisions to moderate Facebook and Instagram content of inmates, an initiative that Mark Zuckerberg has apparently extended his full support to.
- Undivided Neural Interconnectedness — As just ensuring that virtual inmates login to class is not enough, efforts are being made to gauge their attentiveness as well. Being a sentient software, Zoom has learnt to incorporate the nervous system of inmates to ensure an interactive learning experience. This is done to ensure that students pay attention in class, just like they always did back on campus. Their brains will be “slightly nudged” back towards class whenever they think of some inconvenient and unnecessary thoughts.
Needless to say, virtual inmates are appalled by these amendments. However, many seem to be apathetic. “The world is about to end anyway, what’s the worst they can do?”, was the reply of one inmate. Another declined to comment, just saying, “Sorry, the student in me died this lockdown”.
Hopefully, more information about this issue will be made clear soon. Reportedly, the Student Academic Council will release the minutes of their meeting with the administration on this issue, in a press release by next trimester.
]]>With the last of the Univs behind us, it is important for us to reassess what we’ve taken these Univs to symbolise.
As an institution that has, over the years, churned out a plethora of people whom one would term “studly”, the bar was set pretty high. At some level, their achievements became more of a metric for self-evaluation. Being in the top 10 of your batch didn’t feel like so much of an objectively great achievement (something worth praising and working towards), as it did a necessary prerequisite for your academic record to be of any value. Winning a moot became the only culmination of a 5 month long process to have any value. It is important to stress here, that the idea isn’t that winning an international moot or being in the top 10 of your batch isn’t great and the result of a lot of hard work. The idea is that we as a community attach an inordinate amount of value to these achievements. More importantly, when we start projecting these achievements onto others, we’re playing a dangerous game.
The necessary consequence of continuously highlighting and showcasing these achievements is self deprecation. Because it doesn’t matter that you loved the 5 month mooting experience, learnt a lot and got genuinely hooked onto the area of law. In the eyes of most people, these are mere by-products, things you tell yourself to feel good. For you, none of it makes sense unless you win. How we treat people who win tournaments or the like, is a quintessential case of “sar par chadhana“. As I said, the achievements of our peers and alumni, have become a metric of self evaluation. Getting a top 20 rank in Univs has been given such a stature, that anything below that is perceived as a necessary indicator of your ineptitude and incompetence.
People shouldn’t have to cry in self loathing and devastation because they won’t be stamping their passports on college money. Juniors shouldn’t have to come up to seniors saying that they feel like they aren’t doing well enough in law school because they aren’t acing moots or debates like their batchmate X. The burden of winning that we have created is immense. It makes people think lesser of themselves if they don’t. Seniors need to start being more responsible in terms of setting the right tone. We need to stop, in jest or otherwise, calling first years lame for not doing moot univs. We need to stop sending in teams with the burden of winning. It is nerve racking to go into competitions with the burden of performing as well as the teams before you. We need to break this fetish for excellence. We need to start telling juniors that putting their best possible foot forward has inherent value.
To assuage any triggered mooters or debaters, the point here isn’t that there isn’t skill involved in what you do and that it’s merely a matter of you getting lucky. There is value to the skills you possess and effort required in what you have achieved. The point is, those skills aren’t the only thing that have value, nor are they necessarily more important than others. This isn’t a personal call-out of you for having personally contributed to this fetishism (at least not for the vast majority of you :P). This is a call-out of a culture that makes students feel that there are only a fixed number of avenues to make their law school life be of value. It is a call-out of a culture which, to some extent, might even make people participate in activities simply so that other people think that they’re worth something. Our obsession with having our names plastered on a board (*cough* *cough* SDGM), makes having your name on the board the pinnacle of any achievement.
Finally, we need to stop selling ourselves as “studs”. The moment we do that, we will remove the perverse incentive that pushes juniors into doing “studly” things. Let us create an environment where people wouldn’t want to hide in their rooms because it took other people three whole scrolls on their phones to get to their rank. Be appreciative and proud of all the mooters, debaters and ADRers (?) who’ve done brilliantly, but also have some appreciation for the people who gave it the best they could. Their best is of value too. It is about time we recognised it.
]]>I recall Professor Nandimath using a phrase more than once during our orientation ceremony, with all us wide-eyed wee little first years listening in awe to how we were becoming part of an intellectually elite institution: Academic rigour. It lies at the very core of our existence at Law School. Four projects, eight exams, three months. Really hits you like a whirlwind when you first get here. Add to that the constant reminders of the standards you’re expected to uphold and how they’re falling. Throw in the challenges of mooting, debating, writing publishable papers, etc. for good measure. Could it be anything but obvious that our lives here are brimming with academic rigour? Actually, it couldn’t be anything but wrong. Blatantly wrong.
Lawyers rely so often on distinctions for their bread and butter, so let’s make one here. A packed schedule does not constitute academic rigour. The hours in a day you spend engaged in something Law School has thrown at you does not determine how academically rigorous your life is. The idea I’m proposing is simple: quality, not quantity. How many of your courses are challenging you intellectually? Do you look back over a period of time and think to yourself: Man, my thought process on this issue or general way of thinking has become so much more mature? Let me be clear at the outset: I do not wish to undermine the challenges we face at first trying to get used to this crazy schedule and mad rat race. But once the dust has settled, it’s good to take a clearer look and ask questions such as the above. Of course, you’re entitled to ask: why is this question even important? Because it helps us think about why we are here in the first place.
Terry Eagleton recently wrote a devastating critique of the modern university where he argued, in essence, that education in the UK has become way too commodified, and that the university as a center of critique has ceased to exist in the face of capitalist forces. He says that we are in the age of the ‘entrepreneurial university’ that values education only for the contribution it makes to the marketplace. While the point I am making does not delve nearly as deep, I am troubled by what passes for learning at Law School today. One can hear complaints on two seemingly contradictory fronts: one, that our learning is not of enough ‘practical relevance’, and two, that even in courses where the syllabus is not trite and meaningless, we do not explore the nuances that make the subject interesting. It is these nuances and their centrality to the course that constitute academic rigour. The first question is better suited to professional treatment than my own naïve speculation, so I will confine myself to the second. And my answer to it is this: if Law School isn’t giving you academic rigour, take it for yourself.
I’ll be blunt: the system sucks. As much as The Lonely Island said it does. The ‘rigour’ of the institution is killing the academic spirit and not strengthening it. To be sure, a host of other factors are responsible. We have many more distractions than the legendary Law School-ites of yore who have achieved spectacular things in life. And let’s not get the wrong idea here: the spirit of inquiry does not require us to become bookworms who leave the library only to forage for food. That said, the extent to which curiosity and a desire to learn are noticeably absent in this institution is alarming to say the least.
As a member of Stud Ad for the last three years, and someone taking an interest in its activities for all my time in Law School, I have seen symposia on topics ranging from the Takeover Code to refugee law. Diverse as these sessions may have been, they had one thing in common: they saw a woefully low turnout of students from Law School. Very recently, the dean of Cornell Law School delivered a lecture on property law that was attended by six people, three of them being faculty members. This does not prove that there are no more genuinely interested people. They may have had unavoidable reasons like project submissions that kept them from attending. After all, rigour rears its ugly head far too often. But even factoring this in, it does show a considerable amount of apathy among our student body. It is precisely this apathy which I believe needs a cure, and it is not an insurmountable problem.
The bottom line is this: do not let the aforementioned sucky system ruin the academic experience that you can potentially have. We are all fortunate to have a relatively smart group of peers, an excellent library and enviable connections that enable us to get the likes of Noah Feldman to deliver lectures here. Use this wisely and you stand to gain an unimaginable amount. One thing we need to bear in mind closely is that this is primarily a vocational degree programme. Therefore, you approach the law with a limited knowledge base and worldview as it is. Do not be so caught up in working the system, getting your grades and securing your future that you ignore why you are here in the present. Before trying to score a publication for the piece on cyber crimes you just wrote, stop a while and consider how much criminal law you’ve read. It takes years of study and research to write meaningfully on any subject, and it is absurd to panic if you haven’t done so in two or three years of Law School. A related problem is time management. Among those of you who’ve read this far, a sizeable proportion will be thinking “This is all well and good, but we simply don’t have the time.” Trust me, you do. Our supposedly rigorous system can be worked with surprisingly few hours devoted to it. One way to make time is by not treating extra reading as a luxury that you will get to if you have spare time, but viewing it as part of your schedule: an essential activity without which you will become brain dead.
Eagleton is right when he says that in today’s knowledge economy, pharmacists are likely to be more valued than phenomenologists. But hell, if you want to study phenomenology, go ahead and do it. The Great Valuer is not sizing you up with his calculator. Not just yet.
References:
Terry Eagleton, The Slow Death of the University.
The Lonely Island, Threw it on the Ground.
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