Ajantha Subramanian
Professor
Department Chair
Research and Teaching Interests: Political Economy; Colonialism and Postcoloniality; Political Ecology; Space; Social Movements; Citizenship; South Asia; South Asian diaspora.
Curriculum Vitae
Ajantha Subramanian is Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies at Harvard University. Her research interests include political economy, political ecology, colonialism and postcoloniality, space, citizenship, South Asia, and the South Asian diaspora.
Her first book Shorelines: Space and Rights in South India (Stanford University Press, 2009), chronicles the struggles for resource rights by Catholic fishers on India’s southwestern coast, with a focus on how they have used spatial imaginaries and practices to constitute themselves as political subjects.
Her second book, The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India (Harvard University Press, 2019), tracks the relationship between meritocracy and democracy in India on order to understand the production of merit as a form of caste property and its implications for democratic transformation.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Harvard University Press
The Caste of Merit
Engineering Education in India
Ajantha Subramanian
Product Details
ISBN 9780674987883
Publication Date: 12/03/2019
384 pages
About This Book
About the Author(s)
Reviews
Table of Contents
How the language of “merit” makes caste privilege invisible in contemporary India.
Just as Americans least disadvantaged by racism are most likely to endorse their country as post‐racial, Indians who have benefited from their upper-caste affiliation rush to declare their country post‐caste.
Engineering Education in India
Ajantha Subramanian
Product Details
ISBN 9780674987883
Publication Date: 12/03/2019
384 pages
About This Book
About the Author(s)
Reviews
Table of Contents
How the language of “merit” makes caste privilege invisible in contemporary India.
Just as Americans least disadvantaged by racism are most likely to endorse their country as post‐racial, Indians who have benefited from their upper-caste affiliation rush to declare their country post‐caste.
In The Caste of Merit, Ajantha Subramanian challenges this comfortable assumption by illuminating the controversial relationships among technical education, caste formation, and economic stratification in modern India. Through in-depth study of the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)—widely seen as symbols of national promise—she reveals the continued workings of upper-caste privilege within the most modern institutions.
Caste has not disappeared in India but instead acquired a disturbing invisibility—at least when it comes to the privileged. Only the lower castes invoke their affiliation in the political arena, to claim resources from the state. The upper castes discard such claims as backward, embarrassing, and unfair to those who have earned their position through hard work and talent. Focusing on a long history of debates surrounding access to engineering education, Subramanian argues that such defenses of merit are themselves expressions of caste privilege. The case of the IITs shows how this ideal of meritocracy serves the reproduction of inequality, ensuring that social stratification remains endemic to contemporary democracies.
Caste has not disappeared in India but instead acquired a disturbing invisibility—at least when it comes to the privileged. Only the lower castes invoke their affiliation in the political arena, to claim resources from the state. The upper castes discard such claims as backward, embarrassing, and unfair to those who have earned their position through hard work and talent. Focusing on a long history of debates surrounding access to engineering education, Subramanian argues that such defenses of merit are themselves expressions of caste privilege. The case of the IITs shows how this ideal of meritocracy serves the reproduction of inequality, ensuring that social stratification remains endemic to contemporary democracies.
Tamil Brahmins were the earliest to frame merit as a caste claim, and it showed in IITs
Studies on the Indian diaspora in the US can lead one to conclude that caste largely vanishes beyond boundaries of India. The story of IIT students suggests otherwise.
18 January, 2020 3:50 pm IST
IIT Madras | Photo: Facebook
Mass coaching and reservations brought new groups into the IITs and radically transformed the demographic makeup of these institutions. As a result, the social profile of the IITian as part of an urban, upper-caste middle class has given way to a more diverse student body. In reaction to these trends, upper-caste IITians have attempted to shore up their representative status by claiming the mantle of meritocracy. This has involved a robust politics of distinction through which the coached are distinguished from the gifted, and the reserved category from the general category. In the process, a consolidated form of upper casteness has emerged and, in the context of Indian higher education, acquired unique salience. We have also seen the role of Tamil Nadu as an important precedent in the shift from a universalistic to a more identitarian expression of upper-caste identity.
As targets of Non-Brahminism and Dravidianism, Tamil Brahmins were the earliest to frame merit as a caste claim. Their marking as Brahmins produced forms of self-marking as a tactic of meritocratic claim-making. With the spread of Other Backward Class (OBC) politics across India, this shift to a more explicit caste politics of meritocracy has also spread. At IIT Madras and beyond, the assumption now is that the general category is an upper-caste collective.
Through all these challenges to and defenses of upper-caste meritocracy, mobility has remained a key mechanism of caste consolidation and capital accumulation. We have seen in previous chapters how mobility within India under the purview of the central government contributed to the making of an upper-caste intelligentsia. It was precisely the caste capital provided by this mobility that was threatened by the Mandal Commission recommendations and produced such a strong backlash. But spatial mobility was by no means limited to national borders. Migration outside India has also been a long-standing source of upper-caste social and economic capital. This was certainly the case for IITians.
As we saw in Chapter 4, IITians began to leave India from the late 1960s for what they perceived as greener pastures. In the very early years, these were brief forays for training in West Germany and other countries, after which they would return to work in Indian industry. But the pattern shifted once the United States came into view as the principal destination for IITians. The post-1960s waves of migration made up a more sizable, more permanent diaspora.
Also read: The IITs have a long history of systematically othering Dalit students
Migration from India predated independence. The late nineteenth century witnessed the first large wave of Indian migration to Burma, Ceylon, Malaya, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. The vast majority of these migrants were lower-caste indentured laborers. This was followed by a second wave of traders, clerks, bureaucrats, and professionals who went mostly to East and South Africa but also to the other British colonies where indentured laborers had preceded them.
IIT Madras | Photo: FacebookMass coaching and reservations brought new groups into the IITs and radically transformed the demographic makeup of these institutions. As a result, the social profile of the IITian as part of an urban, upper-caste middle class has given way to a more diverse student body. In reaction to these trends, upper-caste IITians have attempted to shore up their representative status by claiming the mantle of meritocracy. This has involved a robust politics of distinction through which the coached are distinguished from the gifted, and the reserved category from the general category. In the process, a consolidated form of upper casteness has emerged and, in the context of Indian higher education, acquired unique salience. We have also seen the role of Tamil Nadu as an important precedent in the shift from a universalistic to a more identitarian expression of upper-caste identity.
As targets of Non-Brahminism and Dravidianism, Tamil Brahmins were the earliest to frame merit as a caste claim. Their marking as Brahmins produced forms of self-marking as a tactic of meritocratic claim-making. With the spread of Other Backward Class (OBC) politics across India, this shift to a more explicit caste politics of meritocracy has also spread. At IIT Madras and beyond, the assumption now is that the general category is an upper-caste collective.
Through all these challenges to and defenses of upper-caste meritocracy, mobility has remained a key mechanism of caste consolidation and capital accumulation. We have seen in previous chapters how mobility within India under the purview of the central government contributed to the making of an upper-caste intelligentsia. It was precisely the caste capital provided by this mobility that was threatened by the Mandal Commission recommendations and produced such a strong backlash. But spatial mobility was by no means limited to national borders. Migration outside India has also been a long-standing source of upper-caste social and economic capital. This was certainly the case for IITians.
As we saw in Chapter 4, IITians began to leave India from the late 1960s for what they perceived as greener pastures. In the very early years, these were brief forays for training in West Germany and other countries, after which they would return to work in Indian industry. But the pattern shifted once the United States came into view as the principal destination for IITians. The post-1960s waves of migration made up a more sizable, more permanent diaspora.
Also read: The IITs have a long history of systematically othering Dalit students
Migration from India predated independence. The late nineteenth century witnessed the first large wave of Indian migration to Burma, Ceylon, Malaya, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. The vast majority of these migrants were lower-caste indentured laborers. This was followed by a second wave of traders, clerks, bureaucrats, and professionals who went mostly to East and South Africa but also to the other British colonies where indentured laborers had preceded them.
A third wave headed for the United States. There are clear differences between the experiences of lower-caste laborers and upper-caste professionals who began arriving in the United States from as early as the 1880s. But despite the fact that caste played a significant role in structuring migration and diasporic life, the scholarly literature on the Indian diaspora to the United States might lead one to conclude that caste largely vanishes as a social category beyond the boundaries of the Indian nation-state. Instead, the most salient forms of self-definition appear to be class, gender, language, religion, and nation.
The story of the IIT diaspora suggests otherwise.
The forms of accumulated caste capital detailed over the previous chapters were key factors in allowing for diasporic mobility. Moreover, the professional success of IITians in the United States has been hugely significant for reinforcing the link between meritocracy and caste. With geographical distance from India and from rising challenges to caste entitlement, IITian achievement abroad once again appears as just that—self-made success. Diasporic mobility has helped to once again force caste into the shadows. However, the absence of caste as a public identity in the diaspora does not preclude its structural and affective workings. If anything, the institutional kinship within the overwhelmingly upper-caste IIT diaspora has become an even more potent form of capital. Diasporic IITians have been at the forefront of efforts to sustain and consolidate their affective ties and to make the IIT pedigree into a globally recognized brand.
Much of this work of branding has been driven by IITians in Silicon Valley, for whom entrepreneurial success has further reinforced their sense of being self-made individuals. Entrepreneurialism—and that, too, being nonwhite entrepreneurial successes in a new industry— has deepened their investment in a narrative of humble middle-class origins in which the brain is elevated as the sole form of capital and histories of caste are strikingly absent. U.S.-based IITians work to advance this narrative, not only in the United States but also in India, where they have been vocal advocates of market deregulation and privatization. Moving between U.S. and Indian contexts has entailed a balancing act between the marking and unmarking of caste as the basis of achievement.
The story of the IIT diaspora suggests otherwise.
The forms of accumulated caste capital detailed over the previous chapters were key factors in allowing for diasporic mobility. Moreover, the professional success of IITians in the United States has been hugely significant for reinforcing the link between meritocracy and caste. With geographical distance from India and from rising challenges to caste entitlement, IITian achievement abroad once again appears as just that—self-made success. Diasporic mobility has helped to once again force caste into the shadows. However, the absence of caste as a public identity in the diaspora does not preclude its structural and affective workings. If anything, the institutional kinship within the overwhelmingly upper-caste IIT diaspora has become an even more potent form of capital. Diasporic IITians have been at the forefront of efforts to sustain and consolidate their affective ties and to make the IIT pedigree into a globally recognized brand.
Much of this work of branding has been driven by IITians in Silicon Valley, for whom entrepreneurial success has further reinforced their sense of being self-made individuals. Entrepreneurialism—and that, too, being nonwhite entrepreneurial successes in a new industry— has deepened their investment in a narrative of humble middle-class origins in which the brain is elevated as the sole form of capital and histories of caste are strikingly absent. U.S.-based IITians work to advance this narrative, not only in the United States but also in India, where they have been vocal advocates of market deregulation and privatization. Moving between U.S. and Indian contexts has entailed a balancing act between the marking and unmarking of caste as the basis of achievement.
As we have seen, ongoing challenges to upper- caste dominance in India have disrupted settled expectations and produced a more strident defense of merit as caste property. The diaspora, too, is an important weapon in this fight. By showcasing diasporic success as the arrival of the global Indian, upper-caste IITians render the struggle for caste rights into a parochial—even regressive—endeavor.
Understanding the transnationalization of caste is particularly important in the current moment, when the rise to political power of middle and lower castes has partially obscured the workings of upper- caste capital. Indeed, it is particularly productive to think about how and in which contexts such capital is reconstituted. While in some ways formal political arenas and the broader cultural sphere have witnessed the entry of lower castes, elite education and the expanding private sector both within and beyond India have serviced the reconstitution of caste privilege by other means. In this sense, we might think of elite and private domestic and transnational arenas as spaces of upper-caste flight and retrenchment away from the pressures of lower- caste politics.
Political scientist Devesh Kapur has argued that the immigration of Indian professionals to the United States was one of the “safety valves” of Indian democracy. Because they could immigrate, the fight over the distribution of political power and economic resources was less contentious than it might have otherwise been. Kapur argues further that the specific form of capital these elites possessed—advanced degrees as opposed to land—made for easy “exit,” first from state employment to the private sector and then abroad. Since this was a transferable form of capital, “exit” also contributed to the further accumulation of capital.
What is less evident is how moving from one system of social stratification to another influenced the worldviews and practices of diasporic elites. Specifically, what did it mean for Indian professionals to move from a society where enduring caste stratification intersected with democratic change to a society where racial stratification operated similarly? How did they respond to their own racialization as U.S. minorities, and how did this experience shape their forms of identification and strategies of accumulation?
Also read: IIT mania is costing students quality time at schools. But CBSE, other bodies still sleeping
In this chapter, I will build on existing literature on the Indian diaspora in the United States to understand the impact of transnational mobility on IITians and of diasporic IITians on India. How, I will ask, was upper-caste identity forged in the United States, where IITians were positioned as both class elites and racial minorities? IITian diasporic experiences have to be understood in relation to the longer U.S. history of race and immigration.
The 1965 U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act marked a key shift toward official multiculturalism and the representative power of Indian professionals. This shift is key to the status of IITians as an influential subset of Indian professionals whose self-fashioning is keenly attentive to the market for identities. As we will see, their self-fashioning as ethnic entrepreneurs, helped by the catalytic impact of the Silicon Valley boom and enduring forms of transnational institutional kinship, has found fullest expression in the marketing of Brand IIT. Moreover, diasporic IITians have leveraged their status as financially successful global moderns to push for legal changes, market deregulation, and privatization in India.
The success of Brand IIT has also transformed the meaning of meritocracy by shifting the emphasis from intellectualism to entrepreneurialism.
This excerpt from The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India by Ajantha Subramanian has been published with permission from Harper Collins India.
ThePrint is now on Telegram. For the best reports & opinion on politics, governance and more, subscribe to ThePrint on Telegram.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Understanding the transnationalization of caste is particularly important in the current moment, when the rise to political power of middle and lower castes has partially obscured the workings of upper- caste capital. Indeed, it is particularly productive to think about how and in which contexts such capital is reconstituted. While in some ways formal political arenas and the broader cultural sphere have witnessed the entry of lower castes, elite education and the expanding private sector both within and beyond India have serviced the reconstitution of caste privilege by other means. In this sense, we might think of elite and private domestic and transnational arenas as spaces of upper-caste flight and retrenchment away from the pressures of lower- caste politics.
Political scientist Devesh Kapur has argued that the immigration of Indian professionals to the United States was one of the “safety valves” of Indian democracy. Because they could immigrate, the fight over the distribution of political power and economic resources was less contentious than it might have otherwise been. Kapur argues further that the specific form of capital these elites possessed—advanced degrees as opposed to land—made for easy “exit,” first from state employment to the private sector and then abroad. Since this was a transferable form of capital, “exit” also contributed to the further accumulation of capital.
What is less evident is how moving from one system of social stratification to another influenced the worldviews and practices of diasporic elites. Specifically, what did it mean for Indian professionals to move from a society where enduring caste stratification intersected with democratic change to a society where racial stratification operated similarly? How did they respond to their own racialization as U.S. minorities, and how did this experience shape their forms of identification and strategies of accumulation?
Also read: IIT mania is costing students quality time at schools. But CBSE, other bodies still sleeping
In this chapter, I will build on existing literature on the Indian diaspora in the United States to understand the impact of transnational mobility on IITians and of diasporic IITians on India. How, I will ask, was upper-caste identity forged in the United States, where IITians were positioned as both class elites and racial minorities? IITian diasporic experiences have to be understood in relation to the longer U.S. history of race and immigration.
The 1965 U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act marked a key shift toward official multiculturalism and the representative power of Indian professionals. This shift is key to the status of IITians as an influential subset of Indian professionals whose self-fashioning is keenly attentive to the market for identities. As we will see, their self-fashioning as ethnic entrepreneurs, helped by the catalytic impact of the Silicon Valley boom and enduring forms of transnational institutional kinship, has found fullest expression in the marketing of Brand IIT. Moreover, diasporic IITians have leveraged their status as financially successful global moderns to push for legal changes, market deregulation, and privatization in India.
The success of Brand IIT has also transformed the meaning of meritocracy by shifting the emphasis from intellectualism to entrepreneurialism.
This excerpt from The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India by Ajantha Subramanian has been published with permission from Harper Collins India.ThePrint is now on Telegram. For the best reports & opinion on politics, governance and more, subscribe to ThePrint on Telegram.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Updated: January 02, 2020 08:32 pm
It was in the context of sharpening Brahmin-non-Brahmin tensions that IIT Madras was founded. In 1956, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, while on an official visit to West Germany, was offered assistance to establish a higher technological institute in India. West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer also promised one hundred scholarships for Indian students wanting to study in Germany. During their interaction, Nehru gave Adenauer a copy of India's second Five Year Plan, in response to which Adenauer cautioned that "while undoubtedly it was good to have gigantic plants, concentration on these alone would leave a vacuum." Adenauer pointed out that "fifty percent of German technicians were drawn from small-scale industries and even handicrafts" and "offered German technical help to India not only in the field of big and medium scale industries, but also in that of small-scale industries.
The first Indo-German Agreement was signed in Bonn in 1959 for the establishment of an Indian Institute of Technology at Madras. As part of the deal, the Government of Madras granted 633 acres of reserve forestland to the Government of India on which to site the new institute. The agreement provided for the services of German professors and foremen, training facilities for Indian faculty members, and a supply of scientific and technical equipment for the establishment of the central workshop and laboratories. The first batch of German professors and technical experts arrived in 1959. In the late 1960s, there were still twenty German professors and five experts remaining at the institute. In addition to their role in teaching and curriculum development, laboratory development, workshop training, and joint seminars, a large number of German experts visited the institute individually and in delegations to exchange ideas, establish research cooperation, and conduct seminars. A number of faculty, technical staff, and students from the institute also visited German universities for practical training and career development. German involvement formally ended in 1973.
The early collaboration with West Germany continues to be actively commemorated as a key part of the institute's history. IIT Madras opened its Heritage Center in March 2006 to showcase the institute's founding and work. Here, the Indo-German partnership is on graphic display in photographs and newspaper articles. Many of the articles are from the two main English-language newspapers in the region, The Hindu and The Indian Express, which followed the Indo-German collaboration with avid interest. The year before the institute's founding, The Hindu carried an article noting that "for several years German industry has, to a considerable extent, been called upon for the realization of the great Indian development projects and that it is ready to continue to take a share in them." The Indian Express also did its part in publicizing West Germany's contribution to establishing a "center of excellence" in Madras and its generous offer of scholarships to travel to Germany for study. Between them, the two papers kept in circulation information that they deemed most newsworthy to their anglophone readers.
The photographs and quotations speak to the significance of the collaboration for both sides. German president Heinrich Luebke laid the institute's foundation stone and unveiled a tablet symbolizing Indo- German cooperation in 1962.
It was in the context of sharpening Brahmin-non-Brahmin tensions that IIT Madras was founded. In 1956, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, while on an official visit to West Germany, was offered assistance to establish a higher technological institute in India. West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer also promised one hundred scholarships for Indian students wanting to study in Germany. During their interaction, Nehru gave Adenauer a copy of India's second Five Year Plan, in response to which Adenauer cautioned that "while undoubtedly it was good to have gigantic plants, concentration on these alone would leave a vacuum." Adenauer pointed out that "fifty percent of German technicians were drawn from small-scale industries and even handicrafts" and "offered German technical help to India not only in the field of big and medium scale industries, but also in that of small-scale industries.
The first Indo-German Agreement was signed in Bonn in 1959 for the establishment of an Indian Institute of Technology at Madras. As part of the deal, the Government of Madras granted 633 acres of reserve forestland to the Government of India on which to site the new institute. The agreement provided for the services of German professors and foremen, training facilities for Indian faculty members, and a supply of scientific and technical equipment for the establishment of the central workshop and laboratories. The first batch of German professors and technical experts arrived in 1959. In the late 1960s, there were still twenty German professors and five experts remaining at the institute. In addition to their role in teaching and curriculum development, laboratory development, workshop training, and joint seminars, a large number of German experts visited the institute individually and in delegations to exchange ideas, establish research cooperation, and conduct seminars. A number of faculty, technical staff, and students from the institute also visited German universities for practical training and career development. German involvement formally ended in 1973.
The early collaboration with West Germany continues to be actively commemorated as a key part of the institute's history. IIT Madras opened its Heritage Center in March 2006 to showcase the institute's founding and work. Here, the Indo-German partnership is on graphic display in photographs and newspaper articles. Many of the articles are from the two main English-language newspapers in the region, The Hindu and The Indian Express, which followed the Indo-German collaboration with avid interest. The year before the institute's founding, The Hindu carried an article noting that "for several years German industry has, to a considerable extent, been called upon for the realization of the great Indian development projects and that it is ready to continue to take a share in them." The Indian Express also did its part in publicizing West Germany's contribution to establishing a "center of excellence" in Madras and its generous offer of scholarships to travel to Germany for study. Between them, the two papers kept in circulation information that they deemed most newsworthy to their anglophone readers.
The photographs and quotations speak to the significance of the collaboration for both sides. German president Heinrich Luebke laid the institute's foundation stone and unveiled a tablet symbolizing Indo- German cooperation in 1962.
Quoting Mohandas Gandhi, Luebke announced the ambition of the partnership as one of making knowledge "the common property of the people." Not to be left out, former West German president Theodor Heuss, who visited the institute in 1960, chimed in from a distance that the collaboration "should certainly bring about a development and revival of the technical abilities of the Indian people." Herr von Heyden, West German chargé d'affaires at New Delhi, offered a more pointed observation about "the engineer," who, he noted, "was a responsible person and every professional action of his had human and social consequences because he was instrumental in creating a new society and evolving a new economic order and new physical environment."
Indian dignitaries, too, offered accolades. S. Radhakrishnan, president of India, appreciated the institute as "a visible demonstration of German friendship for India." Humayun Kabir, union minister for scientific research and cultural affairs, described it as "one of the finest examples of co-operation among the nations of the world in the pursuit of science and technology" and registered his confidence that "the German professors and experts would lay down the traditions of the institution on sound and progressive lines and give it the thoroughness and efficiency, which characterized scientific and technical education in Germany." Kabir pointedly expressed his hope that the German experts "in giving practical training to students would help in raising the standard of the cultivation of manual skill of the students, which was almost neglected in their education."
This chorus of appreciation from Indian and German dignitaries signaled the status of IIT Madras as an emblem of the new India, where world-class expertise would be developed in the service of nation- building. German tutelage was deemed necessary but only as a catalyst to jump-start technological and social development. Indian officials like Kabir were clear about the contributions of German expertise: it was the practical orientation of German engineering that India needed most. For their part, West Germans were eager to participate in this endeavor as a way of leveraging development expertise in the service of Cold War diplomacy. It helped that unlike with Britain, Indo-German relations were not bogged down by a shared imperial past. It was easier to present this collaboration as an equal partnership of two nations that harked back to German-Indian interactions before World War II.
***
For 1960s alumni, this sense of upper-caste, masculine destiny was reinforced by a link to the state. It is easy to forget from today's vantage point, after economic liberalization and the information technology boom, that the IITs began as institutions more aligned with the older, late colonial model of producing technical expertise for public sector engineering. While they were always endowed with an exceptional world-class status that arguably oriented them more outward than inward, this did not mean a total disavowal of the state. The experiences of IIT Madras alumni from the first decade of the institute's history reveal an identification with the state that has fractured in the decades since.
Sometimes the connection to the state was fostered through militarism. The first two cohorts of IIT Madras students graduated together in 1964 because the 1962 Sino-Indian border conflict had made war preparedness a new state imperative. The Indian government wanted to quickly produce more engineers who could be pressed into military-related technical work. As the institute's 1962-1963 annual report states, "The unprovoked aggression by China on our Northern borders posed a grim challenge to the country and institutions like the IIT Madras. We are happy to record that the Institute, in its own humble way, rose to the occasion gamely. National Cadet Corps training was made compulsory for certain years of the B. Tech degree course so as to ensure disciplined military training to the youth in the context of the Chinese menace. The Five Year Degree course was accelerated in order to turn out more engineers in response to the call of the country."
K. Narayanan, an alumnus from the second cohort, noted in a newspaper interview that their syllabus "was rushed through and the final examinations were conducted in December 1964." N. R. Dave, one of Narayanan's batch-mates, added that "due to this, we were called the 'emergency' batch."
For some, the relationship to military service continued after graduation. Narayanan, who graduated as a chemical engineer, joined Indian Oil's Guwahati Refinery in 1965, when the Indo-Pakistan War was just beginning. "The engineers at the refinery had to go on night patrolling," he recalled. "During the day, we received military training. They wanted to train us to be able to defend the refinery." Others like Ramiah, a 1967 alumnus, signed up for military service. Although "many companies like English Electric, Larson and Toubro, Tata etc. came for selection," he with his "patriotic ardor" was "captivated by the terrific lecture given by Squadron Leader Thambi and especially when he referred to the heroic deed of the IAF [Indian Air Force] pilot who smashed his burning plane into the Sargodha radar station in the '65 Ops." Swayed by Thambi's tales of daredevil patriotism, Ramiah ended up enlisting with the Indian Air Force.
For the most part, however, IIT alumni from the 1960s sustained their link to the state through civilian rather than military service. Over their college years, students were sent for training to public sector enterprises, like the Durgapur, Rourkela, and Bhilai steel plants and National Metallurgical Laboratories. Some went to public-private partnerships, such as Tata Steel, that were most emblematic of nationalist development. These periods of training often led to job offers, as it did for Dasigi, who "was offered a scholarship of Rs 150 per month and a job at Rourkela Steel Plant after graduation." Other Madras IITians began their professional lives in public sector enterprises where engineering as nation-building was a core dimension of their work. And many of them did so after a period of practical training in West Germany.
Excerpted with permission of Harvard University Press from 'The Caste Of Merit' by Ajantha Subramanian. Order your copy here.
Disclaimer: The author and publisher of the book are responsible for the contents of the excerpt and the book. NDTV shall not be responsible or liable for any defamation, intellectual property infringement, plagiarism or any other legal or contractual violation by the excerpt or the book.
Indian dignitaries, too, offered accolades. S. Radhakrishnan, president of India, appreciated the institute as "a visible demonstration of German friendship for India." Humayun Kabir, union minister for scientific research and cultural affairs, described it as "one of the finest examples of co-operation among the nations of the world in the pursuit of science and technology" and registered his confidence that "the German professors and experts would lay down the traditions of the institution on sound and progressive lines and give it the thoroughness and efficiency, which characterized scientific and technical education in Germany." Kabir pointedly expressed his hope that the German experts "in giving practical training to students would help in raising the standard of the cultivation of manual skill of the students, which was almost neglected in their education."
This chorus of appreciation from Indian and German dignitaries signaled the status of IIT Madras as an emblem of the new India, where world-class expertise would be developed in the service of nation- building. German tutelage was deemed necessary but only as a catalyst to jump-start technological and social development. Indian officials like Kabir were clear about the contributions of German expertise: it was the practical orientation of German engineering that India needed most. For their part, West Germans were eager to participate in this endeavor as a way of leveraging development expertise in the service of Cold War diplomacy. It helped that unlike with Britain, Indo-German relations were not bogged down by a shared imperial past. It was easier to present this collaboration as an equal partnership of two nations that harked back to German-Indian interactions before World War II.
***
For 1960s alumni, this sense of upper-caste, masculine destiny was reinforced by a link to the state. It is easy to forget from today's vantage point, after economic liberalization and the information technology boom, that the IITs began as institutions more aligned with the older, late colonial model of producing technical expertise for public sector engineering. While they were always endowed with an exceptional world-class status that arguably oriented them more outward than inward, this did not mean a total disavowal of the state. The experiences of IIT Madras alumni from the first decade of the institute's history reveal an identification with the state that has fractured in the decades since.
Sometimes the connection to the state was fostered through militarism. The first two cohorts of IIT Madras students graduated together in 1964 because the 1962 Sino-Indian border conflict had made war preparedness a new state imperative. The Indian government wanted to quickly produce more engineers who could be pressed into military-related technical work. As the institute's 1962-1963 annual report states, "The unprovoked aggression by China on our Northern borders posed a grim challenge to the country and institutions like the IIT Madras. We are happy to record that the Institute, in its own humble way, rose to the occasion gamely. National Cadet Corps training was made compulsory for certain years of the B. Tech degree course so as to ensure disciplined military training to the youth in the context of the Chinese menace. The Five Year Degree course was accelerated in order to turn out more engineers in response to the call of the country."
K. Narayanan, an alumnus from the second cohort, noted in a newspaper interview that their syllabus "was rushed through and the final examinations were conducted in December 1964." N. R. Dave, one of Narayanan's batch-mates, added that "due to this, we were called the 'emergency' batch."
For some, the relationship to military service continued after graduation. Narayanan, who graduated as a chemical engineer, joined Indian Oil's Guwahati Refinery in 1965, when the Indo-Pakistan War was just beginning. "The engineers at the refinery had to go on night patrolling," he recalled. "During the day, we received military training. They wanted to train us to be able to defend the refinery." Others like Ramiah, a 1967 alumnus, signed up for military service. Although "many companies like English Electric, Larson and Toubro, Tata etc. came for selection," he with his "patriotic ardor" was "captivated by the terrific lecture given by Squadron Leader Thambi and especially when he referred to the heroic deed of the IAF [Indian Air Force] pilot who smashed his burning plane into the Sargodha radar station in the '65 Ops." Swayed by Thambi's tales of daredevil patriotism, Ramiah ended up enlisting with the Indian Air Force.
For the most part, however, IIT alumni from the 1960s sustained their link to the state through civilian rather than military service. Over their college years, students were sent for training to public sector enterprises, like the Durgapur, Rourkela, and Bhilai steel plants and National Metallurgical Laboratories. Some went to public-private partnerships, such as Tata Steel, that were most emblematic of nationalist development. These periods of training often led to job offers, as it did for Dasigi, who "was offered a scholarship of Rs 150 per month and a job at Rourkela Steel Plant after graduation." Other Madras IITians began their professional lives in public sector enterprises where engineering as nation-building was a core dimension of their work. And many of them did so after a period of practical training in West Germany.
Excerpted with permission of Harvard University Press from 'The Caste Of Merit' by Ajantha Subramanian. Order your copy here.
Disclaimer: The author and publisher of the book are responsible for the contents of the excerpt and the book. NDTV shall not be responsible or liable for any defamation, intellectual property infringement, plagiarism or any other legal or contractual violation by the excerpt or the book.
