Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was never a professor in any college or university. Nor was Jawaharlal Nehru. Bal Gangadhar Tilak taught mathematics at Fergusson College, but to launch his political work, he had to leave campus life. Nor was Gokhale known as a teacher, though he, too, taught mathematics at Fergusson. Same with Periyar, who was never a professor. Bhimrao Ambedkar briefly taught political economy in Sydenham College, but his fame as activist and thinker came from what he achieved far beyond academia.

And yet, in universities and schools, there were countless Gandhians, Ambedkarites and followers of Periyar: among teachers and students alike.

If we cast our gaze beyond India, Simone de Beauvoir’s fame did not rest on her being a professor. Her following was largely due to her work as thinker, philosopher and writer. Marx spent his life in libraries, but he never held a teaching post. Vladimir Lenin did not teach. Nor did Ho Chi Minh, Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela. Charu Majumdar, too, never belonged to any college in Bengal.

Then how did millions become their followers? During the freedom struggle, were the people on the streets products of their classrooms? Were Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad creations of their colleges? Were Ram Manohar Lohia’s ideas taught in schools or university courses?

The question extends further. Did German universities teach fascism? Did American institutions of learning cultivate Donald Trump’s worldview? Did Indian colleges teach Hindutva or Savarkarism – that today, in almost every Hindu household, we find a Savarkarite lurking?

For nearly sixty years, India was governed by what is now derisively called a ‘secular ideology’. One would assume that most teachers believed in it. Then how has it come to pass that a large and influential section of Hindus today sees secularism as an alien thought?

Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has long been seen and portrayed as a bastion of the Left. But over the decades, how many committed left activists did this supposed fortress produce? In fact, JNU has produced more bureaucrats and police officers than revolutionaries. And whatever their personal beliefs may have been, those beliefs scarcely shaped their professional lives. They have served the system, held it together and not subverted it, as leftists are expected to be doing. Yes, JNU graduates are teaching across India and abroad, but they have written far more papers and books than they have created leftist cadres.

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Even today, when Hindutva has been ruling the country for over a decade and hopes to continue for at least another four years, and institutions like Delhi University, JNU and Jamia Millia Islamia are carefully ensuring that only ‘nationalist’ teachers are appointed, can we be certain that students emerging from these universities will turn into nationalists?

In 1974, thousands of students joined the JP movement – despite their teachers. Often, they did so even against their teachers’ warnings. Of course, some teachers joined the agitation too, but they were few. In the 1970s, there were indeed some brilliant students who abandoned their studies, went underground and declared Mao their Chairman. But they were a small, almost invisible minority. Yet it is also true that among them were some of the most intelligent minds of their generation. And many of them returned to live a nice bourgeois life.

What, then, is the relationship between universities and ideas? Do universities generate ideas that shape society, for better or for worse? We have grown accustomed to thinking about this question superficially. We exaggerate the influence of universities. Teachers, too, like to preserve the illusion that they shape the minds of their students. Governments live under the contrary illusion – that universities are breeding dissent.

In truth, ideas often enter universities from outside them. The most recent example is that of social justice. Before that came Naxalism. Even Hindutva entered the campus from the outside. These ideas exert pressure upon institutions, not the other way around.

Did the idea of reservation originate within universities? Or did it come from outside, forced upon them by politics and society? Without that pressure, universities would never have adopted it. We cannot forget the fierce resistance it provoked from within. The same can be said of other ideologies and ideas. Since 1947, there have always been secular, communal, leftist, liberal, feminist and patriarchal teachers on campuses. But what has been the extent of their influence, relative to their number?

It is not that students are untouched by teachers. But the influence arises less from what happens inside the classroom and more from what they observe outside it. Students see how seriously a teacher takes teaching, but they also watch how they conduct their lives. A teacher’s scholarship, style and moral conduct together shape whatever impact she has.

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It is common to see some teachers surrounded by students. This often gives them the illusion that their ideas have found disciples. In truth, most students orbit them for pragmatic reasons: they are useful. They can help secure a PhD seat, or perhaps a job. These motives weigh heavier than ideological alignments. Often, this very proximity breeds resentment – even disgust – when students see teachers exploit their position. Those who benefit from such teachers lose respect for them; those who don’t nurse bitterness.

When students, for short-term reasons, feign loyalty to an ideology that does not move them, they do not become its believers. They remain with it only as long as it serves worldly purposes. Once its usefulness ends, it turns into a mournful memory. Because it reminds them of how they suppressed themselves before it for worldly gains. Because it diminished them.

History teaches us that turning universities into ideological training camps never guarantees the survival of that ideology. The Soviet Union collapsed after seventy years. McCarthyism in America survives only as a historical embarrassment.

And yet, history’s lesson is the one no power ever learns. A poet once said that it is a folly to bank on literature for social change. The same, one might say, applies to universities. To expect universities to transform society is not hope – it is a kind of foolishness.

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