As an India-based scholar, as someone who
is not a member of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), which is primarily
located in the US though it has 7000 members worldwide, and someone who had no
plans of attending the AAS-in-Asia
conference in Delhi
(July 4-8, 2018), the boycott call against the AAS-in-Asia is
not something that would ordinarily bother me.
The boycott call arose out of the
Government of India’s refusal to allow Pakistani scholars to attend the AAS
meeting; and the AAS’s failure to take a strong public stand against this and
inform its members in a timely fashion so that they could make their own
choices about whether to attend while Pakistani scholars were being denied. 649 scholars protested against what appeared to be
the AAS’s and the local host, Ashoka University’s quiescence in an unacceptable
restriction on academic freedom. I was one of them, even though my primary
anger was with the Government of India, and not with the AAS. However, feeling
that this was not enough, over 200 of the signatories have also decided to boycott
the conference, arguing that the AAS should have had the courage to cancel the
conference altogether rather than submit to the ban.
No one can deny scholars the right to
hold their own associations to account. As far as its effect on the Indian
government goes, the vociferous protest by humanist members of the AAS may even
inspire other less politically conscious professional associations – of
doctors, lawyers, engineers, and even yoga practitioners, to keep out of India
for fear that their members – especially of Pakistani or Chinese origin – may
be arbitrarily denied visas at the last minute.
It is also possible that had the AAS and
Ashoka University protested more visibly and in time, visas might well have
been granted to the Pakistani scholars. In an authoritarian regime, “back
channel diplomacy” as Ashoka and AAS claim they were doing usually benefits
those in power – because they can then withhold or graciously grant visas as a
favour. Visas for international academic conferences should be globally seen as
the norm rather than the exception, a right rather than a favour.
There are many scholars on the list of
signatories to the boycott whose work and political acumen I respect greatly;
some are close friends. It is also true that many American scholars have been debating whether to hold their
associational meetings in the US following the US travel ban on seven
primarily Muslim countries.
However, as AAS president Anne Feldhaus, has pointed out, this
particular boycott raises all kinds of questions, including how international
associations should deal with national sovereignty. The biggest problem,
however, is the whiff of imperial double standards. Most of the signatories to the boycott
come from universities in the US with a sprinkling of European scholars. It
may well be that the AAS-in-Asia is just the beginning and the scholars
concerned will boycott other association meetings in the US itself, but the ‘answers’ to their own ‘FAQs’ that accompany the boycott
call is not reassuring on this score:
“The fact that the AAS has
its home base in the United States, where similar visa restrictions apply is a separate issue: the organization has
no choice but to operate in its domestic environment; it has plenty of choices
about how to operate elsewhere, including refusing to cooperate with
governments who censor in a priori fashion. The AAS does not control visas. It
does control how it operates in the world (italics
mine).”
In response to a specific
FAQ on the comparison with the US travel ban, this is the answer the scholars
boycotting AAS-in-Asia provide:
“First, with respect to the
travel ban in the US, we would definitely support any organization that decides
to hold its meetings in Canada or Mexico or somewhere else, so long as the US
travel ban is in effect. This may be especially urgent in the case of MESA
(Middle East Studies Association), given that the ban specifically targets
countries within MESA's subject area. In an ideal world, perhaps, all
professional associations would shift their meetings out of the US until the
travel ban is repealed. In the event that international scholars choose to
boycott meetings held in the US, we would fully support their decision to do
so.”
This sounds very much like
saying that in an ideal world, perhaps,
I would get rid of my dictator, but since I can’t, I will help to get rid of
yours. Whether one likes the comparison or not, this was pretty much the logic
used by those who supported the US war on Iraq and Syria, wars which destroyed
their education systems from primary school to university. How are US restrictions a ‘separate issue’? To my mind, they are
part of the same global problem of authoritarian governments imposing bans on
academic exchange, and only solidarity can be the basis of academic exchange,
not a patronizing boycott of one country alone.
But it is the statement about
supporting international scholars who
choose to boycott the US that is particularly disingenuous in its willful
blindness to scholarly hierarchies and the political economy of academic life.
The concentration of academic resources in the US means that any academic who
boycotts a US conference loses out much more than one who boycotts an Indian or
Iranian one. Students, in particular,
often have no choice.
Most problematic of all is
the fact that many of these signatories come from universities that are
actively engaged with Indian politicians, bureaucrats, journalists (including
those who actively promote anti-Muslim hate) and businessmen. Not only do these
universities benefit from the largesse of Indian corporates like the Ambanis or
Mittals but their hubris encourages them to hold conferences with influential
Indians in the belief that they are shaping national politics. Some of these
events are held on university campuses while others are held in various five-star
venues in India, like the MIT-India
conference, the Harvard US India Initiative, the LSE-India Summit and so on.
An Ashoka-Harvard
US India student conference held at the Oberoi Trident Mumbai in 2017 had
this to say about its agenda: “Holding dialogue between Indian scholars,
professionals and political leaders to identify solutions in multiple paradigms
in India’s development.” The speakers included Chanda Kochhar, Sunil Mittal,
Amitabh Bachhan etc. While students from these universities who already have an enormous
sense of privilege are parachuted in to ‘identify solutions’ and get to know
Indian celebrities, Indian students are struggling for non-net scholarships,
for qualified teachers, for the right to eat non-vegetarian food in their
messes and so on. There is also no sense that ‘solutions’ to India’s problems
will come from India’s farmers, fishers and foresters, and not from bankers, bureaucrats
or Harvard students.
Finally, under a Government of India scheme with overseas
universities, Harvard, Duke, Chicago, Singapore, LSE,
Cambridge, Sussex etc. are also actively engaged in offering short- and long-term training to Indian bureaucrats in specially
tailored courses like public policy, public finance, leadership and decision
making. The bureaucrats get to go abroad while the universities make money and claim
they are contributing to India’s ‘development’. Smriti Irani gets
to claim she has a Yale degree. This is the same (former) HRD Minister and
the same bureaucracy which has no problem keeping Pakistani (and Chinese)
scholars out, and indeed making life difficult for Indian scholars on a day-to-day
basis. While one recognizes that anthropologists, historians, or linguists are
relatively powerless within university hierarchies, putting pressure on their
own universities to disengage with India’s politicians and bureaucrats would
have much more effect than a boycott of the AAS. That is, assuming the ultimate
goal is the lifting of visa restrictions, and allowing for academic exchange,
and not simply showing up the AAS or Ashoka University for their pusillanimity.
To come back to the AAS in Asia, the AAS conference fees for SAARC/LDC
students
while not cheap, are no more than what societies like the Indian Sociological Society charge. Presumably a boycott by
eminent scholars would mean denying many students and young scholars the
opportunity to interact with them. Participating and protesting, on the other
hand, would make even apolitical scholars think, and fortunately such protests
are being planned by the organisers themselves as well as others.
What Indians
Should Do
As an Indian my primary concern is, of
course, with the Government of India’s idiotic and unwarranted assault on
academic freedom and intellectual life. While businessmen in Modi’s India come
and go as they please, invest as they please and take money out as they please,
academics are bound by a thousand ropes. Leave alone Pakistanis – whose
presence in India has long been a hit and miss affair – Indian scholars are now
being prevented from speaking on Indian soil. From 2016-18, at least 15-20
seminars or events to be addressed by Indian scholars – at places as varied as
TISS, Allahabad University, Baroda University, Delhi University – have been cancelled by university
authorities after the ABVP threatened to disrupt the events.
Many of these cancelled talks have been on
subjects like casteism, the constitution, or democracy. In 2017, Pami Dua, director
of the Delhi School of Economics, refused space to faculty and students for a
seminar on the Supreme Court judgment on the Right to Privacy. In all such
cases, the faculty should have protested far more than they did.
It would be foolish to claim, as some are doing, that Ashoka as a private
university has succumbed to governmental pressure whereas public universities
would have served the cause better. Of course, private universities are politically
circumspect but the record of India’s public universities, including many
progressive academics, when faced with the spate of organised attacks on
academic freedom, has hardly been anything to write home about. Students are a
different matter – and indeed, much of the protest against academic unfreedom
has come from students.
At this moment, whatever one’s opinions
about private vs. public universities, about the AAS and its office bearers,
one needs to see the denial of visas to Pakistani scholars as yet another hit
on academic freedom, where the primary culprit is the Government of India. Wherever
we are, in private or public institutions, we need to protest whenever the
government or university authorities interfere with academic freedom.
Beyond the politics of protest and
boycott, however, it is time for South Asia-based academics to start thinking
about how to make the subcontinent a serious scholarly space. We need to set up
many more collaborations, even if at the moment these are possible only
by email and Skype,
design courses which truly take account of the environment, politics and
histories of all the South Asian countries (not just Pakistan and India),
co-teach courses if possible (why not a joint MOOC?), and do comparative
research. It is quite shocking, for instance, that the public discussion around
triple talaq in India was not informed by the rich debates and histories of
legal reform in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Scholars of South Asia unite – we have
nothing to lose but our visa restrictions.
