What Is To be Done?

A Draft Note on Follow-Up to the Penang Meeting, November 2004
by Ashis Nandy

Multiversity need not be a standard academic project with a distinguished-or, depending on one's worldview, disreputable-cast of characters, which will consider its work done after a series of conferences yielding a few scattered publications. It should see itself as the research secretariat of an intellectual movement that in future will transcend the limited efforts being mounted at this point of time. The movement's main task, as I understand it, is to pluralise and open up the global knowledge system and subvert the present structure of academic intellectual hegemony to the extent possible. This requires: (1) the re-affirmation and empowerment of marginalised, non-western knowledge systems and the broad ideological-ethical framework within which such reaffirmation and empowerment might be possible, (2) interventions in the contemporary academic culture through curricular changes and, later, institutional changes in higher education to consolidate the work that we plan to do, (3) new or reactivated old networks among the scholars from the South that, to at least start with, should try to challenge-or even better-bypass the western academic culture and university system and their versions of multiculturalism, including western initiatives to represent dissenting or radical voices within a standardised form of universalism. The aim of multiversity is to partly return the agency to the South to define their world with help of its own categories and to give centrality to debates within the South.

Keeping this mind, I propose the following two sets of activities:

Modest, Attainable Steps

These are the steps that can be taken most easily and painlessly. They need the least amount of money and can be easily decentralised. Also, they would not tire one out quickly, by making exorbitant demands on one's time and energy.

(1) We are recording the proceedings of the Penang meeting. These can be transcribed, edited, put on the net and published, as was done last year. More importantly, more interesting parts of the conversation can be extracted and a shorter, more accessible version can be published for wider dissemination.

(2) In addition, from among the participants, a five- or seven-person group can be created to have a longish chat on a more specific theme, to give examples from political science, on subjects like nation-state and minorities (political science and political theory), ideas and models of ethnic and religious coexistence (political sociology, political anthropology and political psychology), or scope and limits of nationalism (political history and political theory). Such exchanges can be transcribed and published in accessible forms, sometimes perhaps even in establishment publications that young Southern scholars presume to be authoritative.

This can continue as an occasional activity through out the year. There is nothing to stop Claude from, say, mobilising Vandana Shiva and Anupam Mishra from Delhi and fly to Kathmandu to have a dialogue with Ajayamani Dixit and his group in the Nepal Water Conservation Foundation, with perhaps Imtiaz Ahmed of Dhaka thrown in, to have a South Asian dialogue on cultures of water and water management (environmental studies).

(3) Claude has begun an excellent initiative in dissemination through CDs. This should be strengthened and turned into a more individualised effort. We can try to reach young scholars from Asia and Africa (say, by offering to send them ten digitalised books on one CD, charging a modest fee or for free ), so that they know the works of Southern scholars better.

(4) Multiversity should set up small groups of "experts" to identify textbooks that are more just and less prejudiced and publish a list once a year. Perhaps even to offer a prize for the best textbook published in a year. We could start with the social sciences and the humanities.

(5) A whole new series of collections/readers of existing work specifically for use in universities and research institutions, specifically covering the needs of certain subdisciplines, without calling them, from the beginning, 'alternative' or 'dissenting' textbooks or introductory texts. The idea should be to ensure that they do not become 'supplementary' texts from the beginning, to be read for fun or as clues to the way 'others' think. Ziauddin Sardar's illustrated introductions to science, cultural studies and other such subdisciplines or problem areas are good examples of what I have in mind. They do not flaunt themselves as alternatives and they have innocuous titles. They are presented as competing rather than alternative introductions to their subjects and, naturally, have wide circulation and deeper impact. I also remember the way Arvind Machwe broke into the American textbook market in science and technology with cheaply priced texts written by Indian authors in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Less Modest Ambitions

(1) A low-key three-tier exchange programmes to promote more intensive collaborative work. The aim should be to consolidate existing efforts such as the collaborative journal, Identity, Culture and Politics: An Afro-Asian Dialogue, being edited by Imtiaz Ahmad, Centre for Alternatives, Bangladesh, and Ousmane Kane, Senegal, and sponsored by the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, and published from Dhaka. Such journals, at the moment, are marginal to mainstream academe. They can be given more teeth by ensuring that they have wider reach within the Southern world, for instance, by making a concerted effort to promote them. Likewise, for simple newsy coverage of the activities of Multiversity, we should promote journals like Humanscape, which is published from Bombay. (We have already invited the highly committed editor of Humanscape, Jayesh Shah, to Penang for our meeting. I am sure he can identify other such journals to which one can divert new writings in areas of concern to us. Himal, which is published from Kathmandu, is a possibility)

(2) A modest plan for translation into vernacular languages could be undertaken and especial emphasis could be laid on languages in which publishers are not so interested, such as Simhala, Bengali, Tamil, Nepali, Urdu and Swahili. The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies has a programme for Hindi publications and has a budget for it. Peter D'Souza can be approached to coordinate a new series of textbooks in political science, for instance. There are thriving translation industries in some languages like Malayalam and Spanish and one may try to break into them. On the other hand, some of the regional languages are neglected or do not have rich traditions of translation. Some others have rich traditions of translation of literary works but not of the social sciences, particularly social sciences produced by Africans and Asians.

(3) A series of bibliographic essays on works done by Southern scholars can be gradually brought out. Vinay has done one such study for cultural studies and Apaar Kumar's work of works on alternatives and future studies, done at the Committee for Cultural Choices, is waiting for a publisher for more than a year. These should serve as handbooks for scholars keen to find out what is happening outside the West European and North American universities.

(4) A serious, ambitious interactive website, run in a professional fashion, will be a great assest.