Two cultures and the intelligentsia — The twain must meet

This cleavage is not only manifest in England but exists in all the other nations of the Western world. In fact, this gulf is wider than the recent Huntington’s thesis of differing cultures of divergent civilizations and their consequent clash.

As a consequence of this gulf, the entire intellectual life in the West “is increasingly being split into two polar groups”. This intellectual gulf also permeates to practical life since at the deepest level they are indistinguishable. This leads to mutual incomprehension, hostility and dislike. But the most serious outcome is the lack of understanding which leads to “a curious distorted image of each other”. This mutual suspicion has been characterised by Snow beautifully:“The non-scientists have a rooted impression that the scientists are shallowly optimistic, unaware of man’s condition. On the other hand, the scientists believe that the literary intellectuals are totally lacking in foresight, peculiarly unconcerned with their brother men, in a deep sense anti-intellectual, anxious to restrict both art and thought to the existential moment”.

Snow provides the example of the startling discovery of Yang and Lee at Columbia University and its reaction at Cambridge where scientists and others meet every night for dinner. This work of “the greatest beauty and originality” which should have been discussed at every dinner table, was not discussed at all. Such a momentous event was ignored because there was no communication between the two cultures. “There seems to be no place,” laments Snow, “where the cultures meet.” This is the consequence of a one dimensional purpose of higher education to produce a small elite educated and trained in one particular academicdiscipline.

This separateness of the two cultures can be vividly described by an examination of the prevailing Indian situation where the gap between the tightly closed compartments of the scientists and the generalists is as large, if not larger, as it is in Snow’s world. One way of reasoning this fact is by accepting it as an inevitable consequence of the Western impact on all aspects of our educational set-up. The traditional impact of Oxford and Cambridge and lately of the Ivy League schools is considerable and logically what is happening in the West is also bound to happen here.

Though the influence of the West is largely true, yet exclusive emphasis on this evidence only offers a partial explanation. This is because of the fact that though our educational system is largely Western in orientation, there are important distinctions between the evolution of our educational structure before and after independence. The pre-independence period is marked by a more generalised and liberal orientation ofeducation which more or less sufficed the needs and aspirations of the feudal aristocracy, small middle class and that of the British colonial administration.

The development in the post-independence phase which makes the Indian situation comparatively distinctive is the great leap with technology under Nehru’s leadership. Because of this, Daniel Patrick Moynihan refused to characterise India as an underdeveloped country, though it is poor. This breakthrough would have been inconceivable without the availability of a large number of highly skilled technologists and scientists. It is an admirable achievement of our educational system with all the limitations of scarce resources and at least in the initial stages, shortage of skilled and professional human resources. This acceptance of technology also produced a favourable inclination towards it of our intelligentsia. The traditional favourable field of law was replaced by engineering.

But surprisingly the acceptance did not reduce the gulf between the twocultures and in certain spheres it actually widened the cleavage. The entire controversy of the generalists and the specialists was accentuated by it.

The traditional compartmentalised syllabus of different disciplines in the universities still continue. This is a bit puzzling because in spite of the influence of Western educational pattern during the last few decades we have also come in contact with the former Soviet educational system where, as Snow points out, the gap is much less than that of the West.

In our given situation with all the problems of development that one can think of there is absolutely no hope of improving the lot of the people without large scale and immediate use of technology. Yet there is little comprehension of this phenomenon in the mind of many of our politicians, administrators and academicians who still think that obsolete ideas, simple polemics and the old antiquated framework can somehow meet the challenge of contemporary India.

On the other hand, the technologists havealso not been very successful in creating a congenial atmosphere of mutual trust, confidence and partnership beyond their own groups. They have remained somewhat detached from the ethos of changing social reality. They have given the impression that they are less sensitive to social issues and interested mainly in their scientific world with very little awareness of what is really happening in the country.

This malady of the two cultures has become deep rooted with obstinacy and vested interests on either side. Moreover, there is no easy solution to the problem. As Snow rightly points out, the solution lies in the reorientation of the entire educational system to make it multi-dimensional.

In the short run, we must accept that the continued existence of the two cultures is neither conducive to healthy academic growth nor does it lead to proper utilisation of our resources. It is a hindrance to our developmental efforts which we must not overlook at any cost. The two cultures must be replaced by acohesive, mutually inclusive and composite culture.

The writer is head, department of political science, University of Delhi