Why St Stephen's has failed as a college

You cannot understand St Stephen's College without a nodding acquaintance with the English public school system and, to a lesser extent, the elite ("aristocratic" would be the word then used) ambience of Cambridge in the 19th century.

St Stephen's was founded in the dying decades of the 19th century: February 1, 1881, to be precise, by a small group of Cambridge missionaries.

For long, the College was in academic tutelage to the English system, which accounted for, in no small measure, its prestige and influence. The public schools of India - Doon, Mayo, St Paul's, Modern, and so on, were to St Stephen's what Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Rugby etc were to Cambridge.

Also read - Where I got it frightfully wrong at St Stephen's: Valson Thampu

Together they produced the manpower ammunition to keep the British Raj going, in an air of callous insensitivity to the children of "darkness and error" as the Anglican Prayer Book of 1662 was pleased to then describe them.

The English public schools that I have referred to have had the following features, all shared by St Stephen's, in varying degrees, till recently:

(a) They were residential. The schools separated children from their homes and made them forfeit motherly and feminine influences, which, we now know, are of crucial importance in ensuring the normal emotional growth of a human being.

(b) Being all-male institutions, they fostered an attitude of male chauvinism in which St Stephen's too revelled, and from which it unwittingly suffered, till 1975.

(c) The English public schools had the underbelly of in-house cruelty. Younger boys were ill-treated by seniors. The air in these schools had an element of hostility toward them, ostensibly meant to toughen them! Ragging was quite common. It goes without saying that, insofar as it happened in public schools and in St Stephen's, such ragging was sweetly civilised.

(d) The ultimate aim fostered in the children by these schools was attaining "power and glory". Everything else was secondary. This made most of them join either the British Civil Service, or the Army or the wild jungles of overseas administration that afforded unfettered powers to preside over the destiny of savages in far-flung colonies.

(e) Academic excellence was not the hallmark of these institutions, even if some of their products excelled in the life of letters in due course. An enlightened man like James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill, chose to home-school his son (in preference over public schools) in view of the extraordinary early intellectual promise that the young lad showed, the details of which are readily available in Mills' Autobiography.

The consequence was that the rulers of colonies in the East (India being the Jewel on the Crown) as a class were ignorant of the cultural genius of the people they ruled and, often, intellectually inferior to the educated among them. "I have seen in the East," writes Bertrand Russell in Education and the Social Order, "men who considered themselves the fine flower of a public school education confronted with learned Orientals, and it made me blush to be an Englishman."

Such were the tributaries that fed Cambridge and Oxford at the relevant time. They were dominated by English aristocracy which set the tone and tenor of their (non)academic life.

Even though socialist ideals had begun to spread in England by then, Oxford and Cambridge, by dint of their die-hard orthodoxy, walled them in from such subversive forces and influences.

Also read - How St Stephen's College was degraded into an enclave of snobbery

Consider this against the universal fact that educational institutions the world over have a subversive character and all governments view liberal education through eyes of suspicion and anxiety.

Let us jump a few decades and come to the second decade of the 21st century. In UPA-2, to take just one example, six of the Union ministers were Stephanians.

Besides this, there were 20 Stephanian MPs. [In terms of legislative representation, St Stephen's was equal to the whole of Kerala!]

What light did they bring into the governance of the country?

The best among them were busy defending the indefensible, lending their admirable combative, polemic skills to justifying the fouling of the nation. The point to emphasise is that this is not accidental. The College did not prepare them to do any better. How come?

I have observed, as an agonised participant, the life of the College for over four decades. What was it that I found? I found a dull discipline that ensured a steady work culture, but I did not, at any point, experience excitement about work!

Also read - From HCU to JNU, it's worrying how Modi sarkar is cleaning up India's campuses

As for students, they improvised the adage, "Real education takes place outside the classroom". They created their own worlds, comprising mostly of trivia.

[Like in any 19th century English public school, gaining college colours was the ultimate badge of achievement. Having been with so-and-so, likewise.]

Stephanians are quick to vouch for the greatness of their alma mater; but ask them what comprised that greatness. You are sure to catch them hemming and hawing. I have listened to innumerable old students speaking about "our times in college".

Invariably, it was about trivial things like "café raid at night" or hanging out at Miranda, or daring to desecrate the Cross atop the academic block by hanging inner-wares on it. Revelling in triviality is the other side of mediocrity in academics. "Attitude" became more important than academics.

The world outside continued to despise and denounce, with increasing intensity, the social elitism of St Stephen's and its products. Such condemnations were, however, deemed garbled compliments.

We felt nice about being elitist. But this elitism was much less forgivable in the Indian context of the 20th century than it was in the English context of the 19th.

Academic institutions need to seek not social elitism but social relevance. That can happen only when education harmonises two contrary elements.

Also read - How alternative schools score better than regular ones in India

First, it has to cater to the needs of individuals to grow to their utmost capabilities.

Second, it has to imbue them with a sense of social and national purpose, fortified with a spirit of service. The colonial hangover on St. Stephen's made it foster the passion and preference to rule. There was a time when 25 to 30 per cent of all civil servants of the country were from that tiny institution!

Even today there are more than 50 senior alumni bureaucrats in the Union government. But these are dying embers. Soon enough, much of these would be in the past and it will come to light that the make-believe the college embraced, understandable under certain circumstances, has cost it dear.

I am an ardent believer in the huge potential of St Stephen's. Its history, as I see it, is one of wasted opportunities. For years and years, it has slept under the opium of prestige.

But, prestige, like public opinion, is an elusive and deceptive thing. It blinds you to the ever-changing world around you and makes you pathologically narcissistic.

It is institutional narcissism that makes people feel at home only within the herd (the alumni network) and to strut around as the troubadours of the trivia, patting themselves on the back, for no other reason than the accident that they all carry the same label.