In today's India, institutions are especially important. How should the story of an institution be told? In his wonderful chronicle  of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Dr. Batabyal chose to focus on the contest of ideas, and the change processes, which could be seen, and experienced within higher education. In this episode, he talks about the struggles, ideological and professional, in the backdrop of which the Jawaharlal Nehru University was set up as a centre for advanced research. 

In a free-wheeling conversation, he shares the impact of growing up in one of India’s post-Independence centres of excellence, the steel city of Bokaro, then a microcosm of India, where professionals of all states, all communities came together to build a new and different history of modern India and how that sense of Indianness, was honed by the interest taken by his teachers in honing his latent interest in renaissance ideas and ideals. 

He talks about the shift in perspective, from participant to observer and how that played out while researching and writing his well-regarded, book JNU, the Making of A University.

Dr. Rakesh Batabyal is Associate Professor, of Media History, at the Centre for Media Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

A selection of his writings

https://www.amazon.in/Modern-School-1920-Century-Schooling

https://www.amazon.in/JNU-Making-University-Rakesh-Batabyal

https://www.amazon.in/Communalism-Bengal-Noakhali-1943-47-History