Does Chetan Bhagat want DU students to read only his books?

We need to ask Chetan Bhagat why, oh why, did he, after taking “40 class tests, quizzes, mid-term tests every semester” at the IIT Delhi, finally go on to write books? Because, for Bhagat of the Half Girlfriend, Revolution 2020, Five Point Someone ivory tower, that is really no way to pay back his hallowed IITs, which “strictly monitor” the students.

Bhagat the Brilliant contrasts the Indian Institutes of Technology, interestingly founded by Jawaharlal Nehru – the lynchpin of the Lutyens’ liberal, with the “college for them meant doing adda in the campus lawns” Delhi University types, who also do too much politics. That is when these designated DU types, not to be confused with the Sangh-sophistry-spewing ABVP types, are not getting beaten up by either Delhi cops or the ABVP’s illustrious members themselves, are actually doing politics!

If Bhagat had his way, he would discipline and punish the students by forcing them to read only his books the whole year round. Because other than expressing utter and unfeigned jealousy at the “party-going” DU-walas – seriously, all the DU type end up having is gadzillion cups of chai and samosa; but for the marches, they would need obesity treatment in no time – and saying an inscrutable thing about “their colleges were far male-to-male ratio than us”, Bhagat says little.

Bhagat goes on to talk in the air, such as “our friends at DU couldn’t party enough”, “they rarely attended classes”, “academics was second priority”. This from an IIT alumnus who said goodbye to both applied and pure science long, long back, and also weakened the cause of the liberal arts by penning “books” that can at best serve as manuals on how not to have half girlfriends, how not to be at the IITs, how not to do revolution, etc, etc.

Bhagat’s assertion that DU students “even had time for politics and took campus elections seriously“ is something that would make the deans of all the IITs and the students at IIT Delhi, who just suffered a seminar on cow dung concoction, laugh out hysterically. This liberal, central university = politics versus technology-driven university as obedient research is a stereotype that only the likes of Bhagat still find worth perpetuating.

At a time when the liberal, public university is under assault from the government itself, the likes of Bhagat who want to voice their two cents, locate the crisis of the university in the political student and teachers. Because for Bhagat, the entertainment quotient that should be available in the universities is leching at women students in skewed male-to-female ratio study environments that teach little or nothing about political awareness, progressive ideas, or even the science of doing science ethically.

If the staid atmosphere of the schoolish IITs had sent Bhagat into an existential crisis, and his middling performance found him quickly opting his way out of the IIT academia, and writing books that became sad introductions to the contemporary English novel for the first-time readers in English, why does he recommend that now? Is it because stereotyping is easier than actually realising that the university has space for both the IITs and the currently politically-charged DU?

Because Bhagat gets even the IITs wrong – he says nothing of the thrill of learning the wonders of science and technology, the tests being grueling but ultimately fantastic modes of inculcating a scientific temper – he fails to understand the importance of a liberal, publicly funded university as an idea and intellectual space indispensable for the growth of a nation.

The students in DU are not just fighting to save the liberal university, they are equally sensitive to the question of maintaining the IITs as true centres of all round excellence, and not just factories to produce would-be management graduates and later day immigrants in Silicon Valley.

Bhagat’s diagnosis is just like his books, shoddy and feeding off regressive stereotypes that sadly the IITs couldn’t fix.

Maybe he should try reading something else for a change. We recommend Jawaharlal Nehru’s Discovery of India and the history of the IITs.

Also read: Dear Chetan Bhagat, how was your Karva Chauth?