Ayn Rand In Indian Universities?

An article published in the Times Higher Education website (click here for our page devoted to this article) gives a very good idea of just how popular Ayn Rand is becoming in American universities. The days when she was shunned by professors are long gone. Today her ideas are not only quoted in the media, applied in corporate boardrooms and debated in informal campus clubs, but they have actually made a dramatic entry into mainstream academia. Professors and students alike are curious about what she had to say about the art, literature, philosophy, politics and culture of our times. Even those teachers who don’t fully agree with her, according to the article, are realizing in ever growing numbers, that she is too important to ignore. Their attitude is something like, ‘I don’t completely agree with this, but I think you should know this.’ Wow!

The question we should ask is – when or how will this ever happen in India? If one was to consider the various humanities departments in The Delhi University as representative of the trends in Indian academia, officially Ayn Rand is still a bad word. The various syllabi (often antiquated in content) and the professors who teach them are most likely to behave as though she never existed. Her mention or the sight of one of her books in a student’s hands is met with a quick sideways glance or a very skeptical stare. Anti-Americanism is hot, Noam Chomsky is ‘the guru’, and the days of socialism and even communism haven’t evaporated yet. The sense that one gets in the celebrated ‘north campus’ in the Delhi University, apart from boredom, is that of resistance to change. DU, it seems, hasn’t changed much since the 80s. In these circumstances, I’m afraid, the prospects of Ayn Rand being taught officially in classrooms look very bleak.