André Béteille: A Instructor Par Excellence

First, the title. A part of studying to change into a D College (Delhi College of Economics) sophisticate was to know methods to pronounce it – the Ls are silent in French – and later, to jot down it with the accent marks in the proper place. That aura of international glamour that distinguished Professor André Béteille once we entered his class as MA college students of sociology by no means fairly light with familiarity.

We knew he was Indian and that he broke into Bangla when talking to fellow-Bengalis, however we additionally knew that in true bhadralok trend, he inhabited an Anglo-French mental milieu with consummate confidence. His manner of being at dwelling on this planet was our first lesson in how to not be overawed by or defensively dismissive of the Nice White Gods of sociology – the then holy trinity of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim – however to make them our companions in vital considering. 

Trying again, I now perceive how essential this was. Within the mid-Eighties once I was an MA pupil on the Division of Sociology, Delhi College, the post-Emergency surge of social actions round civil liberties and environmental points – state-sponsored violence in opposition to Sikhs and the Bhopal fuel tragedy occurred inside months of one another in 1984 – drew us to Marx and Gandhi, Gramsci and Ivan Illich.

Giddy with radical critiques of the state, capitalism, industrialism, and the dominant mannequin of improvement, we dismissed each different inquiry as boring, irrelevant, or complicit in sustaining the established order. We learn feverishly however narrowly, measuring an writer’s advantage solely by their ideology, discarding those that didn’t meet the mark. This was not schooling, it was indoctrination, albeit self-inflicted.

We might have continued thus, well-versed in radical literature however little else, self-righteous and doubtless unbearable, if it had not been for professors like André Béteille who gently insisted that we put our political certitudes on maintain and open our minds to different approaches and factors of view. We should always learn Alexis de Tocqueville on American democracy and Max Weber’s lecture on ‘Politics as a Vocation’, and never simply Das Kapital and Hind Swaraj. Our ambition of setting the world proper could be higher served if we realized to consider inequality comparatively, throughout time and house. 

Studying Weber was laborious work. The division college emphasised that college students should learn authentic texts or their translations, not commentaries. We might have floundered if not for the lifeline of Professor Béteille’s lessons. His lectures had been the acme of lucidity. Elegantly structured, fantastically clear, that they had been honed to perfection through the years.

Now that I’m a trainer, I marvel at how brilliantly he distilled advanced concepts right into a type that college students may digest. We may then return to the library with a glimmer of understanding of what we had been studying. We might even gherao Professor Béteille once we had been baffled by what we encountered in programs taught by different professors, kinship and symbolism, particularly. His door was all the time open and he by no means turned away a pupil in mental misery.

If instructing as a occupation fitted André Béteille like one in all his well-tailored tweed fits, it additionally imposed a self-discipline that he embraced. He by no means missed a category and tutorial. He all the time walked in on time, all the time ready and absolutely current. It takes caring and dedication to be unfailingly beneficiant to college students and colleagues. It additionally takes a number of homework.

For generations of scholars who quietly absorbed the ethic behind this effort, instructing reworked from a profession to a calling. Once I’m feeling annoyed by college students who use ChatGPT for assignments or who present up for sophistication with out having performed the assigned studying, I typically consider Professor Béteille unflagging spirit as a trainer and I marvel at his fidelity.

In ‘Science as a Vocation’, Weber notes that good students may be poor lecturers (and vice versa). In Professor Béteille’s case, we had been lucky that he was each. His first ebook Caste, Class and Energy: Altering Patterns of Social Stratification in a Tanjore Village was first revealed in 1965 and ready the grounds for what we now name ‘intersectionality’. I’d suggest it to any newbie in sociology as a transparent exposition of how idea have to be processed by means of empirical evaluation.

Dipankar Gupta has written incisively on Béteille’s scholarship (and Ramachandra Guha on his politics) so I cannot dwell on his analysis on inequality and social stratification aside from to notice that, once I was doing analysis amongst adivasis within the Narmada Valley, Béteille’s essay within the European Journal of Sociology on the idea of indigeneity in India was a serious catalyst for my very own considering.

His work on the center class was additionally forward of its time; Raka Ray and I had been lucky to have him ship the keynote handle on the convention that resulted in our edited quantity, Elite and Everyman: The Cultural Politics of the Indian Center Courses. We’re amongst many who’ve been instantly influenced by Professor Béteille’s scholarship.

I believe Professor Béteille was keen on me. He would smile and remind me, ‘You understand, Amita, I additionally taught your father’ [Baburao S. Baviskar was his student and, later, colleague]. So, in addition to lectures, conversations, and feedback on drafts, Professor Béteille additionally gave me profession recommendation. Once I was bristling with indignation at an unfair ebook assessment, he advised me to let it go.

Once I was employed at a analysis institute and lacking the classroom, he advised me concerning the Younger India Fellowship (YIF) programme and the way a lot he loved lecturing to college students from a mixture of disciplinary backgrounds. Because of him, I taught these college students too and, years later, got here to work at Ashoka College, dwelling of the YIF. André Béteille was its first Chancellor. And although in his latter years he occupied a number of such distinguished positions, I consider that a terrific lots of his happiest moments had been amongst college students. The calm pleasure that he exuded of their firm stays with me and, every time I really feel it, I’m grateful that he taught me methods to be a trainer.

Amita Baviskar teaches at Ashoka College.

This text went stay on February seventh, two thousand twenty six, at ten minutes previous twelve at midday.

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