A.R. Wadia (1888-1971). Remembering a Liberal Educationist in the Age of Post-Liberalism | Murzban Jal

by Murzban Jal

When the old liberal world dies and authoritarianism takes its place, it is definitely the time to mourn. But it is also a time for remembrance, remembrance where memories of making the world a better place can be evoked.

There was definitely a time where teachers were recruited at least where the dreams of a free, cultured and educated India could be possible. At least then in the good old days, teachers and Vice Chancellors were recruited with larger goals in mind. And now in the days of post-liberalism when spitting venom becomes the norm and when academics are recruited as Vice Chancellors when they call for genocide reminiscent of the Nazis, it is time to remember what a liberal educationist stood for.

A small note on what “post-liberalism” looks like must be noted. I begin this essay with the selection of Shantishri Pandit as the Vice Chancellor of the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in February 2022. The fact that she had called for genocide against Muslims, Christians and communists must be noted. [1] One recalls here Martin Heidegger when in 1933 he joined the Nazis with the stated aim that Nazism would rescue the western world from Bolshevism. In his Introduction to Metaphysics, he talked of the “inner truth and greatness” of the German Nazis. [2] According to Heidegger:

Concerning 1933: I expected from National Socialism a spiritual renewal of life in its entirety, a reconciliation of social antagonisms and a deliverance of Western Dasein from the dangers of communism. [3]

Now move from 1933 to 2022. What one sees is not a New Heidegger, but a pale shadow, for this same learned professor (Pandit) who has been propagating mass hatred and is an open votary of fascism, who was simultaneously convicted in a massive corruption scam when she served at the Savatribai Phule University (SPPU) [4]. What do we learn from this? We learn that fascists are corrupt through and through.

 Now turn to the old world of liberalism, a world where atleast genocide was not supposed to be public discourse. Turn thus to Adershir Ruttonji Wadia, or Professor A.R. Wadia as he was known to the academic world and the public at large who was born on 4th June, 1888 in a Parsi Zoroastrian mercantile family whose life encompassed the words of academia and public life. That he belonged to a minority community must be noted. At least belonging to a minority community then did not imply their annihilation despite the communal politics which was being encouraged by the colonial forces. That he was a philosopher and sociologist who founded the Department of Philosophy at the University of Mysore in 1917 must be also be noted as also his linking philosophy to both sociology and social work. Sociology, for him, like social work was a serious enterprise and had to be informed by philosophy.

From Entrepreneurship to Social Philosophy

 
Wadia did his B.A. from Bombay and Cambridge, Bar-at-Law, Diploma in Economics and Political Science from Oxford and was awarded D. Lilt., (Hon.) from Mysore. While beginning his academic career at the Wilson College, Bombay (now Mumbai) he moved to the University of Mysore to establish the philosophy department in 1916 and was Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Mysore for twenty-five years (1917-1942). From 1930 to 1931 and then from 1942 to 1943 he also served as a member of Mysore Legislative Council, besides being Director of Public Instruction in Mysore for a brief period before retiring. In 1946 at the age of sixty he became Principal of the Victoria College at Gwalior serving there till 1949 to become the first Pro-Vice Chancellor of the newly set up Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. He was also Director of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) from 1953 to 1962 and member of the Rajya Sabha from 1954 to 1966 and also became a member of the University Grants Commission in 1960 at the ripe old age of 72 serving the UGC for eight years till his eightieth year. Besides these he was member of the Senate and Executive Council of the Universities of Mysore, Agra, Baroda and Bombay, and also a member of the Banaras Hindu University Executive Committee and of the syndicate of the S.N.D.T. University, Bombay. He presided as Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Indian Philosophical Congress for eighteen years. He was also Editor of the Indian Journal of Social Work and author of several works on philosophy, politics, social work, and literature. He represented India in the General Conferences of UNESCO, in the East-West Philosophers’ Conference in Australia, in the Entretiens of the International Institute of Philosophy, the International Conference of Social Work in Japan and was Governor of the Rotary Organization in India. He was awarded the title of Rajasevasakta by the Maharaja of Mysore, the D.Litt. from the University of Mysore in 1960 and in 1961 was conferred with the Padma Bhushan.

He came from the famous Wadia family of entrepreneurs and shared familial kinship with the celebrated mercantile family of the Wadias who started as shipbuilders in 18th century Surat beginning with Lowjee Nusserwanjee (1702—1774) who became a mercantile prince leaving the prosperous city of Surat for Bombay sometime between 17th and 27th March 1736 accompanied by a group of Parsi carpenters to be the founders of early capitalist entrepreneurship in the then small island of Bombay. What was born was to be the foundation of modern Indian entrepreneurship and philanthropy. Wadia belonged to this family whose kinship he shared with entrepreneurs like Ness Wadia (b. 1873), Professor Pestonji Ardershir Wadia (b. 1878) and the film makers Jamshed Bomanji Hormazji Wadia (b. 1901) and his brother Homi Bomanji Wadia (b. 1911). Professor A.R. Wadia would translate this entrepreneurship and philanthropy into academia thereby transforming academia itself. As an educationist, his life-world was comprised of four layers: (1) the world of cosmopolitanism and secularism, (2) his Parsi faith derived from the ancient Persian Zoroastrian religion with its precepts of good thoughts, good words and good deeds, (3) the adopted Indian culture, especially Indian philosophy of idealism and spiritualism, and (4) the European world of logic and modernity.

Major Publications

Though being born in a family of early capitalist entrepreneurs Wadia’s forte was in the world of scholarship. While studying law, his basic love fell to the discipline of philosophy. His repertoire which was a mix of teaching, academic administration and writing made him leave behind a treasure of knowledge in the form of his books like his 1923 Ethics of Feminism: Study of the Revolt of Woman which is an example of how well before the discourse of feminism became part of global social sciences and teaching in colleges and universities, he already touched on the topic. He called himself a “conservative liberal” and in the era that had just seen the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Russian revolution he was cautious of the tremendous changes taking place in Europe and wanted to balance radicalism with conservatism. It was this conservative liberalism which made him turn to Gandhi. He shared with Gandhi’s ideals of the removal of untouchability in the framework of conservative liberalism. His other notable works are Civilization as a Co-operative Adventure (1933), Spirit of Zoroastrianism (1938), Religion as a Quest for Values (1950), The Future of English in India (1954), Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi & Others Essays (1958), his celebrated edited History and Philosophy of Social Work in India (1961) and Democracy and Society (1966). Along with S. Radhakrishnan, D.M. Dutta and Humayun Kabir he edited the History of Philosophy, Eastern and Western (1952), had a small text for the All India Radio ‘The Philosophy of Social Work’ (1961) while the chapter ‘Pragmatic Idealism’, in S. Radhakrishnan’s edited book Contemporary Indian Philosophy (1952) stands out as a monumental text in world philosophy.

The Philosopher as Social Reformer 

“Professor Wadia was above else a teacher”. The words of the celebrated sociologist M.N. Srinivas writing an obituary for Wadia sum up the life of Wadia. [5] Trained in the discipline of philosophy, Wadia transformed the essential concerns of metaphysics and ethics into the discipline of sociology. Well before the now fashionable ideas of interdisciplinary and transdiciplinary studies came into the mainstream of the social sciences in India, he in his fusion of philosophy and sociology into what Srinivas called “social philosophy” laid the foundations of interdisciplinary studies.
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      He began teaching sociology at the Department of Philosophy, University of Mysore in 1917-18 when he became Head of the Department there. It was at the Department of Philosophy, University of Mysore where he had as his friend and colleague the thirty year old philosopher S. Radhakrishan who was at the University of Mysore from 1918-21. It was here that he learnt that sociology needed both metaphysics and ethics. For him, sociology necessarily needed a metaphysical base and had to take the form of applied philosophy. Even when his mind soared into the world of philosophy and metaphysics, yet for him, philosophy had to be rooted in the real world. Metaphysics attracted him. But that too had to be social, “social” in the sense that the poorest of the poor had to be not only part of philosophical and sociological discourse, but had to be its very essence.

          In his February 1961 talk at the All Indian Radio (AIR) titled ‘Philosophy of Social Work’ he talked of the great world humanists who were involved in the reforming of prisons and humanizing criminals, mentioned the cause of the insane, fighting for the cause of prostitutes, struggle against untouchability and working with lepers. As he said in that lecture “socialism has taken up a strenuous fight against poverty, and may succeed in making poverty a thing of the past” [6]. However as he continues “In the best of society there will be need for people who will be required to help such cases, and such help can come only from devoted social workers.” [7]. For him the elimination of human suffering and unhappiness was not only of great importance, but had to be part of the social sciences where trained professionals would be created to deal with the elimination of human suffering. For this the creation of a “regular army of social workers” is necessary an army that is trained not only to understand the “struggle for existence” as found in Darwinian evolution theory, but also to understand that life is a struggle between good and evil [8]. And for this, the knowledge of what is good; in fact what is ethically good is of great importance. Teaching as teaching of social work to create an army of professionals has to go through the steeling school of morals. For Wadia the will to goodness had to take now centre stage. For him, “idealists may dream of Utopias, but hard facts of life remain for generation after generation”. [9] He says that how human society in the industrial epoch flatters itself that it has conquered the depths of the seas and the heights of the skies, that it has annihilated distances and placed human beings as the masters of the universe [10]. But, as Wadia asks, “is man really happy today?” [11].

     It is this forte of social philosophy, this quest for morality which leads to happiness which led him to serve academia with social and national responsibilities. Disdainful of the positivist method that propagated that facts and norms have to be sharply demarcated, Wadia inculcated the discipline of ethics in the teaching of sociology. It is this social science based on ethics that guided him throughout his career. Just as ethics and science had to be consciously united, so too teaching and academic administration had to be united. Further the lines between sociology and social work had to be obliterated. That is why the cause of the annihilation of economic and social inequalities, especially his critique of the Indian caste system which always perplexed his mind, was always present in his scientific repertoire. M.N. Srinivas talked of sociology and social philosophy, as taught by Wadia, were intended to make a dent on the minds of his students many of them who came from upper caste Brahmin backgrounds. As Wadia stated: “the highest metaphysics of the Upanishads and the ethics of the Gita have been reduced to mere word by the tyranny of the caste” [12]

      In 1961 when the Tata Institute of Social Science was celebrating its Silver Anniversary he set out to edit a book titled History and Philosophy of Social Work in India which comprised a collection of essays penned by over thirty scholars. His chapter ‘Ethical and Spiritual Values in the Practice of Social Work’ echoed the old socialist norm that philosophers have not merely to interpret the world, but in fact have also to change it. Praxis was thus inherent in his theorizing, praxis where “India had must break loose from the shackles of the past. [13] And just as was for Gandhi whom he greatly admired, where the heart, head and hand had to be united to create a good ethical and scientific person, for Wadia the same triad followed. For him, it was not merely the activity of teachers, reformers and physicians that could be called “social work”, but also the work of the potter, weaver and carpenter. But besides also calling for an integration of manual laborers in the genre of social work, he also said that the mass of human population who did not fit even in the last category had to be brought in the life-world of theory and praxis. And just as was for Gandhi (as would be for the German thinker Erich Fromm) “care” had to be a central scientific and philosophical category where a “healthy society” is created. Teaching and writing was for him nothing but a path to create this healthy society. And for that one had to broaden one’s mind. The broadening of one’s intellectual horizons made it imperative that one moves beyond the lecture hall to the world of the underclass, the world of widows, child-brides, the sick, people afflicted by leprosy, prostitutes and the urban poor residing in slums. His idea of philosophy being practical made him see Gandhi in the light of the gospel of Christ.

Transforming the Teaching of Sociology in India

But besides this ethical narrative, Wadia said that it was imperative that the sociology of industrialism and urbanism had to be treated with scientific precision. Thus as a sociologist dealing with urban India, the questions of industrialization and the formation of trade unions also gripped his mind. As he said “industrial labor grew in an almost haphazard manner. Neither the capitalist employers nor the government were fully alive to the potentialities of labor”. [14] His History and Philosophy of Social Work in India had deep sociological insights relevant even to present times. There he noted that “the labor movement tended to drift into the hands of professional labor leaders who were themselves not laborers”. [15]

      Wadia was a modernist, yet he never lost his roots. The ancients also fascinated him. In 1936 when the United theological College of South India and Ceylon invited him to deliver three lectures on Zoroastrianism. These lectures were transformed into a book where G.A. Nateson & Co., Madras, published this in 1938. On the one hand this was his debt to the ancient faith he was born in. On the other hand the ethical triad of good thoughts, good words, good deeds as said by the founder of this ancient Persian faith reached beyond faith to the world of the sciences. His modernism was clear when he said that his faith was founded in the dialogue with other great civilizations and other faiths. When he said that this Persian faith which was prominent in large part of the civilized world till 651 C.E. directly influenced the great faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam he was in a way paving the way for great Iranian scholarship which would follow him like that of Mary Boyce in the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. And as a cosmopolitan thinker as a universal thinker he broke the barriers of all orthodoxies. For him, the Zoroastrian ethics of good thoughts, good words and good deeds could never be a Zoroastrian monopoly. Likewise Dharma had to be torn out from the context of caste-duties where each person recognizes his and her social and national duties.

       Just as Zoroastrianism and Gandhi inspired him along with modern American sociology especially that of Frank W. Blanckmar and John Lewis Gillin’s Outlines of Sociology, so too did Buddhism inspire him. Like the Buddha, the institution of caste and caste hierarchy detested Wadia. What fascinated him were the Buddhist Sanghas which for him were casteless institutions. The Buddhist monks had “missionary zeal” bent towards the “practice of charitable actions” [16]. The Buddhist who got emancipated from family, caste and kinship bondages became the “symbol of the free individual”. [17] Because of his close idealistic philosophical comradeship with Gandhi and Radhakirshnan, especially on the sharing of the ideals of ancient spiritualism and the method of this spiritualism in removing India’s ills like untouchability, he was criticized by Ambedkar who in his What Congress and Gandhi have Done to the Untouchables called Wadia as one of the “friends of Mr. Gandhi (who) are carrying on in order to beguile the Untouchables” [18]. Despite Ambedkar’s objections to the methods of Gandhi and Wadia in dealing with India’s evils and despite the fact that E.J. Sanjanna who between 29th October 1944 and 15th April 1945 in the Gujarati Weekly Rast-Rahabar critiqued the views of Wadia, the latter remained an icon for educationists bent on social reform.

        Thus when Srinivas called him a social reformer this was no exaggeration. Sociology that became ethical thus went necessarily to social reform. And just as caste and its hierarchies repelled him, so too did poverty. Besides understanding the sociology of poverty, Wadia also was interested in understanding the culture of poverty, thus studying the psychological mechanism why individuals and social groups accept poverty, as if it is something natural and not social and historical. He went thus beyond the rationalistic explanations of poverty into the study of Hindu culture and how the ideology of “karma” was internalized as some sort of fatalistic doctrine where resistance to social and economic evils was suppressed. For him, orthodoxy suppresses “the will to help the suffering humanity at large” [19]. He thus saw the necessary movement from orthodox Hinduism to neo-Hinduism, the Hinduism of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and to what he called his “dynamic pupil” Vivekananda [20]. For Wadia Indian philosophy was probably one of the proudest treasures that India ever had. As he says in the preface of History of Philosophy, Eastern and Western along with S. Radhakrishnan, D.M. Dutta and Humayun Kabir “Indian Philosophy is one of the proudest possessions of human civilization”. [21]

Science and Religion

For Wadia philosophy does not end in “merely in talk” as he said in his essay ‘Pragmatic Idealism’. [22] India had to change, had to give up its economic and spiritual poverty. A dynamic India would be born when science and reformed religion met, a reformation that he thought to be absolutely necessary. Consequently the religion of caste (as in India) and the religion of race (as in the western world) had to change to give way to a new world of “the Fatherland of God and the brotherhood of men” [23]. But just as he abhorred orthodox religions, he likewise abhorred the orthodox communism of the Soviet Union where “Lenin sought to laugh religion in cartoons against priests and not hesitate to crush religion out of existence” [24]. What Wadia yearned for was the utopia of hope, faith, work and repentance. Instead of communism’s atheistic utopia, Wadia pointed out to the figure of Albert Schweitzer who from music and philosophy turned to medicine and surgery and left the luxurious world of France to go to Africa. For Wadia, Schweitzer did this “to atone for the misdeeds of Europeans in Africa”. [25] Despite his criticism of the way religion was being crushed in the Soviet Union he never went into the anti-communist camp which was then quite fashionable. Instead what he wanted to do was a great humanist was to learn from all world systems. Thus “communism may deny religion in its official policy but in so far as it includes the dignity of labor and the equality of man, it too breathes the spirit of religion”. [26]

         Wadia was truly the philosophical child of his times. His thoughts, writings and teaching reflected the spirit of not only the freedom movement against British colonialism, but also the dignity of the human being. Yet it is the ideology of conservative liberalism which guided his thinking. Thus feminism had created effects, as he noted in 1923, “which are the crying evils of Europe”. For him family life was of great importance, but not in the traditional sense of the patriarchal family, but where education along with the entire modernist genre of liberty and individuality of the person are taken as the core of educational ideology. Old ideals especially the ideals of religious dogmatism and patriarchal ideas need to be overcome. However as the conservative liberal that he was, he did not plunge into the world of revolutionary activity. It was restraint and what the Persians once called Payman or the “correct measure” that guided him. This in the Ethics of Feminism he quotes Islamic thought where Paradise is depicted at the feet of women, the mother to be precise. He begins the book with three quotes, the first from Goethe which states that “marriage is the beginning and acme of all culture”. [27] He castigated feudal thought which demonized women. For him, the theology of Medieval Europe and the Christian Church had necessarily to be overcome. Nothing could be more alien for Wadia than the presentation of Saint Paul by Clement of Alexandria who said that “it is sin not only to touch, but to look (at women), and he who is rightly trained must especially avoid them” [28] or Tertullian who in his De Culta Feminarum told women “and do not yet know that you are (each) an Eve...you are the devil’s gateway, you are the unsealer of the forbidden tree......the first deserter of the divine law...” [29]. Patriarchal law, for Wadia, was where men extracted absolute obedience from women thus totally subjugating them.” Likewise in his ‘Pragmatic Idealism’ he wondered why modern Europe could yet be in thrall of the biblical myth of creation, the original sin and the Fall. As he said “the story of the Fall is only a myth and no just god could be expected to visit the sins of the heads of the innocent children millennia after millennia”. [30] He wondered why Western philosophy with the exceptions of Pythagoras and the modern theologians did not take Indian philosophy seriously. [31] The doctrine of Karma for Wadia did not signify fatalism as usually interpreted by the westerners. Instead there was a “forward look” to this doctrine, where karma did not imply merely “effect” but also “cause” [32]. But he did say that it was the petrified system of caste which brought in the idea of fatalism into Indian thinking. [33]

Legacy 

Without doubts the pioneering work that Wadia did both at the University of Mysore and at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences led to the creation of great scientific work done even today in these two institutes. He was an educationist and believed that the intellectual and academic profession was a mission, a type of metaphysical cum social calling to do good public work. It was he who introduced the teaching of sociology to undergraduate students at Mysore. His undergraduate syllabi in sociology lasted almost for twenty-five years till the late 1950’s. It was because of his tireless efforts that a full-fledged Department of Sociology along with post-graduate teaching and research came into being in Mysore.

        As a teacher he reflected on the need for the ideal language for education in India. The ideal language was twofold—the language of communication thus dealing with language per se and the language of philosophy and morality. He was after all, as he called himself a “pragmatic idealist”. He said throughout his works that there can be nothing higher in life than morality.

       In 1954 he penned his TheFuture of English Language in India where said that “behind the many and great achievement of the British in India, lies their greatest achievement: the introduction of English in India” [34]. English had to be the medium of education in India, but not at the cost at forgetting the Indian languages. Wadia had without doubts an “emotional attachment” for the English language. [35] But the English language that had to be torn away from the oppressive colonial context and completely and absolutely democratized. For Wadia one cannot forget India’s philosophical roots. Indian sociology needed Indian roots. It could not be formed on the imagination of Western sociology.

     Further, social sciences in particular and academics in general needed solid Indian metaphysical roots. For him, the question of good and evil were not abstract theological questions, but real social ones that the social sciences had to ponder on. He said that in understanding the question of evil and the quest for the good, he found Indian philosophy to be more relevant than Western philosophy. While he leaves his footprints in Indian academia, his History and Philosophy of Social Work in India, especially his chapter on ethical and spiritual values in social work, has become an integral part of the new philosophy of corporate social responsibility. For Wadia, the academia was not about teaching and learning in the abstract. It had to be connected not only to the real world, but to the concerns of society at large, especially to the people living at the lowest rung of the social and economic ladder. Real academics meant “true religion” and “true religion” as he said always meant “service to man”.

     This is how Wadia taught and practiced his philosophy throughout his life. It was always a form of service to humanity, a service that had to be philosophical. “Philosophy as a human pursuit”, as he said, “ought to be no barren speculation but an illuminating vision of truth which inevitably prompts self-culture and self-service”. For him as was for Socrates “an unexamined life was worth nothing” [36]. And as was for Terrence which Karl Marx loved quoting, “nothing human is alien to me”. To sum up his life and works, one can only recall a couplet from a poem of the great bard from Bengal which he quoted in his essay ‘Pragmatic Idealism’ which said:

If nobody listens to thy call,
Then march thou, all alone. [37]

Maybe this is a mistake what this great liberal did. One can never march alone, though now serious academics in the age of post-liberal genocide are locked in the iron cage of loneliness helplessly looking onto the carnage created by the fascists.

     And, as we know, when calls for genocide are made not merely by lumpen fascist politicians, but by academics holding high office, it is pertinent to recall Ambedkar’s critique of Wadia which claimed that he (Wadia) was trapped in both liberalism and the romanticism of Gandhi and thus could not seriously make a break with the old feudal past of India.

     One recalls thus Ambedkar: one cannot do social reform by remaining a liberal; one cannot transform India with Indian metaphysics.