Not Professors, But Baboons (Updated)

When I speak of the evil “professors” of Delhi University, it is important to keep in mind the fact that they draw their salaries from The State. They are therefore a special class of “civil servants” to whom The State has affixed the title “professor,” just as to someone else The State may affix the title “commissioner.”

These professors of Delhi U are therefore baboos (or “baboons” as I prefer to call them) and they have a special duty towards their employer, viz., the duty of indoctrinating the student community with the “ideals” of their The State.

Ludwig von Mises writes about the “civil servant professors” of the Historical School in Germany, the “intellectual bodyguards of the House of Hohenzollern.” These German baboons inflicted great harm upon Germany by indoctrinating their people with the ideals of “statolatry”: the worship of The State. It was therefore natural for them to later worship their Führer.

In precisely the same way, these “civil servant professors” of Delhi University, in particular, of the Delhi School of Economics, have indoctrinated statolatry in the minds of their students. They are the “intellectual bodyguards of the House of Nehru.” Subjects such as “Indian Economics” have no purpose other than Nehru-worship. The objective of these baboons has never been the transmission of knowledge, for they have always been mere propagandists, never real knowledge workers. You will never find their articles in the scholarly journals. They do not produce any new knowledge themselves; they merely “teach.”

Real universities and real professors are never such. Real universities are where knowledge is cultivated, sheltered from any interference on the part of the rulers. Real professors do not teach; their primary purpose is the production of new knowledge. Adam Smith was a real professor. Ludwig von Mises was a privatdozent in a real university. Both produced a whole lot of real knowledge.

Judging from the miserable state of affairs in India’s higher education system, entirely monopolized by the Total Chacha State and its baboons, I do believe that there is no option before the Indian nation than to completely shut down the State-owned university system, and lay open the field to private enterprise, including foreign investors. If there are any genuine knowledge workers within the State system today, they will be the ones who will flourish in the new scenario. Students, of course, will gain the most. Real knowledge will be produced and transmitted. Truth will triumph.

UPDATE: Chandra has a post informing us of a paper by Professor Suresh Tendulkar, till recently Director of the Delhi School of Economics, in a volume entitled - and this is what should NOT surprise us - Essays in Honour of Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

The paper, to Tendulkar's credit, discounts the great "value" of EQUALITY that socialists like him have always placed above the value of FREEDOM. But as a Hayek quote says on Chandra's blog:

"There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal."

There is also the Dylan song:

A self-ordained professor's tongue,
Too serious to fool,
Spouted out that Liberty,
Was just Equality in school.

Anyway, Chandra read about this paper by Professor Tendulkar from a review of this book in honour of Chhota Ustad montek, in ET, written by their Senior Editor. Do read it and see the "economists" cited to buttress her case. Of course, Adam Smith is mentioned right at the beginning!

I hope more and more of you are switching to Mint.