Sarvepalli Gopal (born April 23, 1923, Madras, India - died April 20, 2002, Chennai) was fiercely independent and patriotic. Indian academics working in prestigious universities abroad rarely leave their hallowed precincts to teach in Indian institutions with limited resources and facilities. Gopal was an exception to this general rule. From Oxford, where he was teaching South Asian History, he returned to India to take up a professorship in Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1970 when the university had just come into being. He exercised a decisive influence in the university, without ever being involved in administration. In fact, his name was in the panel for vice-chancellorsip three times but in his characteristic manner he declined to accept this nomination. He, however, took an active interest in academic matters, particularly in evolving the academic perspective of the Centre for Historical Studies. He was the guiding spirit, along with Romila Thapar and Bipan Chandra, in creating a new perspective in teaching and research in the Centre. Although he enjoyed the friendship of a large fraternity of foreign scholars, including historians like Christopher Hill and Eric Hobsbawm, he was quite critical of the hegemony of the intellectual and academic discourse of the advanced countries. He upheld the independence of the Third World intelligentsia. If the Centre for Historical Studies was able to develop an academic self-confidence during the early phase, the personality of Gopal was a major factor. - Prof. K. N. Panikkar
Posted on: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 18:30:10 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015