Selling the Past

King's College is just across the road from my workplace at The Strand. Everyday I take the bus from in front of the King's College to go to the Waterloo British Rail station on my way home. Everyday I see the pictures of well known people associated with the King's College on the glass wall of the institution's Strand Campus.

Never did it strike the chord so strongly till the time when I entered the premises of the King's College to get myself enrolled for my latest academic endeavour. I felt a strong bond with John Keats, who abandoned his career in medicine to become a poet, Desmond Tutu or may be Martin Bashir. They were all alumni of the King's College. It is this special link with the past which probably makes us proud today and provides inspiration for the future.

I have seen such exhibition of the past glory in almost all the famous British academic institutions. Pictures of great Indians like Amartya Sen, Meghnad Desai, I G patel, K R Narayanan adorn the walls of the London School of Economics. Similar is the case with the School of Oriental and African Studies and the Oxford University, which has many prime ministers and presidents as its notable alumni. However, I haven't seen anything like this in the Indian educational institutions that I went to.

At the St. Xavier's College in Kolkata there were portraits of Jagadish Chandra Bose and Ramananda Chattopadhyay but probably the Jesuit institution produced more luminaries, who could be considered well known in their respective fields. That the West Bengal Industry Minister Partha Chattopadhyay is a Vidyalaya Praktani became known to me only after reading a report of his felicitation in a Bengali newspaper, although I have interacted with him several times during my reasonably long stint in journalism. Like the St. Xavier's College,Calcutta, Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya, Narendrapur, also produced many personalities, who later made significant contribution to either their fields of work or to the society at large.

From our childhood days we were taught to be humble and not to boast about ourselves. I still remember my grandfather telling me "baro jadi hote chao, choto hao tabe" meaning if you want to be seen as well known and hence respected you should be humble and not boast about yourselves. This principle, however, doesn't find many takers in the age of Neo-liberalism, when individualism rules the roost. One might not boast about oneself but should not be self evasive either.

What else could be more self deluding than being indifferent to the rich past and being ignorant about the good work of the predecessors. As a student of the Calcutta University's Economics Department at the Katakal Campus, I have never seen portraits of or commemorative plaque about people like Bhabatosh Dutta, Amlan Dutta, Santosh Bhattacharya, Panchanan Chakraborty and many others, who either as economists or as teachers were well respected during their times. Neither was there any knowledge or interest about these personalities and their works among the students nor any effort to make them (students) conscious about such things.

Engaging with the past bestows a sense of responsibility and pride for the incumbent generation, which is essential for success. Moreover, when the market has become the ultimate platform to assess success, probably marketing the past may ensure a better price for the future.

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