Noted author and former professor Lal Behadur Verma who visited the Maharaja’s College in Kochi urged the students to try to understand what much-lauded social reformers have taught. He criticised the tendency to merely laud social reformers without knowing the essence of their teaching.
Verma, who taught history at the University of Allahabad for 40 years and has more than 30 books to his to his credit, observed that philosophers have said many things about the world but the problem lies in the fact that despite of knowing whatever Mahatma Gandhi, Sree Narayana Guru, Sankaracharya or Karl Marx said, our society has not changed.
The author noted that Kerala has not yet been liberated when it comes to decision making. While raising some pertinent questions, he asked the students whether they were really liberated and whether they were really learning.
Verma sounded disappointed with the protests against the Sabarimala verdict. "I was very hopeful when the Supreme Court had pronounced the judgement on Sabarimala as it was really progressive," he noted.
On education system
Flaying the education system of the country, he cited short-sighted teachers who prepared syllabus by aping the pattern of prestigious western universities and demanded the students to learn it. He advised the students that they should be able to demand an academic culture that suits their needs.
Prof.Verma is of the opinion that autonomy for educational institutions cannot bear fruits until it reaches the individuals. He warned that the autonomy should not stop with the colleges but each department of the college should be autonomous.
Indian institutions never provides these kinds of freedom and work under strict restrictions and control which deny their students a free interaction with the real world and natural scope of discussions, he rued.
The whole idea of holding a class inside the four walls of a room is an out-dated concept for the former teacher. Teaching the same thing to forty- or fifty-odd people coming from diverse backgrounds and possessing different levels of mind according to the stroke of the bell looked strange, he noted.
The real class to him was where everybody is free to answer and everybody is equally free to raise questions and queries. The real seminars from his perspective are not events for which people register their names but where everybody asked only the questions they wanted to put forth.
Lauds college
Verma lauded Maharaja’s College for facilitating such open discussions between teachers and students inside the college premises and strongly believed it was much better than typical classroom discussions.
Such freedom, Prof.Verma obverses, has remained in Maharaja’s college and urged the students to cherish it and be proud of their institute. He was impressed to see teachers and students of the college sitting like friends and discussing issues and noted that cannot be found anywhere else.
He also praised the students of the college for keeping alive the spirit by conducting numerous cultural activities
Views on exams and class attendance
Verma also pointed out that the system of attendance did not respect the feelings of a student nor his or her right to decide not to attend a particular lecture session. He recounted to the small group of students and teachers who had gathered around him that during his tenure as a faculty of History at the Allahabad varsity he did not adhere to the practice of marking attendance of the students as he believed that it was not the right practice to force a student to attend one’s classes.
He is also against the idea of examination that merely tests the memory of the students.
Purpose of visit
He visited the college as part of his brief trip to Kerala in connection with the preparations for his new book. His proposed book focuses broadly on Kerala with special focus on the Anglo-Indian Community living in the South Indian state. He observed that unlike the Anglo-Indian community in other parts of India, those in Kerala are much integrated to the socio-economic and political spheres of the land.
After a long discussion he also joined the students in having a cup of tea at the college canteen.