ABSTRACT
As is evident from its title, this chapter is written from the point of view of the issue of intellectual svaraj, a quest and a question that we inherited from the first generation of intellectuals and thinkers of post-independence India. Situating my own initiation into the university and my work within the larger question of the culture of the university, through a briefly worked-out example, I argue that an emphasis on ideology, rather than on theoretical approaches and what is at stake in their methods of analysis and classification, has led to the dominance of area-based rather than issue-based syllabi. This has been detrimental to the growth of fundamental work and resulted in the collapse of serious disciplinary engagement with fundamental technical issues of approach and method. What takes their place in the university is ideological orientation and pragmatism.
