JNU STORIES: THE FIRST 50 YEARS
Jawaharlal Nehru University has long occupied a peculiar position in India's higher education landscape. Founded in 1969 by G. Parthasarathi and Moonis Raza, it emerged as something genuinely different: a place where rigorous scholarship collided with radical pedagogy, where intellectual curiosity wasn't merely tolerated but actively encouraged. Its alumni roster reads like a who's who of contemporary Indian thought, peppered with Nobel laureates, Bhagat Award winners, and Infosys-honoured researchers. What makes this institution so contentious? Partly its very DNA. JNU built itself on interdisciplinary thinking, on questioning orthodoxy, on insisting that universities exist to challenge power structures, not rubber-stamp them. The inclusive policies that shaped its student body, the democratic traditions it nurtured, the spaces carved out for genuine intellectual debate, these features now draw the fiercest criticism. This collection gathers voices from across five decades: former students reflecting on transformative years, faculty members recounting pedagogical experiments, administrators documenting institutional growth. Organised into twelve thematic sections, from 'spaces and places' through 'gender and sexuality' to 'the spirit of JNU', the essays construct something richer than hagiography. They're honest, occasionally fractious, deeply personal. The result, lavishly illustrated with over a hundred photographs, reads less like official history and more like living memory. It captures how a single institution can simultaneously represent both India's democratic promise and its deepening anxieties about what universities should actually do.
- Author: Neeladri Bhattacharya
- Publisher: Aleph Book Company
- Genre: Social Sciences
- ISBN: 978-8194874195
- Pages: 544 pages