Those seeking religious or spiritual instruction may need a guru, who teaches and even orders them toward what he considers the correct path. The shishya is asked to follow the guru implicitly and even blindly. However, those who wish to become scholars would be ill-advised to look for a guru. Critical enquiry and original research require one to have a certain independence of mind, to adopt or discard theories and methods according to one’s own intellectual interests, not at the bidding of someone else, even if he be more powerful or (especially) more famous.
Tragically, this important difference between the spiritual search and the scholarly quest is largely lost sight of in India. The academic culture of our country is irredeemably feudal, with those who are older and of higher status almost feeling obliged to act as gurus, demanding obedience and getting reverence in return. This intellectual feudalism exists among the sciences and the humanities, and within the latter, amongst all ideological shades. Marxism is in theory opposed to social hierarchies, but in practice Marxist professors in Calcutta have been no less hierarchical towards their junior colleagues than professors of a conservative Hindu orientation in Varanasi.
While young scholars must not be in search...
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