Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2015 had asked the universities in Japan to either abolish or reorganise the humanities and social sciences (hereafter referred to as ‘liberal arts’ interchangeably) departments. While Abe could not see the decision to an end, he did start a conversation nonetheless — a conversation on the relevance of Humanities and Social Sciences education. In the Indian context, the discussion becomes even fierce, for the institutions of the liberal arts have been reduced to a factory of churning dimwit simpletons, indoctrinated to certain pre-moulded ideological, political, and religious beliefs.
These ideological institutions are led by Marxist and leftist professors and their young striplings who then dip their hands in the advertising industry. The companies often get swayed by their swanky, social justice activism-ridden presentations and give the nod to their supposed ‘creative’ ideas.
However, when those ads go live, the ad agency generates the woke points but the companies being advertised are left to fend off an angry public whose emotions and religious sentiments are often hurt by such ads.
Einstein’s of the Social science programmes
JNU, TISS, IIMC, MUDRA are some of the leading art institutions in the country. The anti-Hindu ideas propagated from these institutions need no documentation. And thus, when the revolutionary little prodigies stuffed with Einstein-Esque ideas of social sciences step into the real world, the Chomsky’s and Freud’s have a hard time competing with their activism.
Collectively, such liberal institutions slow down the process of producing high-quality creative minds and deprive India of bright, furnace-cooked intellectuals. The point of liberal institutes was to broaden the horizon of human minds to seek clear, pristine, and engaging conversations regarding myriad everyday human problems devoid of any partisanship and come up with out-of-the-box, clever ideas to critically help the human race.
The left-leaning eco-chamber of liberal professors
However, the exact opposite seemed to have happened since the idea was laid into stone. While there is a dearth of studies in the Indian context, a 2016 study published in Econ Journal Watch stated that in the disciplines of the social sciences, it was found that there were 11.5 Democrats for every Republican teacher in the 40 premier institutes of the US. Use a similar barometer for the Indian context and one will realise that there is not much of a difference here as well.
It’s the folklore, a running joke one might say that majority of the professors are left-leaning or communists in arts and liberal institutions- scurrying around in the campuses with a weary, worn-out satchel, sandals with socks on, and a copy of the communist manifesto in their hands. Each one of us that has been part of the education system, in any capacity has seen the implicit and explicit behaviour of the professors.
Liberal institutions disjointed from reality
More often than not, the students, learning the ropes under the highly obnoxious professors in the liberal art schools are indoctrinated with their worldview. The end result is that we see ads such as Tanishq’s Ekatvam campaign which appears severely disjointed from reality.
It’s not that Hindus nowadays on the realms of the Internet are hyperactive or take offence to any ad, for fun and giggle – it simply is a schoolboy mistake on part of the woke advertising agencies to not read the room and tug onto a string that is bound to invite severe reaction.
Love Jihad has been a sensitive and delicate issue for the last few years. The Nikita Tomar murder case came out, days after the Tanishq ad campaign, bursting the utopian bubble of the company and yet the advertising agency creating the ‘masterful’ ad would continue to ply its trade.
Read More: Days after Tanishq controversy, another case of Love Jihad and a bloody murder shocks the nation
Negative ad campaigns to garner eyeballs
Similarly, the last few days have seen a plethora of such ads that have graced our screens. Whether you take a morbid take on the subject to sell your goods like Nykaa or outrightly hurt the religious beliefs of Hindus by making preachy ads like Ceat Tyres or endorse events that promote Hindumisia like Unacademy – all the aforementioned companies should take the call to fire their respective ad agencies.
The liberal arts universities have come under attack from governments across the world, as the Return on Investment (RoI) on these institutions is low, and these institutions create the most ruckus to the ruling regime. The governments have slashed the fund for these institutions, and it seems that the only liberal arts institutions to survive in the 21st century are the private ones. If the trend continues of disparaging Hindu beliefs and customs, the government of India should take a leaf out of Abe’s book and implement a similar idea in the country.