Via T.T. Ram Mohan, I had seen this tribute to Paul Samuelson in Rediff by Subramanian Swamy, a political non-entity with an uncanny ability to stay in the news. In his post, TTR had already alerted his readers about one of the sidelights in the article: Swamy's grouse with the Delhi School of Economics; in recounting this part of the story, Swamy names names:
Amartya Sen invited me to join the Delhi School of Economics as a full Professor in early 1968 stating in a hand-written letter that my 'gaddi was being dusted.' I therefore spent three months in the summer of 1968 at the Delhi School of Economics as Visiting Professor, before returning to Harvard with the intention of winding up and joining as Professor of Economics at the Delhi School.
But I did not realise then that the Left triumvirate of Sen, K N Raj and S Chakravarty had in the three months discovered that I was not only not ideologically neutral or soft like Jagdish Bhagwati, but hard anti-Left and wanted to dismantle the Soviet planning system in India besides producing the atom bomb.
So when I arrived in India in late 1969 this triumvirate scuttled my ascending the dusted gaddi. Sen was at his hypocritical best in explaining to me his volte face. [...]
Fortunately there was a professorship open at IIT-Delhi. Dr Manmohan Singh was the chairman of the selection committee. Samuelson with Kuznets, the 1971 Nobel Laureate in economics, wrote the committee strong letters of recommendation. Armed with it, Dr Singh did not wilt under the huge pressure mounted by the triumvirate and I was appointed a Professor of Economics in October 1971. But it did not last long.
The triumvirate then persuaded Indira Gandhi that I was a closet member of the RSS with chauvinist views, and a danger to her. With the KGB favourite Nurul Hasan as education minister, I was easily sacked in December 1972, but re-instated by court in 1991.
A couple of days ago, I saw the same article as an op-ed in The Hindu. It was the same article, alright; except for this episode where Swamy trashes "the Left triumvirate of Sen, K N Raj and S Chakravarty" and "the KGB favourite Nurul Hasan"!
6 Comments:
well he may be political non-entity but what matters is that he was right and you left wing ppl were as usual horribly wrong. Keep on living in ur make belive world.
Indian academia has long been afflicted with the left-virus...marxists have taken many a great institutions hostage to propagate their ideologies, throwing reason and truth to the wind.. good to see swamy tellin the world about his own ordeal..
Yes he won a case against IIT.We may not know the whole story as Raj and Sukmoy are no more.
But to say that marxists prefer fellow marxists to be appointed in institutions where they have much clout may not be an exaggeration.Delhi University, Jamia and JNU- in all the three one can find many leftists/marxists in key positions to make or break careers.
I read the whole piece by S. Swamy. I feel that it was more a tribute to Swamy than one to Samuelson.
Even though the timing and the forum of the article reeks of shameless self promotion, there may be some truth to Swamy's claims, especially since he managed to win a case in an Indian court against IIT-D and the government.
"A couple of days ago, I saw the same article as an op-ed in The Hindu. It was the same article, alright; except for this episode where Swamy trashes "the Left triumvirate of Sen, K N Raj and S Chakravarty" and "the KGB favourite Nurul Hasan"!"
Looks like Swamy can be critical of the Left when writing for Rediff, but is willing to remove the reference to the Left when writing for The Hindu. He seems to follow the Marxist philosophy ( Groucho, not Karl): " These are my principles. If you don't like them, well, I have some more.....
Raj:
Alternatively, when Winston Churchill was told that he would either die of syphilis on the gallows by a rival, Churchill said that it depended on whether he embraced the rivals wife or his principles.
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