Foreword Note
Experimenting with ideas
Dr. S Arul Selvan
Faculty Adviser
Associate Professor
Department of EMMC
Pondicherry University
Public Universities in India, as centres of critique, inquiry, and
discussion, are losing their critical space in the contemporary
society, alarms EPW in its recent editorial. Dissent and resistance
are the essential moral legal obligation of higher education centres
like Universities. University is a contesting site for ideas, where
curious minds explore, articulate, and debate a spectrum of
ideas, which have been easily labelled otherwise, by the fanatics
recently.
The Confucian ideal of ‘I hear and I forget. I see and I remember.
I do and I understand’, is the guiding principle for a course on
Media Specialisation, being offered by the Pondicherry University,
where the students are trained to produce experimental creations,
not bothering to cross the conventional borders being levied by
the traditional intellectuals and the academia.
Indeed, the Department of Electronic Media and Mass
Communication (DEMMC), of the Pondicherry University,
facilitates its learners a comfortable space during their course
work, where freedom to question everything has been made a
way of life. DEMMC trains its students to challenge bigoted
views and attitudes, in order to produce diverse and alternate
positions which normally are not feasible through a corporate
media controlled social order.
Nidhin Nath has independently produced a magazine on t
Freedom of Expression. Both of them grew amidst a series of
protests, the Pondicherry University has been witnessing for the
past few months, starting with fighting the then Vice-Chancellor
who occupied the position with fake claims of her credentials,
raising voice against the banning of the students magazine,
seeking justice for a Dalit student who was denied admission to
PhD program, raising voice against a politician who spoke against
south Indians, etc. Hence, the contents of the magazine obviously
reflect the essential mood and ambience of the campus.
Like all experimental productions, I hope, this creation would
give an insightful reading to the readers. I congratulate Nidhin
Nath for making more meaningful creations, by choice of their
content, language, design and presentation.
Theyyam 5