I have just read a note on Facebook which talks about the perpetuating Chaudhuri and Ghosh dynasties in Jadavpur University.

The same status has also compared the process of testing in Jadavpur University with that of Delhi University. Hence I write. I have been taught by both Sukanta and Supriya Chaudhuri.

It will be meaningless to recount what I had learnt from them, as it would be to tell you about many other outstanding teachers of JU - then and now. As I grew older I could also feel my differences with these enormous scholars - perhaps because I learnt to think and question both teaching and learning while a student at JU.

I only know Sankha Ghosh through his writings. I deeply value his nuanced literary criticism. Not so much all his poetry. But these are peripheral issues.

The information given about Delhi University admissions in the status is wrong. Misleading and partial, rather.

Stephens does rigorous interviews. And the other colleges also sieve differently. For a brief period we had the CATE entrance test at the undergrad level, which worked remarkably well until it was chopped off.

In MA, we still do tests, though much watered down now, thanks to similar machinations and sabotaging as happening at JU now.

DU English MPhil is a most rigorous programme, and we test students at different levels before admitting them.

This is an outrageous update. I can see that many in JU are a bit defensive of late. I do not think that given the onslaught in our institutions from various vested quarters, we can survive with a guilt complex.

We all are in the business of literature since we know it and value it in its most nuanced forms. They can remove us from our jobs or water down the curriculum. Still art shall remain art and its methods of evaluation shall follow the ways that we teach and discuss and refine.

If we are made jobless, we shall make parallel universities and champion taste, refinement, argument, scepticism, wonder, ennui and a social commitment that is durable and complex.

Literature is about earth and air and about chiseling ideas into forms.

We shall continue to affirm such tortuous grace and daily vulnerability that we are bequeathed with.

Jadavpur is not more elite than others. It has turned less so, owing to a liberal guilt that pays homage to justice at the rear end of every update and article. It must thunder on above all the din, and keep steadfast its esoteric destiny.