Professor Anand Kumar: Democratic Imagination

Our generation, sixty-five years on, has lived many lives within a single lifetime. What remains to be cherished, and what deserves to be erased? These questions continue to haunt us. Particularly for those who entered their teenage years with idealism and dreams—whether in academia or in public life—the experience was sobering. They felt the brunt of a system where falsehoods, fabricated notions of merit, and the machinery of propaganda consistently served the interests of the ruthlessly competitive, often without true institutional merit. It was their language, aligned with the rhetoric of power, that expanded the processes of exclusion, leaving the idealists to reckon with disillusionment. Professor Anand Kumar is among those rare, well-trained, and finely socialized intellectuals who endured these tribulations with integrity and distinction. His resilience drew strength from a grounding in cultural tradition, complemented by the maturity acquired through modern education across diverse settings. In 1979, he joined Banaras Hindu University after formative years at JNU and in the United States, securing a permanent position. Very soon, through the clarity of his expression and the depth of his interventions, he established himself as an exemplary teacher and a promising scholar. With wide exposure, intellectual maturity, and sharp acumen, he stood apart—without rival, commanding both respect and admiration.

Yet, the system—powerful in its own ways—has always operated through parameters of its own making. Few things are as corrosive as a university when its institutional hegemony is challenged. In the 1960s, the doctrine of “publish or perish” emerged, and the inevitable question arose: where are his publications? His record—books and numerous papers—stood as evidence, though often treated as a painful elaboration of the obvious, where each sentence of Anand Kumar’s could unfold into volumes. Still, it was met with dismissive whispers. Like Camus’ Outsider, who was there to defend him?

In the parlance of Banaras, the charge was blunt: “Oh, he is a Neta, not an academician.” In more refined international circles, when established names faltered, the verdict was gentler but no less diminishing: “Well, he is a public intellectual, not a classical scholar.”

Then came the 1980s, when the stakes of promotion and selection grew sharper. The question shifted to: where are his four first-class degrees? The refrain echoed once more: “He is good, but his academic record is not good enough.” Again, those moulded by the system—fortified by calculated chains of power—prevailed, and the process of exclusion marched on.

What emerged was either a “mistaken modernity” or perhaps an “Indian modernity,” in which modern institutions hollowed out the very idea of education and the pursuit of knowledge—whether in public universities or the expanding private sector. I, too, have felt the rumblings of such prejudice from those who thrived on ridiculing others. The refrain about me was: “Well, he teaches theory through poetry. He is too versified for the girls—where is his sociology?” Judgments like these, passed without ever entering a classroom, nonetheless found their way into the corridors of selection committees, where reputations were often determined more by calculations than by substance. To such an extent that, in recent years—though still unverified—it has even come to be regarded as a foregone conclusion, already inscribed upon a wishful list

The irony is that those who once triumphed through jugaad methodologies are now attempting to manipulate social media and symbolic capital with their polished exhibits. Yet, they stand exposed. In an unexpected twist, social media and artificial intelligence have become unlikely guardians of creativity and conscience—domains that cannot be stolen or replicated. This, perhaps, is a form of natural justice. Those who flourished outside the realm of integrity, creativity, and genuine knowledge now fade into irrelevance, leaving us with a deeper question: what, in the end, is the true purpose of a university?

The past decade has unveiled the veneer of our constructed hierarchies and entrenched assumptions. Those previously ensconced within the cloistered realms of ‘merit’ have been laid bare. It has become evident that mobility is not synonymous with merit, nor is mere exhibitionism in concert with power sufficient for its perpetuation. True sustenance arises when creativity, art, and literature engage meaningfully with the social sciences and are translated into public praxis. Public sociology, once dismissed as trivial, has now transcended the confines of drawing-room scholarship and the sterile perusal of books and papers, asserting its relevance through active engagement with societal interactions.

Celebrating Professor Anand Kumar’s seventy-fifth birthday within an institution that has profoundly shaped the social sciences—and sociology in particular—is more than a recognition of individual achievement; it is a celebration of human agency itself. His critical sociological imagination challenged the limits of empiricism and functionalist orthodoxy, opening a sustained dialogue between signifier and signified. Through the lens of democratic imagination, this dialogue extends toward the possibility of holism, embracing complexity rather than reducing it. By constructing ‘a seven-pillar intellectual edifice’, he illuminated the previously overlooked dimensions of social life, enabling scholars to engage with human interaction in ways that are both rigorous and deeply sensitive. Public sociology, he reminds us, is impossible without classical grounding, just as literary creativity requires mastery of method and understanding. Today, we find ourselves at a juncture where genuine scholarship and creative insight can emerge together, and it is to be hoped that the convergence of knowledge, imagination, and human agency will chart a renewed direction for the discipline. In this, the legacy of thinkers like Professor Anand Kumar endures—living not only in their work but in the possibilities they open for those who follow.

Contemporary sociology in 2025 stands at a transformative threshold, where technological innovation, interdisciplinary insight, and ethical engagement converge to redefine the discipline. The integration of quantum computing and artificial intelligence allows scholars to model social systems with unprecedented subtlety, while computational methods such as agent-based modelling and network analysis deepen our understanding of complex interactions and institutional dynamics. Yet, these technical advances find their fullest meaning only when joined with the humanistic core of sociology: narrative, biography, and historical consciousness. Public sociology, in this vision, ensures that the character, conduct, and integrity of scholars illuminate social action rather than remain obscured.

Qualitative inquiry, reimagined in dialogue with AI, preserves depth, nuance, and context, while a critical examination of social structures reveals how reciprocal interactions give rise to enduring institutions. In this integrated horizon, sociology becomes inseparable from moral and material consciousness, from reflection and performance, from knowledge and imagination. It is a discipline not merely of interpretation, but of participation—equipped to engage with the world, transform understanding into action, and sustain the promise of human agency in shaping society. The exploration of social action remains the core understanding of sociology.

Prof. Ashok Kaul, Retired Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Banaras Hindu University