Professor’s Cut: Learning from high-art cinema

One of the aims the National Education Programme-2020 strives for is the (well-known) idea of allying education with notions of citizenship. It purports to enable student skilling across disciplines, while at the same time attempting to nurture the students’ conscience and social sensitivities. When the policy landed, there was wide discourse on its pros and cons and whether it was what one had known before.

Its gestures are lofty, the steps to get there, uncertain. To this writer’s knowledge, of all the discourse that transpired in public conversation, these citizenship upshots were phrased as if they were concrete, measurable targets. One wonders, are conscientiousness and citizenship exactly measurable? Are they ongoing processes? Or, are they both? Indeed, if any form of education – in the widest and most meaningful sense of the term – were to perform its stated undertaking, would it not achieve these ends on its own? Why would one need a new policy then?

In a truly great work of art, say in literary fiction, one finds meaning often at the margins or in least expected passages and parts. Much true education is similar; its insights can be sideways. And this is so, because all education is not just about skills but also feelings, emotions, and understanding one’s profound alignments or discord with the Universe. In an engaging classroom, the student and the teacher and the subject at hand combine to form a complex interaction called learning. In my view, an assured way to initiate and bolster the NEP 2020 obligation towards citizenship can be through well curated cinematic exposure in higher education.

Not just here, but elsewhere, we live in a time where the habit of reading has ironically declined almost precisely at a time when access to reading and the internet has expanded. As a child, I and many of my generation, recall the national broadcaster showcasing the best of the cinemas of India on Sunday afternoons. One got to know Jahnu Baruah, Shaji N. Karun, Bhupen Hazarika, the filmed versions of the stories of Gurdial Singh or Mahasweta Devi, all subtitled (usually in English, Hindi or the state’s language) to speak to them. Even as a school-going student, one felt the intent behind this exposure. One watched Baruah’s Firingoti in awe and wondered at the resilience of a widow teacher rebuilding a school after the India-China war. There was a time the national broadcaster, for some odd reason, showcased stories set in rural schools across India. I vividly recall a university classmate from Bihar sharing what Firingoti meant to them and recapitulating watching the then subversiveness of Bharathiraja’s Vedham Pudhithu, and Mammootty’s masterfulness in Vidheyan, nearly twelve years after having watched them in different corners of India. I now wonder how Ray’s films aren’t mandatory in university curricula.

Given the age we live in, and the mobile phone and the internet being its most favoured forms of communication and mediation, one reckons cinema can be deeply helpful in educational settings, but only if they are read, taught and curated perspicaciously. Indeed, this becomes all the more vital in spheres of non-arts education. So often we have reports on industry sectors saying STEM graduates weren’t skilled enough, failing to communicate clearly or confidently or not knowing how to express themselves. In this sense, foregrounding cinema education as a means to get undergraduates to appreciate and then reflect on what they’ve seen are key means to get them to absorb and identify with the markers of their social spheres. Post that they read around films and learn to express, critique and widen their ken. All the high-art cinemas of India, await their own audiences across the land. May educational institutions become their haven.