The promise and the lie of humanities

The rising regime of technocracy has generated a slew of self-appraisal on the role of Humanities in the contemporary world, and especially in the institutional location of University. The location of the university is not placed absolutely within the premises of learning but has from the colonial times imbricated itself with the question of social and economic mobility. The university in the postcolonial India continues to be a site of allocation of resources and as such is overdetermined by questions other than the purely academic. This paper delineates the twin concerns for Humanities in India and argues for Humanities which will creatively amalgamate the two concerns that have been worrying it in India - that of the rise of technocracy, and that of a non-complementarity between learner aspirations and institutional requirements. Towards this, the paper advocates on stressing the mutuality of the experience of modernity, thus stressing simultaneity over historicity.