Welcome to the Department of English, Sardar Patel University! Stephen Dedaulus’ philosophic assertion in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man comes to one’s mind as one surveys what has been: “This race and this country and this life produced me….” (p.202) Absolutely true! Our existence as a University Department is linked irrevocably with our people, our society, our state and our country. Institutions survive and prosper due to their unflinching support, which is what makes them what they are and what they would be in future. This Department has reached where it has due to their constant support. We, in this Department, promise that we shall do all we can to retain that absolute trust.
This Department is fortunate to have been a privileged creation of destiny. We were established three years after our university was duly constituted by the Government of the then Bombay Province, and were assigned the task of catering to our learners’ needs vis-à-vis advanced learning and research in English Studies. We do take legitimate pride in the fact that we are of one of the academic units of a university named after the illustrious Iron Man of India, Shri Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. We are indeed aware of the great responsibility that this association entails.
Our visionary founders made a rich amalgam of the best of what was available elsewhere as well as what was and would be needed locally in terms of courses in higher education in Sardar Patel University. They succeeded in ensuring that this university combines within itself the best of the traditions of learning in ancient India like Nalanda and Taksashila on the one hand, and Oxford and Cambridge in England on the other. The aim was to help produce graduates who would not only be self-sufficient and self-reliant but also employable, if not self-employed. Shri Sardar Patel believed that we needed education of the kind that would prepare future citizens of independent India, self-motivated and self-reliant rather than educated youth, lingering after employment. His words of wisdom reflected the entrepreneurial spirit of the people of a state which was on the threshold of creation. It struck an instant chord with the people not only in Charotar but the rest of the regions in what is now called Gujarat. Our founders used this magic talisman to shape this university and it has served the university well all through the years of its existence thus far. We, who are a part of the university, are committed to the realisation of that glorious vision. Our university has come to acquire the halo of an important institution of higher learning, whose graduates are doing well for themselves not only in Gujarat but also elsewhere in India and abroad, both in the professional and service sectors.
Our current Vice Chancellor, Professor (Dr) Harish Padh, who assumed office on 1 July 2010 at a crucial point in time in our history as a university, is a man of vision who believes in leading from the front. His predecessor, Professor B G Patel, had initiated the process of implementing the Choice Based Credit System and the UGC-mandated changes in the admission process for MPhil and PhD. He, on his part, has helped remove all the bottlenecks and has taken care to oversee the meticulous implementation of these structural changes. With the wealth of experience he has brought with him to his high office not only as a teacher, but also as a researcher and an administrator at the national and international levels, continuity, though with necessary modifications, has come to be recognised as the theme of his administration. We have pledged him full support and cooperation in our collective effort to scale newer heights for our university.
What makes this Department unique in many ways is the fact that the founding fathers of our university created us with a view to fulfilling the needs of a rural population and helping arrest the migration of youth to urban pockets for higher education. Our karmayogis and great visionaries like the Iron Man of India, Shri Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel; Shri Bhailalbhai Dyabhai Patel (Bhaikaka); Shri Bhikhabhai Kuberbhai Patel; Dr HM Patel; our successive Vice Chancellors etc not only nurtured the university but also helped establish healthy traditions, thus helping shape the university. Departments of this university have been the beneficiaries of this nurture and care. Our far-sighted academic and administrative leadership helped give us a clear sense of direction over the years. How this manifested into reality needs to be recounted.
Each one of us in the Department belongs to the Department family, and has always strived to practice democratic values. Each one of us has a say in what we do, right from deciding on policies, syllabi, down to the smallest decisions. We take care to ensure that our policies conform to the overall policies of the university. We take genuine pride in the fact that we have been completely transparent in our functioning and in taking full responsibility for whatever we have been able to do all these years and honest in accepting areas in which our effort has yet to bear fruit. The Department today offers MA (Full-time), MPhil (Full-time) and PhD degree (Full-time and Part-time) programmes in broad areas of specialisations within English Studies.
We use the term ‘English Studies’ instead of ‘English Language and Literature’ because it not only subsumes both but also includes a wide array of sub-disciplines. The recognition of English as an international language has changed the complexity of English language and literature. English is no longer the language of the English but of the users of English the world over, and most of these are individuals who may not necessarily be English by birth. There is change all around. ‘Commonwealth Literature’ stands renamed today as ‘New Literatures’. The British colonies of yesteryears have become independent and are keen today on promoting their own literatures written in English. This has led to the popularity of postcolonial literatures. All these developments have opened newer areas for researchers to investigate and negotiate. The impact of researches carried the world over is evident even in the area of English language studies wherein all areas within core and applied linguistics: phonetics, phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics, pragmatics, stylistics etc on the one hand, and discourse analysis, text linguistics, the history of the language, language teaching etc in English on the other have come under a single umbrella. English studies is an umbrella term that embraces within itself even other areas like western literary theory, western literary criticism, creative writing, gender studies, ethnic studies etc, and all these in English, and the list gets longer with the addition of newer areas at regular intervals.
We are proud of being one of the major departments of our university, and what adds to our feeling of legitimate pride is the fact that our university treats us as one of its special Departments. We are grateful to God that such a perception is also shared by our peers, both within the university and outside. This is the reason for our perseverance in pursuit of excellence. We have always believed in taking challenges head on, and this provides us with the motivation to keep improving all the time.
We derive a lot of satisfaction from the fact that we have had the privilege of organising and hosting major academic events like the XXXII All India Teachers’ Conference in 1981 to begin with; 3 UGC-Sponsored Summer Institutes in English Language Teaching in 1985-1987 including an Advanced Summer Institute; 5 UGC-sponsored Refresher Courses in English: one in 1993 and the rest between 2000 and 2002; 19 National and State Level Seminars; 3 State level symposia; and 6 State and National Level Workshops between December 1981 and March 2011.
In addition to all these, we have been able to produce three edited course-books, one in the late 1960s, and two in 1990s through the deliberations in various workshops, and these continue to be prescribed on various courses across universities in the entire western region of our country. The Department has also published two monographs under Phase-I of the UGC SAP-DRS. The Department has completed successfully more than four minor and major research projects funded by the UGC. We are grateful to the UGC for having recognised the achievements of the Department by awarding us two successive phases of the Department of Research Support (DRS) award under the Special Assistance Programme (SAP): Phase-I between 1 April 2004 and 31 March 2009, and the ongoing Phase-II from 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2014.
Our teachers and researchers have not remained complacent in the meanwhile. They have been presenting learned papers at state, national and international seminars, symposia etc. We have a good track record in research publications with our teachers and researchers publishing research papers in prestigious journals and books. Our teachers have guided numerous researchers successfully, leading to the award of MPhil and PhD degrees. Some of our important PhD holders include Dr (Ms) Armaity Davar, Dr A Abraham, Dr Yogesh Hathi, Dr A S Khan, Dr Ramakant Joshi, Dr (Mrs) Manjuben K Patel, Dr Salim Varghese, Dr A J Jose etc. All this has been our modest contribution in the 53 years of our existence as a University Department.
We feel grateful to God that we have been rewarded amply. Some of our alumni today adorn high offices in the state administrative set-up; the print and electronic media; the Indian army; but a majority of them are teachers in institutions of higher learning, in colleges affiliated to this university or its sister universities in Gujarat and a few in Maharashtra. Some of them occupy teaching positions at various levels in Departments of English in universities across Gujarat: 7 in Charotar University of Science and Technology, Changa; 5 in Sardar Patel University, Vallabh Vidyanagar; 3 in Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, Surat; 3 in Anand Agriculture University, Anand; 1 in Bhavnagar University, Bhavnagar; 1 in Dharmendrasinh Desai University, Nadiad; 1 in Krantiguru Shyamji Krishna Verma Kachchh University, Bhuj-Kachch; 1 in Navsari Agriculture University, Navsari; and 1 in Sardar Krushinagar Agriculture University, Palanpur. Two of our alumni are Project Fellows under UGC SAP-DRS in the Departments of English in two different universities in Gujarat: 1 in Sardar Patel University, Vallabh Vidyanagar; and 1 in the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara. This is but only a sample. For more details, please click ‘Alumni’ section on these webpages. The Department is grateful to all of them for having brought us a good name. Unfortunately, there are many more whose current positions and institutional affiliations are not known at the moment. Also, we do not have a complete list of our numerous alumni working as teachers of English at the school level. We appeal to our alumni to help us update the list.
We have been able to reach where we have due to the purushartha of all our teachers and colleagues who preceded us. Some of our senior colleagues, under whom some others amongst us had the privilege of studying and working, have already superannuated after rendering illustrious services to the Department for years together. We applaud their significant contribution and pray to God to give them health, wealth, happiness and prosperity in the remaining part of their worldly lives. Unfortunately, we lost one such beloved senior, Professor KD Kurtkoti, a few years ago. May God rest his noble soul in eternal peace!
All our senior teacher-colleagues who have since superannuated have set for us such high benchmarks in teaching, learning, and research that we have had to set for ourselves and reach new goals in order to retain our position in the system. The current members on the faculty in the Department are doing their very best to fulfil the expectations of the society, and to face newer challenges successfully. We have been second to none in participating wholeheartedly in adapting and implementing numerous initiatives mandated by the UGC, the Government of Gujarat, and the university like, for example, the introduction of semester system, the choice based credit system (CBCS), grading system in evaluation etc. We draw satisfaction from the fact that we have been able to take up and accomplish all the tasks that either came our way or were given to us, with a fair degree of commitment and dedication. However, we do know that it would be rather naïve to rest on our laurels.
We live in a world where self-appraisals are fast becoming a norm. We have always believed that such appraisals, especially with regard to any contribution that we might have made, or believe to have been able to make to the creation of new knowledge or to any addition to it, is better left to our peers, sister institutions, our students, and the institutions employing our alumni. Self-certification seems to us to be a case of sheer vanity. We rest content in our belief that trying to do good and doing good are in themselves the reward of our karma as propounded by Sri Krishna in The Bhagvadgita, and adopted by the founders of this University and the educational township in creating our logo: “karmany eva ’dhikaraste” (ma phalesu kadacana) (II.47): “To action alone hast thou a right (and never at all to its fruits).” (Trans. S Radhakrishnan, The Bhagvadgita, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1948, p.119)
We thank the UGC, the state government, the university, local population, media, students, fellow teachers elsewhere, and sister institutions both within and outside our university for placing their trust and confidence in us. We feel quite humble indeed! It is this trust and confidence that keeps boosting our spirits and spurs us on. However, we do count on receiving your constructive feedback from time to time and your continued support in our work so that we measure up to your expectations.
We extend to you and all those who share our ethos a warm invitation to join hands with us in working towards a better future not only for ourselves but also for the generations that follow, our learners, who are the raison d’être of our existence.
Vallabh Vidyanagar J H Khan
25 March 2011
