Kashf at One

By Sana Shah

I

As I sit to reflect on how Kashf Initiative has fared in its first year, this reflection may take a multidirectional turn. An assessment of the goals, motivations, and vision of a young collective like Kashf Initiative cannot be separated from the challenges and issues in the state of higher education in India, in general, and in research in the social sciences and humanities, in particular, to which it attempts to respond, in whatever molecular capacity that it can. While India may be one node, the functioning of the neoliberal economy, or what Romila Thapar calls ‘insecurities generated by the neo-liberal culture’ (Thapar 2014, 12), implicates the state of the social sciences and humanities globally, with some locales unevenly affected relative to others. Therefore, a thorough churning of our vision is inextricably linked to the precarity that characterizes today’s world, reflected variedly, from the pressures of knowledge-production to the human-made political catastrophes of the day.

Four years ago, one of the recurring issues, albeit with a sense of humour, that circulated among friends completing their Master’s degrees, was the realisation that the research methods component had come to assume an air of neglect. As we completed our degrees, we struggled to prepare our synopses for various entrance examinations and viva for MPhil and PhD degrees in the country, clueless even about the difference between a literature review and a literature summary or about various referencing styles. At that time, we did not realise the gravity of this disquiet. Over the years, we came to believe that we needed dedicated departments or units with a concerted focus to train students in research methods, with a greater emphasis on methodology. The weight of this felt absence has only grown deeper, as we found ourselves staring into gaping holes in areas such as methods, writing, reading, and referencing. Some of us felt the impact more than others, depending on our varied social locations with differential experiences of socio-economic deprivation, intergenerational inequalities and limited educational exposure and facilities owing to our region of belonging and early education. Indeed, some members were more privileged than others, and all of us more privileged than most students were in our part of the world. From there, it took nearly three years for that early intuition to concretise into a solid plan. What ultimately convinced us was the striking contrast we observed when we moved to universities such as Oxford and Cambridge, where entire departments or university programmes exist solely to teach methods, writing, and research skills. PhD students there did not have to do the double work of pursuing their own research topics while also acquiring the basic research skills, unlike us.[i] In using these infrastructures as reference points, I neither aim to glorify them nor to frame an unfair comparison, but to highlight the value of such spaces, which are a definite possibility in our part of the world as well. 

While several central universities in India have made an attempt to include methods courses in their curriculum, lack of resources owing to the damaging scale of defunding of social science education have meant that such courses have not yielded results towards providing strong methodological training. However, insofar as education must be a public good, that is, non-rivalrous and equally accessible to all, private universities, which are now creatively addressing some of these pedagogical insufficiencies, cannot be the avenue for comprehensive social science education, as it tampers with the idea of education as a public good and quality education as a matter of right.  We infer, then, that in such a situation, non-university spaces of learning are not add-ons; they are one of the axes of students' intellectual life. It is from this realisation that Kashf was conceived. A platform that acknowledges the reality that many universities in India remain underserved, underfunded, and structurally constrained, leaving students demotivated in a system already strained by crises in education, research, and employment. While Kashf’s grounding remains firmly within South Asian realities, needs, and traditions, our practices are entrenched in the possibility of meaningful cosmopolitan forms, rather than in the insular trend that has been growing within Indian academia (Amir Ali 2022). As we say this, we are also aware of the unintended pitfalls of such an approach, something which I will address subsequently in this essay. 

Kashf emerged then not as a finished design, but as something worked into being through numerous conversations, hesitation, and thoughtful labour. After a few meetings with friends and colleagues and some brainstorming calls, some of us who had been growing together through our shared academic journeys founded the Kashf Initiative. I am fully aware, and I reiterate: Kashf was never established as a substitute for public education, and certainly not as a replacement for the extraordinary pedagogy we were fortunate to learn in public institutions such as JNU. Kashf exists only as a supplementary space. At this point, I urge the readers to pause as we did. What Kashf was interjecting in, as we realised, was not simply a lack but also a structural web of systemic failings, not purely deliberate but also induced. One that can be safely traced back to the neoliberal curse. The corporate lingua franca, best reflected in keywords such as ‘impact’, ‘outcomes’, ‘metrics’, and ‘productivity’, has started to displace slower pedagogies of reflection, immersion, and curiosity. This climate not only deepens existing inequalities but also sidelines the deeper, slower, and often more difficult work of knowledge-making. It breeds a culture in which scholars are expected to brand and market themselves through publication sprints constantly, and the distinction between the scholar and the work produced begins to blur. 

II

Much of academic life today is overwhelmed by pressure: the pressure to publish, to perform, to keep up. In this rush, many are left without time or space to reflect, ask questions, or learn at their own pace. Over the past decade, the neoliberal model of higher education has become so normalised and absorbed into academic life that we rarely pause to ask what it is doing to the culture of learning itself, to our research, our teaching, or ourselves. I remember, during one of our recent workshops, a team member put it sharply: everyone now rushes to speak in the language of I argue, they say, this paper shows, but few pause to ask the more fundamental question: How did we arrive at this argument? What did we have to learn, unlearn, and read to get here? That is the pause Kashf hopes to create. And sustain.

 As we complete our first year, I cannot help but feel proud of the small yet steady steps we have taken. Over twelve months, we conducted a series of guidance and training sessions on various aspects of research and learning in the social sciences and humanities. Add to that a few hands-on workshops, our attempts to explore reading and writing groups, and foundational lectures on methods, reading, and writing. I will never forget the contentment we felt in a collaborative workshop that we organised, where all we did was discuss approaches to reading texts, the fundamental but straightforward and often omitted lesson of ‘how to read’, which best reflects what we hope to do. In other words, Kashf sought to provide information on existing knowledge, the first step in education and one that is equally neglected in our educational system today (Thapar 2014). Within the team, some of the team members have felt that perhaps something also needs to be done at the level of secondary education. Specifically, to prepare students for the methods of thinking that higher education offers or should offer, especially for social sciences and humanities, where the quotient of unsettling the acquired values and notions uncritically is higher. Perhaps Gramscian thought rings a bell here, when he reckoned that the study and learning of creative methods in science and in life muat begin in the last phase of schooling; a mandate which cannot be left to the monopoly of university or to chance in practical life (Gramsci 1971, 32). We will see what we can do at a modest scale to address that gap, and this thought will preoccupy us for some time before planning any further steps in this direction. 

From introductory, informative sessions in English and some in multiple regional languages to hands-on workshops; from reading circles where we engaged with Gandhi, Ambedkar, and even Godse’s writings on their own terms; to initiating a writing pillar and building an ever-growing bank of open-access resources for researchers, Kashf has been working quietly on many fronts at once. From heartwarming emails of students to nudges for sessions to pleas for support, it is a reflection not of scale but of need and solidarity. However, if I fail to examine our own work critically, it would be a disservice to the spirit of learning we claim to uphold. Kashf, as any other young collective, is far from perfect. The challenges and limitations sometimes stem from our individual dispositions, at different times from our personal and professional engagements, since our team mostly comprises early-career scholars and at still other times from structural constraints: ġham-e-duniyā, as poets would say.[ii]

III

Nevertheless, we must always remain alert to what Kashf is not and must not become. We are not another seminar forum. India already has many platforms where public intellectuals speak on the issues of the day, and while those are valuable, they are outside our immediate scope. Kashf is also not a consultancy or a 'short-cut to research' producing firm. We are not about impact or outcomes, and certainly not about heightened visibility measured by the number of sessions, likes, or followers. Those were never the pathways we imagined for ourselves. Within the team, we have always grappled with the challenge of ‘what if we are empowering the already empowered’ - this is a challenge that lays bare our own privileges, and there is no two ways about this. One pole of this challenge is about access and how to enhance it, but the next question is: access to what? A simple answer is access to quality higher education for all, and, for this initiative, access to research pursuits in the social sciences and humanities, in particular. However, further prodding reveals the despondent state of higher education and research in the social sciences that we aim to make accessible. Something that has been discussed at length in works such as The Idea of a University (Apoorvanand 2018). We must therefore acknowledge that it is a vicious loop of infrastructural lags, ad hoc experimentation with the syllabus or educational frameworks, fund cuts, jeopardised academic freedom and autonomy, topped with Kafkasque turbulence that disincentivise the pursuit, not to mention the employment question, which adds to the overall discontent and disillusionment, often reflected through empty classrooms and dispirited staffrooms. Even this loop is not experienced evenly but is mediated by oppressive caste structures and gender hierarchies, not to speak of the anti-reservation campaigns coupled with precarities that the minorities are faced with. While we wish to train volunteers in knowledge and research practices, material and social conditions continue to threaten or imperil their futures. 

This observation becomes more urgent in view of the burgeoning paradoxical reports, like the latest KPMG study, which is based on ten years of National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) data. It reveals that the ‘country's universities and colleges are witnessing “outcome-led systemic improvements” driven by faculty upskilling, doctoral growth, and a culture of innovation’ (India Today 2025). Such Reports highlighting rising qualifications, publication volumes, and ranking visibility capture a fundamental shift in the formal metrics of Indian higher education, even as these gains coexist with deep structural fragilities. What appears to be an improvement may be a reconfiguration of academic labour within ranking-driven regimes rather than a renewal of the university as an intellectual commons, which might be traced back to the positivist approach that inspired the governance model for Indian universities (Trivedi 2025). Perhaps the question of access cannot be answered without linking it to questions of equity and quality, which the massification of higher education, initiated in the 1960s, must address (Sarkar 2020), and which increasingly involve private institutions. Further, the proliferation of these private institutions must be read through the framework of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), signed in 1992 (Dhar, n.d., 116), which in its current form also relies on the process of ‘re-feudalisation’ of higher education spaces in India (Dhar, n.d., 118), and elsewhere, tied with the foreclosure of student unions (Teltumbde 2018). While private institutions have turned the notion of exceptionalism on its head by commodifying education (Dhar, n.d., 111), I cannot help but sprinkle the sensibility that underwrites Roy’s idea of ‘making friends with defeat’ (Roy 2025) to ask what kinds of intellectual pursuits become impossible once success, defined in this grammar of exceptionalism, is the only grammar left to us. If refusal to abide by the rules dictated by such a grammar of exceptionalism implies defeat, Kashf will happily befriend it.

Perhaps that is why so far Kashf has relied, and must continue to rely, on those who believe in quiet, serious work on its own terms, detached from the peripherals of careerism and the otherwise ‘utilitarian focus’ (Sarkar 2020, 24) that seems to dictate the idea of a university in our times: students, teachers, activists, educationists, and researchers who showed up not for spectacles or performative gestures but for learning, teaching and for the passion towards social sciences, while cautiously navigating the waters of what has been called the ‘banality of competence’ currently ensnaring the industry of social sciences (Shiv Visvanathan 2012). Involved, sometimes in organising a session, in sitting on the panels, in delivering keynotes, in guiding the reading circles, in facilitating the writing groups, in moderating the sessions, in handling the logistics, or by simply putting their faith in this young initiative by participating in the sessions or brainstorming meets - it is they who have carried Kashf on their shoulders since the first day, with double labour, despite the material realities of the times. 

At this juncture, I must acknowledge that Kashf has also been blessed with an extraordinary team, and I use the word ‘extraordinary’ very consciously. A team that I can best analogise to a canvas in the making, a meeting of different hues, each complementing the other, which gives this canvas a unity of meaning. By now, I am thoroughly convinced that, having set a ‘not-to-do’ list, if Kashf fails to uphold that list, the team members will neither stop pointing it out nor hesitate to walk away, if it comes to that. It is with this conviction that we must therefore guard against becoming a space driven by commercial benefits, parasitic collaborations or networks driven by echo chambers of socio-economic and cultural privilege and intellectual elitism, that stand on the labour of marginalised communities. I must further reiterate that the initiative is, and will remain, entirely non-profit. 

At the same time, there are structural challenges we cannot ignore. Because of the increasing pressure on students from academic systems - APA points, CV-building expectations, competitive admissions - there has been a growing demand for incentive-driven sessions or, at best, queries to that effect. This is not a reflection of individual attitudes but of the attitudes embedded in the system and the overarching pedagogy in which we all operate. Navigating this without compromising our ethos will be a challenge in the days ahead. It is essential to reiterate that Kashf is not an initiative designed to remedy structural issues of the scale that only governments, public institutions, and long-term policy investments can address. A policy report by Niti Aayog, ‘Expanding Quality Higher Education Through State Public Universities (SPUs), highlights that more than 40% of faculty positions remain vacant and that only 10% of SPUs have well-equipped research facilities, which significantly affect learning outcomes’. The report further warns that ‘access to digital resources remains a challenge, with only 32% of SPUs having fully functional digital libraries, thereby limiting students' and faculty members' access to global research databases’ (The Times of India 2025). Add to that recent reports about the decline of institutions such as Delhi University (Misra 2025).  We are therefore placed to work within certain limitations. We are acutely aware that the challenges facing Indian universities- funding deficits, uneven research cultures, faculty shortages, and infrastructural decay- require political will and systemic transformation, not a small, volunteer-driven collective. Our work, then, echoing Gramsci's work on Education, identifies the challenge not simply rooted in 'model curricula' but of people, and not just people 'who are teachers themselves but of the entire social complex which they express' (Gramsci 1971, 36).  

IV

For a long time, and in almost every meeting, we brainstorm the modalities for the next session. I am aware that many of us share scepticism about technology, especially in matters related to AI, and that certain domains must always be treated as the remit of formal educational spaces, i.e., universities and colleges, a point well entrenched in an exchange with one of our guest speakers. In fact, there is no doubt that, despite all the challenges, the Indian University has had a positive impact on society, and that is all the more reason for us to extend that respect to that brand of intellectual stirrings (Saikat Majumdar 2019). We are all products of public institutions and therefore fully understand and respect the work entrusted to them and the labour our teachers put into their classes. Perhaps, at some level, it is the care with which we have been taught that drives us to move this initiative forward alongside everyone. As Romila Thapar has pointed out, there are two sources of education: the informal, which, in addition to visual-oral forms such as mass media, now also includes social media and Artificial intelligence; and the formal, which are educational institutions (Thapar 2014). In the new era, with all that technology has to offer, I understand, for some of us, it has marked the end of a particular way of academic life, with crucial implications for universities as sacred spaces for open discussion (Gurpreet Mahajan 2020) and for the relevance of classroom teaching. The more profound anxiety, however, that animates a set of concerns is not alleviated by not doing the work that Kashf is doing.  More so when it is the legacy of the same public institutions we graduated from that taught us that classrooms can be stretched beyond the walls of a university. We must concede that there will always be resources for students to consult or refer to in this era driven by the information technology boom leaning towards ‘factory-made online knowledge dissemination, devoid of deeper insights’ (Adhikari 2020, 163). This is all the more reason, therefore, to ensure that students do not fall for low-quality work, resources, or shortcuts that lead to dead ends. At the same time, not everyone is as fortunate as we have been to study with the teachers we did (and even this must not be read as a generic statement, but as one qualified with caveats), or to have the resources we did. In many institutions, departments are understaffed, resources are lacking, or exploitative practices predominate in supervision. Kashf is a learning platform for such students that provides support in whatever ways we can. Perhaps, as most of us try to navigate through these fresh challenges, we might find refuge in a blend of Tagore’s experiments in what Ranjan Gosh has called ‘no responsibility’ – which is ‘the perspective of non-affiliation to a stable and established centre of knowledge’ reiterated by Sarkar and Basu, underlying the establishment of Visva-Bharati (Sarkar and Basu 2024) with Derrida’s take on responsibility. To quote Derrida then, 

‘That’s where responsibility starts, when I don’t know what to do. If I knew what to do, well, I would apply the rule, and teach my students to apply the rule. But would that be ethical? Ethics starts when you don’t know what to do, when there is a gap between knowledge and action, and you have to take responsibility for inventing the new rule which doesn’t exist’ (Derrida in ‘The other heading. Reflections on today’s Europe’ (1992), as cited in Sarkar and Basu 2024, 5).

Our work operates at a far more modest, supplementary scale: to create spaces of learning, reflection, and method where they are otherwise scarce. We are but a drop in the ocean, if only a drop, so be it. I must therefore acknowledge and salute the spirit of other initiatives and projects doing similar work. I know a few through the work of my friends and colleagues, and others are not yet known to us but are doing a commendable job. We do need more drops, in fact a deluge to form another ocean. As one of our colleagues had verbalised this vision, quoting Faraz, 

Shikwah-e zulmat-e shab se to kahin behtar tha
Apne hisse ki koi shama jalaate jaate

Which roughly translates as: 

Complaining about the darkness of the night was far less worthwhile;
Lighting at least one lamp that was ours to light would have been preferable.[iii]

Another challenge is one internal to us: Kashf is a volunteer-driven initiative. The labour is uneven, the work intense, and delegation remains difficult. We are slowly learning how to distribute responsibilities more fairly and sustainably. With twelve active team members and an extended network of occasional contributors, stakeholders, and campus volunteers, who experiment with new ways to take Kashf beyond the metropolitan boundaries. Sometimes these experiments snowball into unexpected results, and sometimes things do not go as planned, which is alright too. Our task now is to streamline the workflow without sacrificing the openness and diversity we value. As we step into our second year, our hope is simple: that we continue to build a space where students, researchers, and thinkers can slow down, to think justly, read deeply, write meaningfully, to understand before responding, to interpret with care before concluding in a rush, to imagine without fear of measurement and to demonstrate that scholarship can be slow yet meaningful. If the past year has taught us anything, it is that there is a profound hunger for such platforms.

Kashf began as a fragment of a thought shared among friends. It is a statement as much as it is an experiment in education. Born out of labour of love, a mirror of shared intellectual camaraderie, a debt of curiosity, a carrier of the institutional legacy that provokes students to think. Today, it has become a small room where learning breathes easier. The year ahead holds much work, but it also holds promise of building a more thoughtful, reflective world of research and learning, taking one quiet step, opening one window at a time.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Notes

[i] When we speak of learning from universities like Oxford or Cambridge, it is not out of admiration for, or aspiration toward, a Western gaze. Instead, it is to recognise that certain institutional forms—departments for writing, methods, and research training—exist elsewhere and serve a clear pedagogical function that students everywhere deserve. Even this comparison, when made, is entirely infrastructural, not cultural: it fully acknowledges that such institutions are themselves products of a market-driven global landscape where the West has historically held disproportionate capital, resources, and structural advantages.

[ii] See (Ahmad Faraz, n.d.) . Perhaps that is a blend for which the team is too young to handle. 

[iii] Here is my favourite version of this ghazal, sung by Noor Jehan, if this is of interest: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DYjtADDr-PaI&ved=2ahUKEwjSrNWb3rqRAxXrnK8BHY4eIM4QtwJ6BAgIEAI&usg=AOvVaw1hWQmSIwnXL0hRhfGnbOh7

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Acknowledgements: I am grateful to team members of Kashf initiative, particularly Monika, Dr.Gayatri and Vidushi for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay. Within the team, each of us hold diverse perspectives on the issues discussed in this essay and perhaps, some have gone beyond the issues listed in this piece, into more deeper questions which require laborious engagements. To that end, gradually, they too will be expressing their viewpoints through their set of writings which will be featured on this blog.