Abstract
Queens’ College, where Ajit was successively Fellow, Senior Fellow, and Life Fellow was more than just a nominal affiliation: it became his permanent base, fortress and gurdwara, and he was devoted to it. He was “Mr Economics”—as Director of Studies, he assembled a team that projected Queens’ into the top echelon of economics teaching. An inspirational and pluralistic teacher, he enabled students how to think, not what to think; not to follow his leftist beliefs but to formulate and argue their own; he taught and demanded theoretical clarity, methodological rigour and policy relevance. Ajit’s unabated support for students’ rights and Vietnam made him unpopular in some official circles. He was the fulcrum for cross-border gatherings for South Asian students. Significantly, he initiated the weekly Queens’ Economics Seminar, a congenial debating chamber for the heterodox personages and lineages of Cambridge economics. A grateful College honoured its favourite son in several ways.
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Notes
- 1.
Martin Bernal (2012, p. 279): “Although Ajit Singh is now the senior fellow at Queens’ College , I always saw King’s as his home”.
- 2.
That is how the relationship evolved, but not necessarily how it started, when, according to a knowledgeable informant, senior-most authorities of the College reacted with hostility to Ajit’s red politics, an attitude reinforced by the fact that the intrepid Ajit went to every Governing Body meeting fully briefed and with the interests of both the students and the non-academic staff of the college at the forefront of his concerns and agenda. The College President over this period was Arthur Armitage , and Jo informed me that “he hated Ajit with a vengeance”; fortunately for both, Armitage left Cambridge for Manchester in 1970.
- 3.
John Eatwell started as an economics undergraduate at Queens’ College , supervised and influenced by Ajit and Joan Robinson ; went on to become a Fellow of Trinity College ; served as a senior advisor to the Labour Party; entered the House of Lords ; and returned to Queens’ College , this time as its President . He was a lifelong friend and associate of Ajit within and beyond Cambridge, and co-authored an alternative economics textbook with Joan.
- 4.
Vani Borooah , personal communication 2015.
- 5.
Guru Dronacharya was the royal preceptor to the warring clans in the Mahabharata epic, supreme master of military strategy and arts.
- 6.
Personal communication; email dated 30 June 2015.
- 7.
Appendix 19 of Twigg (1987) reproduces a Queens’ College document: “Contingency Plans for Dealing with Student Agitation, 1969–70”. The document resembles, in form and content, a manual for prison wardens, and carries instructions for “precautionary measures” and separately for “measures during incident”, covering various “situations”, from demonstrations in college, or in the hall, or a sit-in, or an open meeting, etc.; and the measures include everything from cutting off heat, light and other services, to stopping all service of meals, removing valuables, taking names, warning police, locking up and so on. It is a testament to the state of confrontational relations between the authorities of the College and its student body, or at least a significant section of it (Twigg 1987, pp. 475–478).
- 8.
Twigg writes how, when at Queens’ in the Cold War years, the economist Baron Vaizey (then, Mr. John Vaizey ) was dissatisfied with his teaching in economics and arranged for supervisions with the distinguished economist Joan Robinson , but recorded that “my tutor, who denounced her as a communist , refused to pay her” (Twigg 1987, p. 404). That was immediately after the War, and two decades before Joan was into defending the Chinese Cultural Revolution , or about when she was writing her alternative economics textbook with a future President of the College!
- 9.
- 10.
Rod Caird was the President of the Queens’ College Union in 1969–1970; preceded by John Wells who was an economics student of Ajit’s and who won the Adam Smith Prize ; John Wells was subsequently a staunch member of the left group at the Faculty.
- 11.
Owen Chadwick , Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University , 1969–1971, in Interviews with Alan Macfarlane . Several of these protests are recorded in Evans (2010).
- 12.
The list of economists for that short period includes, with apologies for inadvertent omissions: Iqbal Ahmed, Rashid Amjad, Monojit Chatterji , Abu Haroon Wahiduddin Mahmud Chaudhury , Naeemuddin Chowdhury , Ajit Ghose , Mahabub Hossain , Satish Mishra , Ghazi Mujahid , Muhammed Muqtada , Sikander Rahim , Atiqur Rahman , Ashwani Saith , Sam Samarasinghe, Abhijit Sen , Vela Velupillai , Piyasiri Wickramasekhara , with Ruchira Chatterji and Jayati Ghosh providing a very necessary modicum of gender correction a few years later. Virtually everyone in the list would have interacted with Ajit in academic or personal capacities. The historians Basudev Chatterji and Mushirul Hasan , sadly both prematurely lost, were declared eligible for cricket selections. I cannot forget the gentle Mushir—in a match against the Faculty XI—fielding at midwicket, quite credibly and creditably impersonating a whirling dervish, inscribing figures of eight under a skier, then raising his arms, hands wide apart, as if in ibadat, hoping this turn to prayer would miraculously lodge the ball in one palm or the other; it went through between them of course, with poor Mushir dropping to his knees to complete the repentance. The entire field cheered, demanding an encore.
- 13.
We had developed a working formula for issuing generic non-specific kinds of invitations to Ajit: “Oh Ajit, don’t come alone!”, “Oh Ajit, you are both invited”, “Oh Ajit, do come together”—and of course we were always happy with whoever kindly graced the occasion! Ajit’s friends were our friends, and always welcome in any permutation or combination. Some idiot once had a brain fade and asked something stupid about solving simultaneous equations—“well”, came the instant reply delivered with the trademark mischievous chuckle “I think it improves my performance”.
- 14.
In this connection, see also Prabhat Patnaik’s recollection: “Besides participating in demonstrations and meetings, he also played a crucial role in starting or reviving intellectual forums where left-wing dons could meet and discuss” (Patnaik 2015, p. 32). Prabhat mentions in particular the Tawney Group; and the meetings usually in Lord Kahn’s room at King’s College . And from the mid-1970s, there was the Matthews-Cairncross CLARE (Cambridge, London and the Rest of England) Group of economists that met on a frequent basis at Clare College (Silberston 2011).
- 15.
The Faculty Seminar in Political Economy at Queens’ was sponsored by the Cambridge Political Economy Society Trust .
- 16.
Personal communication, email dated 30 January 2018.
- 17.
An independent rendition of what must be the same seminar at Queens’ comes from an interview with Tony Lawson (Dunn 2009, p. 483): “In the mid 1970s Cambridge was a very lively place and the battles were fought everywhere, not least in the coffee room of the top floor of the Economics Faculty. The debates covered policy and economic understanding. I remember, too, the fortnightly Queens Seminar (which still goes on, although less regularly) where there were lots of arguments going on …. I remember [a] seminar when Bob Rowthorn said you can’t just take account of the demand side of the economy, the supply side matters too. I distinctly remember Richard Kahn asking slowly ‘Did I hear you say that the supply side matters too?’. Bob Rowthorn said ‘Yes’ and I remember Richard Kahn just putting his papers together very slowly, putting them in his briefcase, standing up and walking out of the room. It was that kind of environment”. Lawson goes on to provide another snippet from this lively seminar room: “I remember, too, a first time when the idea of rational expectations was talked about at the Queens Seminar. Probably it was the only time. I forget the name of the non-local speaker. But I do remember Kaldor being in the audience, because after the speaker had defined rational expectations, Kaldor stuck his hand up and said something like ‘Did I understand you to be saying the following …’ and repeated the definition of rational expectations. The speaker replied ‘Yes’ and then Kaldor just started laughing. And you know what Kaldor looked like? Massive. His whole frame was shaking and he was giggling and it was so infectious the whole audience fell about laughing too. And this was happening at a time when much of the rest of the economics profession was already well on its way to being taken over by this really quite daft idea” (ibid.).
- 18.
Vani Borooah , personal communication, 10 August 2015.
- 19.
“The Queens’ seminar became the St Caths seminar. After the financial crisis, there was a series of seminars organised by Philip Arestis and Michael Kitson (both at St Catherine’s College ) to discuss the crisis and its aftermath, including many on austerity in the UK. It has replaced the Queens’ seminar as the outlet for non-mainstream economics and is financially supported by the CJE ” (Ken Coutts , personal communication, email dated 25 October 2018).
- 20.
Telephone conversation with Vani Borooah , Fellow of Queens’ College 1979–1987, 12 August 2015.
- 21.
Personal communication, email dated 21 October 2017.
- 22.
Also a “Lillee-esque” demon fast bowler, complete with the long run-up, smooth-as-silk bowling action and droopy moustache, and fine opening bat who, with the Aussie pro Geoff Harcourt , clocked up a century opening stand turning out for the “Land Economy, Geography and Judge Business School XI” in the inter-departmental tournament (why didn’t they follow the lead of the Windies and merge their sporting identities, say, into “The Heterodox XI”?); the year was 1992, alas too late for Ajit’s condition to have allowed him to take the field.
- 23.
“Dr Andy Cosh Celebration Dinner ”, News and Events, Queens’ College , Cambridge, 24 October 2016. See: https://www.queens.cam.ac.uk/life-at-queens/news-and-events/dr-andy-cosh-celebration-dinner. Eduardo Gallo is the first holder of this Fellowship (https://sites.google.com/site/edoardogallo/).
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Saith, A. (2019). King of Queens’. In: Ajit Singh of Cambridge and Chandigarh. Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12422-9_6
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