Devahuti and Damodar [Part 2]

[continued from part 1]


1965. My second year of Teacher’s College and second year of evening units at the University of Queensland. The first year under Devahuti had taught me a great deal – mainly how NOT to do a university course, but I have always been a slow learner. When I learn, I do reach a take-off point, but it takes me a while to get there.

   I looked at the offerings for advanced units in History. Devahuti’s unit was a first year one, and passing it opened up the field a little, as I could now take Advanced Units in history. Still, nothing appealed a great deal. Then I saw this subject, Contemporary Southern Asia, and there was something about it that struck a chord. In reality, it was more contemporary political science than history, and the Course Coordinator, D P Singhal, was as much a political scientist as an historian. I hadn’t realised what a pivotal role India had played in world politics in the modern era, surrounded by great powers and interacting with them.

   I am not sure when I became aware that Damodar [pronounced ‘Da-MODE-ar’] was Devahuti’s husband, but it made sense of course. Universities in India were then, in 1965, as now, enmeshed in politics which wasted time and energy and could ruin careers. The trouble could come from the political right, or left, or both. When the UQ wisely decided to offer more courses in Asian history, Damodar and Devahuti decided to get out of the destructive politics in Indian universities and make a fresh start away from the subcontinent itself. Both of them had distinguished themselves at the University of London and UQ got itself an extraordinary bargain when they both applied for positions.

  So, I studied Damodar’s course in 1965. I was bowled over by his knowledge of the world’s history and the interlocking of cultural, historical and political forces. 1965 was still the Menzies era in Australia politics, and Vietnam was looming. War between India and Pakistan was also inevitable. The cold war was at its height (though was it ever NOT, until the Iron Curtain came tumbling down thirty years later?)

   Damodar's clarity of vision helped me make sense of what was happening in the world I was about to enter as an adult. I had grown up in the country, where a conservative political landscape was the norm, and Menzies had god-like status. Unions, by this view, were evil and by controlling the Labor Party would destroy the country if it ever fell into their hands.

   I never questioned any of this. Why would I? We had had conservative governments all my life so nothing was tested, challenged or even considered on a basis of balance or understanding. We tend to inherit our political views and it takes a bombshell to force us back from what we have inherited in that respect.

   Damodar's teaching challenged every preconception I had, though I was not then old enough to even appreciate how much the world was a far more complicated place than I had imagined. Devahuti gave me a chance to view life through oriental philosophies; Damodar gave me a different window to view everything that was happening around me. But I resisted much of this novelty because it would have shattered the illusions I had, and removed me too far from my comfort zone.

   In April of 1965, a few weeks before my 18th birthday, my father died. Another illusion shattered; that one’s parents will be there forever - that life will go on in other places exactly as before, and be picked up again on end of term visits home.

   Now that I look back, I didn’t realise at the time just how radically my world would be changed by the events of that year. Yet I would not see either Devahuti or Damodar for another couple of years, during which I would be teaching primary school children at Gladstone and Calliope. For that time, until 1968, they disappeared from my life entirely, or so I thought. But their influence did not wane, I now realise, and it would, from 1968 onwards, become far more powerful than I could ever have imagined.
[NOTE:  I would like to have been able to say that Damodar Singhal recognised me as some bright star on the horizon of academia as a result of my brilliance in his classes, but that is completely untrue. I was at that stage at least quite indistinguishable from the dozens of other students just wanting to get another two credit points towards my degree for the year-long course.] 

[go to Part 3] [Part 1]