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The role of elites

by Edward Shils

1.Under colonial conditions, the underdeveloped countries lacked the effective demand which permits a modern intellectual class, in its full variety, to come into existence. Persons who acquired intellectual

qualifications had only a few markets for their skills. The higher civil service was by all odds the most bountiful of these, but opportunities were restricted because it was small in size and the posts were mainly pre-empted by foreigners. (In India in the last decade of the British Raj, there were only about 1200 such

posts in the Indian Civil Service. and of these, a little less than half were filled by Indians. In other countries, the number of posts was smaller and the proportion held by persons of indigenous origin was also much smaller.)

15      2. Joumalism, as a result of generally widespread illiteracy,  was a stunted growth and provided only a few opportunities, which were not at all remunerative. Journalism under colonial conditions wasmuch more of an unprofitable political mission than a commercially attractive investment, and most of it was on the minuscule scale.

20     3.The medical profession was kept small by the costliness of the course of study, the absence of an effective demand for medical services, and the pre-emption of much of the senior level of the medical service by the government and its consequent reservation for foreigners.

25       4.Teaching at its lower levels was unattractive to intellectuals because it involved living in villages away from the lights and interests of the larger towns, and because it was extremely unremunerative. Nor

were there many opportunities in it. On the secondary and higher levels, opportunities were also meager. Of all the underdeveloped countries, only India had an extensive modem college and university system before 1920; after that date the additions to the Indian system of higher education came very slowly until the eve

of the Second World War and the chaos which accompanied it. Outside of India there were at most only a few thousand posts available in institutions of higher learning in all of colonial Asia and Africa, and some of these were reserved for Europeans (and Americans, in the two American colleges of the Middle East).

Thus opportunities for teaching on the upper levels of an extremely lean educational system were few. Where the authorities sought to maintain a high standard, they were very particular about whom they chose to employ. (It should be added that political considerations, at this time of nationalistic, anti-colonialist

effervescence, likewise restricted the chances of entry, since many able young men disqualified themselves by the high jinks of adolescent politics during their student days).

5.The Legal Profession. For these reasons many of the intellectually gifted and interested who also had

50  to gain their own livelihood entered the course of legal study and then the practice of the profession of the law. Entry to the legal profession was not restricted on ethnic grounds; the course of study was short and inexpensive and could be easily undertaken. There was, moreover, a considerable effective demand for legal services.

55       6.The colonial powers were concerned with order and justice and, in their various ways, had attempted to establish the rule of law in the colonial territories. The wealthy landowning classes and the newer wealthy merchants were frequently engaged in litigations in which huge sums were involved and the 60

60  possibility of lawyers to earn handsome fees gave an eclat to the legal profession which only the higher civil service otherwise possessed.

Furthermore, in countries like India, Egypt or Nigeria, for example, what else could a university or

college graduate do with his qualifications if he did not wish to settle for a clerkship in the government or in a foreign commercial firm? The law schools were therefore able to attract throngs of students. Once the legal qualifications had been obtained, the young lawyer went into the nether regions of the bar, where he

had much time for other interests. The leisure time of the young lawyer was a fertile field in which much political activity grew.

8.This existence of a stratum of underemployed young lawyers was made possible by their kinship

connections. The aspirants to the intellectual professions in the under-developed countries almost always came from the more prosperous sections of society. They were the sons of chiefs, noblemen, and landowners, of ministers, and officials of territories in which indirect rule existed, and of civil servants and

teachers in countries under direct rule. In some countries, they occasionally came from prosperous mercantile families, though seldom in large numbers.

9. These social origins, against the background of the diffuse obligations accepted by members of an

extended kinship system, meant that even where the income gained from a profession was inadequate to maintain a man and his immediate family, he could still continue to associate himself with the profession. The deficiencies in his earnings were made up by his kinsmen. Unlike teaching, the civil service, and most

journalism, where membership in the profession is defined not merely by qualification and intermittent practice but by actual employment, a person need not earn a living by legal practice in order to be a lawyer. This is why the legal profession in nearly all the underdeveloped countries has been, before and since

independence, crowded by a few very successful lawyers and a great number of very unsuccessful ones.

10. These are also some of the reasons why the legal profession supplied so many outstanding leaders of

100 the nationalist movements during colonial times, and why the lawyer-intellectuals form such a vital part of the political elites of the new states.

Students. No consideration of the intellectual class in underdeveloped countries can disregard

the university students. In advanced countries, students are not regarded as ex officio intellectuals; in underdeveloped countries, they are. Students in modem colleges and universities in underdeveloped countries have been treated as part of the intellectual class — or at least were before independence and they

have regarded themselves as such. Perhaps the mere commencement of an adult form of contact with modem intellectual traditions and the anticipation — however insecure that acquisition of those traditions would qualify one for the modem intellectual professions conferred that status on university and college students, and derivatively, on secondary-school students.

115    12.The student enjoyed double favor in the eyes of his fellowcountryman. As one of the tiny minority gaining a modem education, he was becoming qualified for a respected, secure, and well-paid position

120 close to the center of society, as a civil servant, teacher or lawyer. As a bearer of the spirit of revolt against the foreign ruler, he gained the admiration and confidence of those of his seniors who were imbued with the national idea.

Formally, the student movements in the colonial countries began their careers only in the 1920's,

but long before that the secondary schools, colleges, and universities had been a source of personnel for the more ebullient and aggressive nationalistic movements. Since the beginning of the present century, students have been in a state of turbulence. This turbulence flowed more and more into politics, until the

students became vital foci of the national independence movements. The secondary schools, colleges, and universities attended by the students of underdeveloped countries became academies of national revolution. It was not the intention of the administrators and teachers that they should become such; rather, the

contrary. Nonetheless they did, both in their own countries and in the metropolitan centers of London and Paris, where many of the most important architects of independence were trained, and where they found the intellectual resonance and moral support which sustained them in lean years.

140     14.The London School of Economics in particular has probably contributed much more to the excitation of nationalistic sentiment than any other educational institution in the world. At the School of Economics,

145 the late Professor Harold Laski did more than any other single individual to hearten the colonial students and to make them feel that the great weight of liberal Western learning supported thier political enthusiasm.

However, it was not only in the universities of London and Paris, but in shabby clubs and cafes,

cheap hotels and restaurants, dingy rooming houses and the tiny cluttered offiees of their nationalist organizations that the colonial students were educated in nationalism, acquired some degree of national consciousness, and came to feel how retrograde their own countries were and what they might be if only

they became their own masters and modernized themselves. Personalities like Mr. Krishna Menon, Or. Nkrumah, and Dr. Banda were themselves formed in these milieux, and in turn formed many of those who were to play an active part in the movement in their own countries.

160    16.The political propensities of the students have been, in part, products of adolescent rebelliousness. This has been especially pronounced in those who were brought up in a traditionally oppressive environment and were indulged with a spell of freedom from that environment — above all, freedom from

165 the control of the elders and kinsmen. Once, however, the new tradition of rebellion was established among students, it became self-reproducing. Moreover, the vocational prospectlessness of their post-university situation has also stirred the restiveness of the students.

160   17.The Unemployed Intellectual. In most underdeveloped countries during the colonial period, the unemployed intellectual was always a worry to the foreign rulers and to constitutional politicians, and a grievance of the leaders of the independence movement. He still remains a problem in the underdeveloped

175 countries which have had a higher educational system for some length of time and which are not rapidly expanding their governmental staffs. In Ghana or Nigeria, there is a shortage of intellectuals and all graduates can find posts; in Pakistan, which inherited only a very small part of the higher educational

180 system of British India, the government has tried to restrict entrance to the universities, especially in «arts» subjects. In India and Egypt, however, despite rapid expansion of opportunities for the employment of intellectuals in government, there has been a more than proportionate expansion in the number of university

185 graduates and the problem remains as acute as ever.

18.Yet the difficulty is not so much «intellectual unemployment» as under— and mal-employment. Most of the graduates sooner or later, do find posts of one sort or another, but they are not posts which

190 conform with expectations. They are illpaid, unsatisfying in status and tenure, and leave their incumbents in the state of restlessness which they experienced as students.

From: Edward Shils, «The Intellectuals in the Political Developement of the New States», in Finkle and Gable (eds.) Political Development and Social Change (1966).

 


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