I am Hem Raj, a humanist. This is my way of introducing myself – my first name and a phrase that describes me in relation to teaching, my profession. A teacher is a humanist because he tries to help people live well. Hem is a humanist because he also helps people seek goodness in their lives. That’s it. You can call me Hemanist, making sense of the form of humanism I identify with and try to practice.
Hemanism bears the pith of my character. My name largely embodies it. ‘Hem’ in English is the double-folded stitched edge of a cloth. It is analogous to what I tend to become at times – a strong margin which remains intact even when the body has tattered. ‘Hem’ in Sanskrit denotes two things: ‘gold’ and ‘ice.’ ‘Gold’ may signify my father’s desire (while naming me thus) to see me stand out as someone valuable and sought-after, while ‘ice’ may point to my natural capacity to melt at the warmth of love and compassion and to flow and fit as a liquid in given circumstances.
All my active years till August 2013, I believed that professional life moved in a fixed, linear path and Hemanism operated unhindered to its best potential. But an incident shook my conviction so hard that I was compelled to deeply reassess myself, my surroundings and the people associated with me by default or design.
The morning following my return after the three-week stay in Goa, India, I got a phone call from the Faculty Chief who said he had a serious conflict with the Head of the Department and needed my help. I instantly found out that he had thrown a bone of contention to the Head through a unilateral decision to snatch the latter’s power by appointing a new program coordinator. The events took such nasty turns that I was conditioned to stand in the Chief’s opposition rather than in his elitist fold. A devout who had till then taken the side of the establishment, having faced all sorts of complaints and criticisms from colleagues, I was in utmost dilemma and pain in the ensuing days for having to stand at the other side, albeit reasonably. Within a fortnight, crazy things unfolded in an unexpected magnitude. As a result, I pledged to dissociate myself from the program with which I was primarily associated.
I have hardly revealed to anyone why I had left the program ending my decade-long direct engagement in it. Those who bothered to notice my sudden absence thought that I had found a greener pasture on the University’s main campus, productive enough for me to forfeit all professional potential. But it was caused by the dilemma of having to take this or that side. And it was triggered by the stigma documented in an audit report, which noted that the program was not prospering because of the malperformance of the teachers of English and Nepali. I had pointed out serious flaws in the report and questioned the authenticity of the loose, informal word-file which registered the accusation. My criticism resented the authorities, and one of them even went so far as to utter a threat one day: “It won’t be good for you!”
I did not want to fuss about the report to the extent of agitating anyone, especially the students who were very confused about the rapidness with which the faculty members split. Not that I had an inkling of fear after the threat; any hassle due to me was sure to retard my doctoral study. My resolution became firmer at the revelation that the newly appointed coordinator had even managed to snatch the courses I had designed and taught since the program’s inception and to terminate my PhD supervisor and me from the subject committee. Consequently, I cut off communications with the ones who had designed the accusation and instigated my transfer.
The shift, still, hampered my ongoing PhD work. I had returned from India with four chapters. It took me one complete year to write the remaining three. I got busy the whole year building a new team and making sense of the ‘forget and forgive’ philosophy, albeit unsuccessfully. I mainly learned the lesson that if you were at a university and had grand plans, you would have to have your own program and a team that converged to and worked for a shared vision. I internalized what I had once read from Paulo Coelho: “The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.” I had got up without falling. So, rising without falling became one of my mottos in the subsequent struggles.
The shift nonetheless opened novel avenues for me. I experienced a radical ‘emancipation’ from being one of the ordinary folks to becoming the unquestioned semi-autonomous leader for eight years and six months. I could justify that forming a team of diverse orientations was the demand of the time and a possible venture. I started an entirely new group of faculties, making sure not to lend it insularly mono-disciplinary and loosely multi-pronged. With the Humanities and Management Unit (HMU) in place in September 2013, I established a ‘non-technical’ faculty in a ‘rigidly technical’ academic setting of the cenral campus.
Through HMU, students of engineering and science got more intensive academic orientation in professional areas like communication, entrepreneurship, and business management. Faculties scattered in different departments with seemingly insignificant positions came together with visible career prospects. The unification caused a growth in size, and size generated trust resulting in the assignment to run the Bachelor of Business Information Systems the following year. Ironically, while the leadership of one school had discounted me as one of the malperformers in a program that I had so dearly helped to take place and thrive, the leadership of another entrusted me with a program in which I had bare interest and orientation. I learned that running a program and organizing and leading a team had very little to do with my academic training. What actually worked was the zeal and readiness to understand human behaviour and the knowledge of strategies and resources.
The shift also allowed me to apply my knowledge of and skills in rhetoric, the field I was struggling to specialize in through my doctoral study. I was autonomous regarding syllabus design, pedagogical innovations, and resource management. I had my own students, my own team, and the trust of counterparts as diverse as law, biotechnology, pharmacy, environmental science, computer science, civil engineering, computer engineering, mechanical engineering and electrical and electronics engineering, among others.
I do not think a similar incident will not occur again. But if it does, I will take it just as it comes. In August 2013, I might have fretted and grumbled a little in the circle of close friends. But I have grown eleven years since and been tougher in temperament and forbearance. Now I will take adversity as an opportunity to know new manners even if the persons involved were too familiar yet too cryptic. The shifts I have experienced so far have instilled in me a positive fear of stagnation. My past was as simple as this. When I felt that I had matured enough to sense peaceful vegetation or painful vengeance with no prospect for high intellectual engagement, I took a move no matter how uncertain the consequences were.
Because my roots are my fortitude. I was born in and have been a part of a lower-middle-class, the multiethnic social stratum of a rural village of north-east Morang as the fourth child of liberal Hindu Brahmin parents, for whom religious practices were more like rituals than faithful engagements. I grew up with a character as an offshoot of the time when anti-Panchayat, progressive indoctrination for socio-economic transformation defined a youngster’s upbringing in a lower middle-class agrarian family. That is why the threat “It won’t be good for you!” had rung just as big as a fly’s buzz to me in August 2013.
I entered teaching in December 1994 at a nursery school based at Kerkha, Jhapa, and started to make ‘social and educational’ contributions. It was when I was waiting for my IA second-year results. I moved to a secondary English medium school at Urlabari, Morang, after seven months. This was after I had joined BA and had to be close to Urlabari Campus to manage my studies and job comfortably. I came to Kirtipur, Kathmandu, at the beginning of 1997 in order to pursue MA studies. I started teaching at the secondary level at a school situated in Naya Bazar, Kirtipur. I also served at the same school as the vice principal and learned some administrative skills. My nearly seven-year-long school teaching ended in August 2000 after I made it to Kathmandu University’s Department of English.
The professional dimension of my life is marked by reasonable moves. I moved three times to arrive at KU in 2000, all for good. At KU, I have already made four moves, all for good. The first was from School of Science to School of Arts (June 2005), the second to Engineering (August 2013), the third to Management (January 2019) and the fourth to Education (April 2022). Each move also gave a tweak to my disciplinary orientation. In the last twenty-four years, thus, I have substantially designed syllabi and taught courses as diverse as general English, technical/professional communication, media studies, cultural studies, creative writing, fiction and prose, managerial communication, logic, academic writing, postcolonial studies, and critical theories. But I have never failed to adore my decision to move to Engineering in August 2013. This surely laid the foundation for my transfer to Education in April 2022, though fairly late. But no matter how eventful the period between August 2013 and April 2022 must have been, the teacher in me remained calm, cool and consistent in learning and facilitating learnings.
Till I decided to vie for a permanent position as a lecturer at KU in 2002, I had never seriously reflected on what I was doing in my life. But the fact that I had hardly ever cared to know what lay beyond teaching and was willing to be permanent at KU attested to my lifelong attachment to the classroom. I could indeed never be in the street or the parliament or the corporate world or the public service office or anywhere else. And ever since I realized that I was born to be a teacher, I have borne this simple maxim: “Some jobs are made in heaven, and teaching is one.” So, my perennial social responsibility entails my work as an educator. As much as an educator, I think I have contributed substantially as a mentor, an opportunity creator, a conflict negotiator, a challenge taker.
A teacher, indeed, is endowed with a broad spectrum of influences through the student population representing an unfathomable spatio-temporal expansion. I deem it needless to claim to have promoted a particular cause or served a particular community or geography.
This Hemanist just wishes to go on working at the pace and potential of his share.
