How we write is how we sing is how we live
Hindustani music and the pedagogy of writing, a pioneering writing centre at a public university, and a call for proposals for the Critical Writing Pedagogies Symposium at Ashoka University
Spotlight: The Linguistic Empowerment Cell, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Spotlight is a series where we focus on writing centres and writing programmes across the country, highlighting the nature and contexts of their work, demonstrating how they navigate disciplinary prerequisites and student needs vis-a-vis writing pedagogy concerns and practices.
The contributor, Chinmoy Saikia, teaches a course in critical writing at Ashoka University.
The Linguistic Empowerment Cell (LEC) at Jawaharlal Nehru University began as a modest capacity-building initiative in 2010, led by Dr Vaishna Narang, eminent professor of Linguistics, in collaboration with the School of Law and Governance. Its primary mission sought to address challenges faced by students from diverse regional and educational backgrounds, particularly those with limited exposure to English-medium instruction. Over the years, the LEC has evolved into an important academic support unit at JNU, helping students meet the many reading and writing demands of higher education.
Dr Garima Dalal, Associate Professor and the chief coordinator of the LEC, speaks fondly of the early days of the LEC when a team of ten guest faculty would conduct sessions in the mornings and evenings, outside of regular class timings. And the students would come in great numbers; for many of them the English language functioned as a foreign language rather than a second language: a distinction, emphasises professor Dalal, of great consequence.
“When I conducted this UPE project on first-generation language learners of JNU, I was very shocked to understand that English is still a foreign language to them. If we connect the dots, and look at it from an academic and professional communication perspective, students cannot understand lectures. They have the mental capability and capacity to absorb ideas, but not in a language which is not familiar to them. LEC came into being to help these students.”
In those early days, diagnostic tests classified groups of students by proficiency levels, though this approach was later abandoned due to logistical constraints exacerbated by the numerous challenges that JNU faced during the second half of the 2010s and, later, during the COVID pandemic. Today, the LEC’s flagship offerings are two non-credit, audit-based courses: Basic Communication Skills and English for Academic Writing.
Pedagogically, the LEC distinguishes itself through its flexible, learner-centric approach. Classes are bilingual (Hindi and English), ensuring accessibility for students across disciplines, from Sanskrit to biotechnology. Instruction is activity-based, eschewing too much “theory” in favour of practical, discipline-specific applications. For instance, students may analyse numerical conventions or citation styles in readings from their own fields, or they may be asked to write a small response, based on a presentation, which would then be followed by a discussion. Students may participate in different variations of these tasks, in groups or individually. Assessments, too, are bound within the classroom confines, ranging from citation-error identification to presentations and writing tasks.
The mix of the student body in an LEC classroom offers fascinating insight into the functioning of the Indian public university. In the absence of departmental support, students from all levels of study at the institution seek out the LEC to learn a number of essential academic skills. As such, the classroom is often a mix of undergraduate and graduate students, both masters and doctoral. Many of the students are also referred to the LEC by their supervisors. Over and beyond these courses, the faculty members at the LEC also offer one-on-one consultations to scholars who require customized feedback on their writings or specific insights to help them synthesise their literature review.
“Professor Narang used to say [that] linguistic empowerment is cognitive empowerment because then scholars have the skills and the knowledge. We are there to bridge that gap, where they can put that knowledge into English so that they can reach out to the masses.”
The picture one receives of the LEC is that of a small but fiercely dedicated unit within a large university which has relentlessly attempted to bridge a number of institutional gaps with regard to comprehension and academic expression and prevent the most vulnerable students from falling through the cracks. Having persisted through a decade of funding trouble and logistical difficulties, the LEC has learned to adapt. Dr Dalal and her colleague, Dr Sandesha Rayapa, have also been co-supervisors to doctoral students in varied departments. Most recently, after the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) at JNU, the faculty members at the LEC have begun to offer two-credit value-added courses under the School of Languages. Informal collaborations flourish as well: various departments within the university often invite LEC instructors to lead sessions on academic writing or plagiarism in their departments.
In the days to come, there is hope that the LEC will transition from a “cell” to a full-fledged center, a move that would formalize its research and supervisory roles. This would include advanced courses in academic writing and broader institutional partnerships. In the meantime, the team—led by Professor Dalal and comprising two permanent and several guest faculty members—continues the good work, bringing both care and rigour to their fabulously diverse classrooms.
Origin Stories: Writing, Music and the Art of Close Reading
Origin Stories is a series where writing teachers or tutors discuss their journeys into the worlds of critical writing pedagogy. The contributor, Dipanjali Deka, is a musician and performance studies scholar, currently teaching at the Centre for Writing and Pedagogy, KREA University.
A few years ago, I was sitting in riyaz with my Hindustani Classical Guru, working on Raga Bhairav. We had just begun the swar vistaar (note elaboration), and I was eager to move from the mandra saptak (lower octave) to the madhya saptak (middle octave). She gently stopped me and said, “Abhi kitna kuch karna baaki hai yahan… time nahi hua upar tak jaane ka (There is so much left to do here… it’s not yet time to go up yet.”) And then she guided me through it. For the next thirty minutes, we meditated on the notes of the lower octave. It was a lesson in not just slow attention and patience but also in understanding the infinite exploration of possibilities within a short range of musical space. Years later, I was reminded of this in a completely different context.
When I started working with the Writing Pedagogy Centre at KREA University, one of the things that struck me was how closely the writing pedagogy experience resonated with my years of learning and singing Hindustani Classical Music. This short piece is a reflection on a few of these shared sensibilities between learning to write and learning to sing.
Writing pedagogy at KREA is discipline-agnostic; it teaches the craft of writing. It is about learning how to engage with texts, and these texts come from a variety of disciplines, from sociology to neuroscience. The idea is to enable the learning of certain skills using those texts. Eventually, the texts become tools that help one see beyond their content. Closely examining these texts for “form” becomes a way to understand what goes into one’s own writing. The aim is to look beyond what is being said and focus on how it is said. This, I realised, was quite like the way we train in Hindustani Classical Music.
It is common to hear singers describe classical training as their foundational discipline, even when they perform in other genres. Classical music pedagogy is immersive, and it teaches one to thoroughly explore the musical grammar of a raga. Even when the lyrics come into focus through the bandish (composition), the words remain in service of the sur (melody). In Hindustani music, sur is central. The training of the how dominates than of the what. In fact, training of the sur takes precedence in a way rarely seen in that of lyric-driven genres. To know a raga is to know the rules, grammar, and emotional landscape of a particular melodic scale. With sustained practice, that knowledge enables a listener and a singer to recognise the raga in songs, whether in a classical bandish or a film tune. It allows a singer to compose within its form. One can certainly enjoy music without knowing the raga, just as one can write without “knowing” the craft. But classical training does sharpen aural awareness. It attunes both the singer and the listener to the constituent elements of the form.
So, asking if one can teach writing is akin to asking- can one teach classical music? The answer is yes, both can be taught, and both require rigorous training. And once the foundational skills are learnt, they can be applied across genres and disciplines, whether in writing or in music. How else are the two connected? Writing and singing are both modes of emotional expression. Both work within structure. But beneath these surface similarities lies something subtler that connects the two practices more deeply: slow and close attention. In music, it manifests as attentive listening. In writing, as close reading.
Close reading a text is the practice of slowing down to notice the details we often miss when we skim. It’s about rereading a passage to find emerging patterns, repetitions, unexpected punctuation, or a peculiar word choice. These are often the keys to a deeper meaning that is not immediately available. Close reading allows us to interpret and reflect, to say something about the text in our own voice.
I was once reading Neerja Mattoo’s analysis of a vakh by the 14th-century Kashmiri mystic poet, Lal Ded:
Siva is everywhere, know him as the sun
Know the Hindu no different to the Muslim
If you are wise, know yourself,
That’s the way to know the Saheb
Mattoo traces the progression of the word know through this poem—from the clearest form of knowing (the sun), to the more layered knowing of non-difference between Hindus and Muslims, to the most difficult knowing of all: the self. And through that, to the ultimate knowing, realization of the divine. Her close reading of the seemingly obvious and simple vakh reveals an interpretation that a cursory glance of the vakh cannot uncover.
In classical music, to closely listen to a raga is to observe the swara (note) work in relation to the other notes. For instance, despite having the same swaras in their scales, the Raga Bhairav and Raga Kalingda are different in how the swaras are treated. In Bhairav, there are deep slow oscillations around komal re and komal dha, giving it a pensive nature, which is not seen in Kalingda. In musical passages, ga becomes a resting point in Kalingda and not in Bhairav. Despite having the same notes, ornamentations and temperament differentiates the two: just as human twins would look different in how they dress up or move, or how two similar passages would work differently with a change in punctuation. How one chooses to join two notes - through a glide or through a brief pause can create two completely distinct emotional impact. Slowing down allows one to observe this micro-ecosystem of notes, microtones, frequencies, and transitions. Even when it comes to a song as we understand it, one could pause to attentively make such reflections.
Consider a verse from the ghazal Ranjish Hi Sahi, sung in Raga Yaman by the maestro Mehdi Hasan:
maana ke mohabbat ka chhupaana hai mohabbat
chupke se kisi roz jataane ke liye aa
Agreed, in hiding lies the beauty of love,
Yet, quietly, some day, come and confess to it.
Hasan repeats the word maana (agreed) thirteen times, and each repetition is subtly different. Through voice alone, he inflects the word with a range of meanings—plain acceptance, yearning, surrender, even mild annoyance. The flattened “agreed” on paper transforms into a spectrum of emotions in the performance. The voice creates the text of the music. Just akin to great writing, repetition in great music is never mechanical. Each recurrence adds something new, enriching the emotional landscape of the piece.
In a way, what my guru asked of me, to stay anchored in the lower octave during Riyaz, resonates with what Mehdi Hasan and Neerja Mattoo did when they explored a single word in a song or a vakh until it yields all its meanings. Writing and singing both demand a discipline shaped by deep listening and attentive reading. They are practices in cultivating awareness of the text and the movement of a note. To read and listen closely — to punctuations and pauses, to notes and words, to glides and metaphors — is to train oneself in that attention. It is through this attention in listening and reading, that we begin to grasp not just what is being communicated, but how and why.
Call for Proposals: Critical Writing Pedagogies Symposium, Ashoka University
The Undergraduate Writing Programme at Ashoka University invites proposals for the second edition of the Critical Writing Pedagogies Symposium, to be hosted at Ashoka University on 18 and 19 April, 2026.
Two years ago, when we convened the first symposium we hosted participants from over 18 institutions across the country, and saw the beginnings of an integrated community thinking and addressing the same problems. There was a shared sense that critical writing pedagogy in India—practised across disciplines and teaching contexts—had reached an exciting moment of coherence.
But the terrain continues to shift. So, with the benefit of two years, we return with renewed questions: How do we define critical writing from where we stand now, in a post-AI present? What practices—old or new—constitute the core of this work? With universities and society undergoing rapid change, what does our teaching within the classroom look like exactly?
We invite proposals in two categories: lesson demonstrations, where the presenter shares an activity, lesson plan, or teaching technique with the audience; and research papers, where the participant presents a scholarly idea. The symposium will be held in a hybrid format. All demonstrations will be done in person at Ashoka University. Papers will be presented online. When submitting your abstract or proposal, please indicate whether you are applying for a lesson demonstration or a research paper presentation.
Please find the full call for proposals here. You can submit your abstract as well as write to us for any further query at: uwp@ashoka.edu.in. The deadline for submitting abstracts/proposals is 30 January, 2026.
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Critical Writing Pedagogies is produced collectively by the Undergraduate Writing Programme at Ashoka University and the Centre for Writing and Pedagogy, Krea University.
The newsletter is put together by Anannya Dasgupta, Neha Mishra and Sayantan Datta from Krea University, and Varun Andhare, Devapriya Roy, Chinmoy Saikia and Sameer Thomas from Ashoka University. It is designed by Varun Andhare. This issue was edited by Devapriya Roy and Varun Andhare.
Please drop us a line at criticalwritingpedagogies@gmail.com with any feedback, questions or comments. We are especially looking forward to your inputs for the “Announcements” section, where we will highlight hiring notices, calls for abstracts, research projects in development, upcoming conferences and symposia, and possible book- or journal-collaborations. We would be grateful if you emailed us about these.
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