We had two cabins on a high ridge: on one side a 3,500-foot drop into the Valley of Kashmir and on the other the rolling green slopes of the Gulmarg Plateau. We were somewhat isolated on that ridge except for the four squawking geese, some grazing cows, a few stray Indian tourists and some bearded Westerners.

We did not want to be alone for Kashmir was the summing up, and that seemed to bring us closer together again. We let go of the present for a time of reflection. We looked back and ahead. It was cool and comfortable enough for thinking and review. And the time was right: the final phase before new travel and the return home. We were quite relaxed: ready to be with each other, ready to reflect and even to write, ready to make a too generous assessment of what had happened to us. There, at the end, on that rolling alpine plateau, in good company, at ease, out of reach of the plains, free from the grasps of India, cooled down to a living temperature, it was inevitable that we would see the past months in the best possible way….We would be selective to our advantage. And that fits. India likes happy endings no matter what.

But you will want something more definitive: celebration of our learning of course, but the failures and confusions and questions as well. Our most solid accomplishment was the maintenance of the group, its morale and with it the structure of the program…Conversation was always possible…

The structure held but not the content…The great failure of the program was the required academic project. It was treated in many ways: postponed, evaded, divorced, abandoned, renounced, circumscribed, and even completed…It was one prime ingredient in getting the faculty’s approval…But the fact remains that these projects just did not come off as credible pieces of academic research…

A good number of students…wrote about themselves not as scholars but as involved observers, changing in the very act of observing. And some went so far as to argue that Williams-in-India was not only a misnomer but an impossibility. It had to be each one of them in India not the institution….

It must be evident from our correspondence and newsletters that our encounter with Indians has been uneven and troubled. We have disliked much more than we have liked, especially those who try to be most like us…To see the other is not to like or respect him…

We go away now…But we have just begun our reflection. That must go on. And so it will: first at home, with family and friends; then back at Williams with friends and the institution.”

Read Williams In India Newsletter

final newsletter to parents