“He was constantly nose-deep in general knowledge textbooks to a point where his epistemophilia was positively anti-social.”

We all know kids like that in India, mugging useless trivia to ace quizzes, to enter GK competitions and — who knows? — perhaps one day to score those extra marks in a vital competitive examination.

The acquisition of knowledge is a national preoccupation in India, but unlike in most countries, it is rarely about acquiring true mastery of a difficult subject or deepening one’s understanding of the world and its mysteries. It is rather a test of memory that involves remembering an obscure fact for its own sake and recalling it just when it matters, at the key moment when the question is asked to which that particular fact or detail is the answer.

This pursuit, a harmless enough hobby in my student days — I founded the Quiz Club at St Stephen’s College in 1974, well before quizzing acquired its current monstrous proportions — has made epistemophilia a rampant disease in our schools and colleges.

It is unhealthy because it divorces knowledge from its true purpose, and because it gives its victims the mistaken impression that they are knowledgeable, when all they have done is memorised information of no earthly use outside the rarefied environs of a quiz competition. Here’s one more campaign for our slogan-shouting campuses: “Down With Epistemophilia!”