Ashoka University Founder Reminds Indian Liberals the Price of Wheat and Lentils

Two weeks after controversial Ashoka University professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad was released on bail by the Supreme Court, Sanjev Bhikchandani, one of the founders of the university and a prominent entrepreneur, wrote a mail to the university community that delivered some much needed home truths.

Bhikchandani’s mail strongly pushed back against the idea that activism and academic work are indistinguishable. This idea is a core tenet for much of the Ashoka University faculty and Mahmudabad is only one—extreme—example of activism gone rogue. Mahmudabad was detained by Sonipat Police last month after a controversial social media posts on Operation Sindoor, India’s military response to terrorist attacks by Pakistan that led to the killing of 26 civilians at Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) on 22^nd April.

Mahmudabad was valorised by in India’s liberal circles and his arrest was roundly criticised as having a “chilling effect”—a favourite Ashoka University expression—on free speech. The apex court was quick to come to his rescue but deemed it fight to appoint a Special Investigation Team (SIT) made of senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officers to parse through his social media posts. The court, clearly, did not give the professor a carte blanche on “free speech.”

The founder’s letter brought home truths that the university community has refused to admit, let alone understand and act upon. The founders of the university, who had envisioned a first-rate academic institution are now frustrated with what Ashoka University has turned out to be.

Bhikchandani went on to wonder aloud: “Ashoka is too much of a headache. Is it worth the effort? And you may not believe this, but money, even in this day and age, does not grow on trees but it still makes the world go around. Every rupee has to be sweated for. Try raising money for Ashoka. As Pramath put it to me the other day, Aatey daal ka bhaav pata chal jayega.” Pramath Raj Sinha is another founder of the university.

These were uncharacteristically strong words on the part of Bhikchandani. But in all likelihood he was forced to say what he did. The university is now an activist cesspit and not the research institution it was originally meant to be. This unbalanced approach between activism and academic work formed the bulk of Bhikchandani’s complaint.

“As an institution, Ashoka cannot take an activist position. Ashoka is a university under the Haryana Private Universities Act. It is governed by the law of the land — both Haryana laws and central government laws. It is answerable to regulators and to government authorities. It is not a political party or movement — it is an educational institution. It cannot take an activist position, and if any of its office-bearers wish to take an activist position personally, they may resign their offices before doing so.”

This is, by far, the clearest message delivered by a founder to the university on the erratic behaviour of its faculty members and students when it comes to activism.

The problem with Ashoka University’s faculty, and that of many such institutions across India, is that the refuse to draw a line between academic work and activism. This has spilled over into pedagogy and teaching. The result is a large body of graduates who consider that their first task in life is to oppose the government.

There is, of course, no problem in doing that. But if one wants to engage in that kind of work, the setting is a political party and not a university where one can claim that one is doing “academic work” while in reality it is pure and unadulterated political work. This creates multiple problems at different levels. For starters, once the distinction between academic work and activism is erased, any sense of objectivity in academic work also disappears. It is hard to imagine that such “activist academics” would write any objective analysis of various issues that confront a country like India. Is it possible for such a faculty to write objectively about India’s national security problems? As the Mahmudabad case showed, the understanding of such academics on these issues is, at best, jaundiced.

There are other, more practical, issues as well. The founders are entrepreneurs who have been generous in sharing their wealth and resources—including their time—to create what they had imagined would be a first rate university. But now, eleven years after the university opened, they are confronting what can only be described as political challenges. Bhikchandani’s words succinctly captured the issue at hand:

“In this respect, there is a policy issue I would like the Governing Body to take up: Is a full-time academic position at Ashoka truly full-time? Can a full-time academic also pursue a political career? In the private sector, we generally stay away from what are termed as “Politically Exposed Persons.” Should Ashoka have such a policy?”

The issue is not an entrepreneur getting cold feet at his creation but one where the creation has become a problem that cannot be solved.

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