Ashoka University founder Bikhchandani takes on India’s intellectual Left

Instructing academics on the value of political neutrality in a university is like throwing a stone at a hive of wasps. The danger of multiple stings, most being painful, is very real. And unlike honeybees, wasps don’t have to suffer the consequences of a sting.

Investors and entrepreneurs like Sanjeev Bikhchandani—a founder of Ashoka University—are just discovering the wasp-like behaviour of activists who populate India’s intellectual landscape. Investments in “liberal arts” institutions like Ashoka University is very different from investing in, say, a defence start-up. The returns are not in the nature of innovative products or intellectual property but more like a cohort of students turned into political activists. This “investment” is of a very different, troublesome, kind.

On 4^th June, Bikhchandani wrote a letter to the Ashoka University community in which he questioned activism in the university. He also stressed the importance of political neutrality in a university. Coming on the heels of la affaire (Ali Khan) Mahmudabad, the missive made sense. The entrepreneur also mentioned how the university was becoming a headache for him and other founders.

A week later, on Tuesday, political activist Yogendra Yadav penned an op-ed in The Indian Express where he criticised Bikhchandani. Among other things, Yadav wrote that, “…can any university, least of all a liberal arts university, fulfil its educational mission without permitting, respecting and fostering active engagement with real-life questions of its time? Such active engagement deserves to be celebrated as a civic virtue. If this is activism, then liberal arts education and activism are connected by an umbilical cord.” In effect, Yadav wants a liberal arts university to be activist.

That drew a sharp and cogent retort from Bikhchandani again. In a post on X on Thursday morning he reminisced about an encounter with Yadav some years ago and noted his (Yadav’s) leftist political inclination and the contradictions that accompany such positions. “I guess this is the dilemma of the socialist deep left. You need the money that only industry can give you so you must break bread with them and pitch. At the same time you deeply mistrust industry and your reflex is to attack it.”

He added that, “Ashoka was established to foster academic excellence, intellectual curiosity, and a deep commitment to inquiry across disciplines, including the liberal arts. It was never meant to be an instrument of ideological activism—neither from the left nor the right. To assume that liberal arts education necessarily entails institutional alignment with a political cause misunderstands both the mission of a university and the principles of academic freedom. Encouraging students to think critically is essential. Institutional neutrality, however, ensures that this critical thinking happens in a space free from political capture—by any side.”

There is truth to what Bikhchandani writes. Virtually all Indian academics in humanities—and Yadav is no exception—have a deep streak of political activism. Bikhchandani, in contrast, has a very different conception of what a liberal university should be: a venue for free spirited inquiry into different academic disciplines. The two streams—despite Yadav’s strenuous effort to conjoin them—are distinct in nature. Understanding the world and changing the world are two, very different domains. Indian academics, down to the last man (and woman), are loath to admit that they are different.

In his op-ed Yadav mentioned the need to think critically and the necessity of a free exchange of ideas in a university. This has been flouted almost systematically in all Indian universities. “Free spirited enquiry” in such settings is usually a hand-folding or a finger-grasping exercise where impressionable minds, fresh out of schools, are gently—but firmly—guided towards one ideology. The same outlook continues on the journey of such students when they acquire doctorates and enter the university system. Over time this has led to intellectual inbreeding of an extreme kind. The results are visible to anyone and Bikhchandani is an example. His assertion that Indian intellectuals mistrust (and probably) dislike the very people who fund them is the dark underbelly of Indian intellectualism.

Ali KhanAshoka UniversityLeft politicsSanjeev BikhchandaniWeb Exclusive