For me, the most distressing and disturbing sight for the last two days have been the images forwarded to me, in which the hand-baggage and the vehicles of students arriving in Ashoka University for the next semester are being thoroughly searched, including glove compartments. Scanners and metal detectors have been installed at Ashoka as enhanced security measures. But to prevent what? What is it that Ashoka University does not want its students to bring in the campus? I am trying to think, but cannot think of anything young students cannot bring in as part of what they would like to have with them. Surely the management does not think that the mother of the student would have lovingly packed a pot of marijuana for the boy to consume; which the security person will confiscate during their frisking and help keep the campus pure and uncontaminated? Good educational institutes normally plan a welcome for the returning students. I, myself, have planned such sessions giving incoming students floral bouquets and welcome notes with a smile, so that both students and their accompanying parents feel good. Why does Ashoka think that it has to treat its students as criminals who will necessarily come to campus for disciplinary subversion and that their baggage must be checked to keep the university crime-free?
Although ‘institutionalized education’ is primarily a 'support' function, it has nearly universally degenerated to a 'control' function through which the school controls every aspect of one’s life. Students have to follow arbitrary rules and obey without dissent. Many eminent thinkers have extensively written about this aspect of institutionalised schooling. Jerry Farber’s 1967 underground classic The Student as Nigger talked about the master-slave relationship in modern educational settings as the students are overly constrained and intellectually demotivated.’ Paulo Freire’s Danger School graphically illustrated how students are cut off from life, and placed in a world of unchangeable rites—a world of silence and immobility. The pupils must keep quiet, listen, obey and are judged. The teacher talks, knows, gives, orders, decides, judges, notes and punishes. Ivan Illich’s visionary classic De-schooling Society described the harm such schools do as in: “Most students intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. The pupil is thereby ‘schooled’ to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new.”
The freedom to have another point of view, the freedom to disagree, and the freedom to express a dissenting opinion without fear—these are the bedrock of a university education. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, one of the co-founders of Ashoka University, writes, “Ashoka values openness and a spirit of inquiry”. Yet, from the beginning, Ashoka has been intolerant of vehement opinions, especially those opposing the incumbent government. Since its founding in 2014, faculty members have been regularly asked to leave Ashoka for expressing such opinions. In October 2016, Professor Rajendran Narayanan, and two other employees were allegedly asked to leave because they signed a petition against human rights abuses in Kashmir. In March 2021, two faculty members, Pratap Bhanu Mehta (the former Vice Chancellor of the university) and Arvind Subramanian resigned, alleging a curbing of academic freedom in the university. Mehta openly and staunchly critisised the Narendra Modi government. In August 2023, Assistant Professor Sabyasachi Das from the Economics Department resigned, following the university's decision to formally distance itself from his controversial work.
Ashoka’s problem is the mindset of those who founded, funded and are now firmly in control of the university. However, it is only the independent and fearless scholars who ultimately attract intellectual development in an educational space. Professor Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who has remained a leading critic of the United States of America’s (USA) foreign policy since 1960s, contemporary capitalism, the USA’s involvement in the Israel-Palestine conflict, has for example, never been asked to leave MIT. Professor Chomsky does not get his eminence from being a professor at MIT, but MIT does get its eminence from having independent and critical thinkers like him.
Ashoka’s website describes itself as “providing a holistic education that is liberal…offering a diverse and inclusive space for its students to think deeply and critically…express themselves creatively, and communicate with meaning to cause impact and change. Students are encouraged to explore ideas, engage in research, and focus on values and ideals of the highest order to experience self-transformation within the duration of their education and henceforth.” However, I would think that if those are the objectives, the first thing the founders and funders of Ashoka should have done was to have distanced themselves from the running of the university. Before I expand on this, let me give an example of another university which began with similar aspirations nearly a century ago — the Banaras Hindu University (BHU). It formally came into being in 1916, primarily a brainchild of Madan Mohan Malviya along with Annie Besant, and was generously funded by Maharaja Rameshwar Singh of Darbhanga and Prabhu Narayan Singh and Aditya Narayan Singh of Raj Darbhanga. Thakur Jadunath Singh of Arkha, and other noble houses of United Provinces contributed to the development of the university. However, the funders did not insist on running the university. The University has since been run by eminent educationists, scholars and scientists, among whom are two Bharat-Ratnas, and several Padma Vibhushans and Padma Bhushans. The Vice Chancellor list of BHU reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of eminent and internationally renowned scholars and scientists. The faculty list is equally distinguished, with a list of alumni who have enriched India and the world with their contributions to multiple fields.
Unlike professional managers and people with service mentalities, who want to be on the right side of the incumbent powers, true scholars and scientists are fearless and can be trusted to create and run institutions on the courage of their convictions. They take decisions based on those convictions unlike those whose decisions are shaped by convenience and wanting to avoid trouble with the authorities.
On the other hand, the current Board of Management of Ashoka University includes—besides the Secretary to Government— Haryana Education Department; Mr Pramath Raj Sinha, Chairman, Board of Trustees; Zia Lalkaka, CEO, HT Parekh Foundation; Rahul Mookerjee, MD, YoNao Capital; Aditya Ghosh, Akasa Air; Karishma Shanghvi, Sun Petrochemicals; and the administrative employees of Ashoka like the Vice Chancellor, two Deans and a Professor of Ashoka University who cannot really be expected to oppose an opinion expressed by the Chairman, Board of Trustees. Hence, most of them come from a service background rather than academic environments. One must remember that being a corporate leader does not equip one with a fearlessness which is expected from a knowledge leader who fights their way for the truth.
Mr Sanjeev Bhikchandani, one of the co-founders and who seems to be the spokesperson of Ashoka regularly demonstrates a lack of consistency in his statements. He derides student participation in university’s affairs by saying that the student council (called the Student Government) is “under the impression that their mandate is to govern the university”. Is Mr Bikhchandani so ignorant as to be not aware of the world-wide students’ protests from the 1960’s after which most great universities now allow student participation in university management, including faculty selection and courses taught? Mr Bikhchandani claimed that “parents do not pay fees at Ashoka so that their wards can do andolans”. And then, he went on to say in the same post: “Ashoka is merely a liberal arts and sciences university” —- a ‘Liberal Arts’ university which does not encourage liberal values? Really? Are Ashoka’s website homepage and its co-founder even on the same page? Yeshwantrao Chavan, one of modern India’s tallest leaders used to say, “there is something wrong with a person if he is not a leftist when young”. Given the current mess the world is in, how is it wrong for the best and the brightest of our young minds to question the way things are, oppose them and suggest alternatives?
Let me describe two really liberal Universities I have personally experienced: The Royal College of Art in London, which continues to be the best art & design institute in the world for ten years running and gives complete freedom to its students. It is this freedom which lets its students discover their potential in their areas of interest without the school ever forcing its own point of views on them. The second is the Architectural Association (AA), one of the oldest schools of architecture in the United Kingdom (UK), founded in 1847. AA has been committed to producing and disseminating ideas that challenge and advance the design of contemporary culture, cities and the environment, constantly and fearlessly looking into the future.
It is a massive tragedy that on the one hand Ashoka tries to attract the best and the brightest of young creative minds from all over India and on the other, asks them to stop thinking differently and obey the arbitrary rules — rules made by those whose only qualification is that they are in Forbes India’s rich list ranked 68th; having made their money not by making an intellectual breakthrough but by cashing on the desperateness of the millions of unmarried and the unemployed. Unless Ashoka’s financiers have the good sense to dissociate themselves from the running of the university and hand it over to eminent scholars and independent thinkers who can operate fearlessly because of their eminence, Ashoka will remain as just a place for training obedient servants for the corporate world. It will be a finishing school for managers who only want to reach the top by acquiring the right credentials in a hurry.
Kirti Trivedi is a veteran designer and a former professor at IIT Bombay. He currently serves as a visiting distinguished professor at IIT Indore, and is an Ashoka Parent.
The article was first published as a LinkedIn post. The Edict has edited the article for stylistic clarity. Views expressed are personal.
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