Resignation of a certain Pratap Bhanu Mehta and another certain Arvind Subramaniam from a fledgling University, named grandiosely after the great Emperor Ashok, is supposed to have shaken the very foundations of freedom and liberal thought in the country. M/S Mehta and Subramaniam may well be great academicians as fellow intellectuals certify, but I fail to understand the arrogation of the role of the “seat of liberal thought and abode of free minds” by the Ashoka (with an extra A) University and lamentations on its subsequent fall from the high tower of our moral radar.
Set up in 2014, the Ashoka University is acclaimed to have become the very font of liberal expression in the country. Duh, really! In just six years? And, acclaimed by whom? This self-important pompous self-award of the title of “wielder of moral compass of the nation” by an infant university, as lifespans of universities go, is jarring at best and cocky grandiosity at worst. Not more than a couple of batches of students may have passed out from its portals and they have yet to leave a mark on the society they are expected to lead to great heights. Classifying such a university as a great thought leader just on the basis of a beautiful building and a clutch of liberal arts professors cobbled up from afar, is unacedemic and unappetising.
It claims to run on free and unencumbered donations and on American level of exorbitant tuition fees, which will attract only the privileged and the elite and yet will propound theories of egalitarian social order. It cannot claim nor can it be thrust upon with the greatness of an Oxford (set up in 1096), a Cambridge (1209), or even an Al Azhar (970). The protestor gang writing copiously in English media to defend M/S Mehta and Subramanian also imply that a great seat of learning has been toppled and the free society in India is gasping for air. Well, Gentlemen and Ladies! Great seats of learning are built after centuries of honing and burnishing, unrelenting pursuit of excellence of scholarship and pedagogy. Even in the new world, the great universities of Harvard (1636) and Princeton(1746) took the long path, not the one beaten by media and cronies. Yale University, the epitome of liberal thought and dissent, a JNU to the world, was setup in 1701 and did not achieve its stardom in six years, fifty years or even a hundred.
Being new is not a disqualification by any means. In India private institutions as new as the Shiv Nadar University (set up in 2011), the Amity University (2010) and the SRM University among many others have served the society well, not only in liberal arts but also in science and technology. Even the Lovely Professional University of Jalandhar is a privately funded institution, has a far bigger campus, more beautiful buildings and larger faculty and massive student populations. But none of them claim to be leading lights of humanity. I really wonder how the Ashoka University has assumed such pompous grandiosity in just six years!
In a country, where every Tom, Dick and Harry can abuse the Prime Minister on live TV and rogue gangs of students profess breaking-up of the motherland in college campuses, I wonder what retributions challenged the conscience of M/S Mehta and Subramaniam and what stabbed the already bleeding hearts of English speaking upholders of societal values. Whatever may have ploughed these heartbreaking scars on them, the Ashoka University cannot claim to have achieved any stardom riding their backs.
I would like to suggest to the Ashoka University faculty and its backers to sit down at their tables, do some hard and gruelling academic work, publish some incisive research papers, study-documents and turn out students, year after year, who serve the humanity with humility, compassion and foresight. Mere conferences and patronages do not a great institution make. They should make a good beginning by rechristening the University the Ashok University (without the anglicising A) for that was the name of the great Emperor.
