University as Prison

For me the most distressing and disturbing sight for the last two days have been the images forwarded to me, in which the vehicles of the students arriving in Ashoka University for the new semester are being thoroughly searched, including glove compartments, and hand-baggage. Scanners and metal detectors have been installed at Ashoka in enhanced security measures. 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 can’t 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 un-contaminated?

Good educational institutes normally plan a welcome to the campus for the returning students. I have personally planned such sessions giving incoming students a floral bouquet and a welcome note with a smile, so that both students and their accompanying parents feel good. Why does Ashoka think it has to treat its students as criminals, who are coming to campus to create acts of 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 in a 'Control' function, where the school controls every aspect of the process. The students and the parents have no say at all. Actually, the more expensive the school, the more shabbily the students are treated. They have to follow the rules and obey. 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, in which students are overly constrained and intellectually de-motivated.’ 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, of immobility. ‘The pupils keep quiet, listen, obey, 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: ‘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 the university education. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, one of the co-founders of Ashoka, has written ‘Ashoka values openness and a spirit of inquiry.’ Then how come Ashoka, since the beginning, has been so intolerant of opinions of its own eminent faculty members when they expressed opinions which the management thought may somehow make Ashoka seems against the current government. Ashoka was founded in 2014. Since then, faculty members have been regularly asked to leave Ashoka for just expressing their opinion. In October 2016, faculty member Rajendran Narayanan, and two other employees were allegedly asked to leave because they signed a petition on Kashmir. In March 2021, two faculty members, Pratap Bhanu Mehta (formerly the VC of the university) and Arvind Subramanian resigned alleging a curbing of academic freedom in the university. Mehta had been an open advocate of liberalism, speaking openly about the 'Death of liberalism' under the Narendra Modi Government. In August 2023, Assistant Professor Sabyasachi Das of the University's Economics Department resigned following the university's decision to formally announce that it was distancing itself from a controversial paper by Das.

Ashoka’s problem is with the mind-set of those who funded, founded and are firmly in control of the university. Actually it is the independent and fearless Scholars like Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Subramanian who bring prestige and glory to the University. They attract the students. Prof Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT, who has remained a leading critic since 1960s of US Foreign Policy, Contemporary Capitalism, U.S. Involvement and Israel’s role in Israel-Palestinian Conflict; and is a highly influential voice in anti-capitalist movements has never been asked to leave MIT. Prof Chomsky does not get his eminence from being a professor at MIT, but MIT does get its eminence by having independent and critical thinkers like Prof Chomsky.

Ashoka’s website describes itself as ‘providing a holistic education that is liberal, multidisciplinary, and interdisciplinary, offering a diverse and inclusive space for its students to think deeply and critically, learn across disciplinary boundaries, 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.’

In my opinion, 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. Let me give an example of another university which began with similar aspirations nearly a century ago: the Banaras Hindu University; before I expand on this statement of mine.?

The Banaras Hindu University formally came in to 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 for the development of the university.

However, the funders did not insist on running the university. The University has since the beginning been run by eminent educationists, scholars and scientists, among them two later Bharat-ratnas, and several Padma Vibhushans and Padma Bhushans. The VC list of BHU reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of eminent and internationally renowned scholars and scientists: Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, Amarnath Jha, Acharya Narendra Dev, Triguna Sen and Kalu Lal Shrimali. The faculty list is equally distinugished: CV Raman, APJ Abdul Kalam, Girija Devi, Sucheta Kripalani, S.R. Ranganathan, Omkarnath Thakur, Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar; with a list of alumni who have enriched India and the World with their contributions: Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Bhupen Hazarika, Krishan Kant, Robert M. Pirsig, Mannu Bhandari, Kota Harinarayana and others.

Unlike professional managers and people with service mentality who want to be on the right side of the powers that be, true scholars and scientists are fearless and can be trusted to create and run Institutions on the courage of their convictions and take decisions based on those convictions, unlike those whose decisions are shaped by convenience and wanting to avoid trouble with the authorities.

The current Board of Management of Ashoka University includes besides the Secretary to Government, Haryana Education Dept; 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 employees of Ashoka like the VC, two Deans and a Professor of Ashoka University, who cannot really be expected to oppose an opinion expressed by the Chairman, Board of Trustees. One has to remember that being a manager, no matter how exalted, is still a service position and not a knowledge expert position. Being a partner in McKinsey and CEO of Anand Bazar Patrika does not equip one with a fearlessness which is expected from a Knowledge Leader. You still have to report to the client or the boss; and develop an attitude which likes to keep on the right side of the law and the policies of the government in power.

Mr Sanjeev Bhikchandani, one of the co-founders of Ashoka; seems to be one of the spokespersons of Ashoka, and who regularly demonstrates a lack of consistency in his statements; an authoritarian mind-set, and a complete lack of understanding of the young minds, for which he has self-appointed himself as a controller of attitudes.

He derides student participation in the management of Ashoka by saying that the ‘Student Council, called the student government is “under the impression that their mandate is to govern the university”. Is Mr Bhikchandani so ignorant as to be not aware of the world-wide Students’ Protests from the 1960’s after which most great universities allow student participation in the management of the university, including faculty selection and courses taught? Mr Bhikchandani has written ‘Parents do not pay fees at Ashoka so that their wards can do ‘aandolans’ and underlined his view that Ashoka does not boast of left-liberal values.’ And then goes 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?

There are more revelations about why Mr Bhikchandani is happy: ‘Ashoka is boring – thank God.’ Are Ashoka’s website homepage and its co-founder 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, is it wrong for the best and the brightest of our young minds to questions 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 10 years running; and which gives complete freedom to its students. It is this freedom, which lets its students discover their own potential in their own areas of interest; without the School ever forcing its own point of view on them. The second is the Architectural Association (AA), one of the oldest schools of architecture in the 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. Its admissions page says ‘We are looking for students who have a combination of curiosity and ambition that is required to define a unique path through a school that fosters a multitude of pedagogical methods and agendas.’

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 then asks them to stop thinking differently and obey the 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 just remain a place for training obedient servants for the Corporate World, and a finishing school for managers who want to reach the top in hurry by acquiring the right credentials.

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