When Manmohan Singh passed away on December 26, 2024 at the age of 92, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was fulsome in his praise of his predecessor. His statement, despite the vast difference between the two men in their ideological and political sensibilities, is significant but hardly surprising, given Singh’s local and global stature. Modi’s words represented what should ideally be the norm in mainstream politics and in the realm of public decency. Hence, it was only to be expected that political and ideological divisions would collapse as local and world leaders, both past and present, united to pay tribute to Singh – a clear demonstration of the respect he commanded in politics and life.
In stark contrast to this outpouring of grief and respect at the national and international level, the usually loud and persistent X and Instagram handles of South Asian University (SAU), as well as its website, were abjectly silent on Singh’s death and his life. One might ask why a university in India’s national capital – nominally led by SAARC, but in reality, run today solely on Indian funding and based on Indian interests – should have any interest in a national leader. The answer is simple and self-evident: without Singh’s political intervention and leadership, SAU would not have come to being in Delhi or elsewhere. The university owes its very existence to the man whose passing it has institutionally and conspicuously decided to overlook.
Why Singh should have been remembered by SAU
Singh is remembered as the architect of economic liberalisation in India. One may agree or disagree with his neoliberal principles, but anything happening in the Indian economy today would be inconceivable if he had not taken the first step. This is to say, the present is always built on the past and memory, like hindsight, helps us look at things more reflectively and cautiously. But SAU does not seem to take heed of this uncontested truism.
Also read: A Prime Minister of Quiet Strength and Decency: Remembering Manmohan Singh
Singh should have been important to SAU on multiple grounds. One, he was simultaneously a nationalist, regionalist and globalist. It is in his regional incarnation that former foreign minister of Pakistan, Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, referred to Singh’s well-known wish that “he looked forward to the day when it would be possible to have breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul.” In this sense, more than any other political leader from the region, Singh clearly epitomised the regional underpinnings of what SAU was supposed to be: a regional intellectual platform where the divisions between nation states in South Asia would diminish in classrooms, in students and teachers’ activities and even in the food served in the canteens. The fact that these expectations were once partly achieved and now have been almost fully dismantled is a discussion for another day.
Two, it was Singh who ensured that the university was established when it was merely a lofty idea that had been floating around the region for a long time, initially conceptualised by South Asianists such as Ashish Nandy, Imtiaz Ahmed, Kanak Dixit, and others – including myself. The university’s website still notes – almost grudgingly – “the idea of establishing a SAU (SAU) was mooted by the Prime Minister of India at the 13th SAARC Summit in Dhaka in 2005.” Singh was the 13th prime minister from 2004 to 2014. I say ‘almost grudgingly’ here because there was a time in this same historical context when the university identified Singh by name and didn’t relegate him to a nameless, cold single-sentence reference as it has done today.
While this erasure has happened on multiple fronts, SAU’s social media feed is updated with ordinary and mundane occurrences. They also vociferously flash incidents related to its current president as ‘news’, varying from receiving awards to opening a Yoga Center in the university. In comparison to this, there is still nothing on the man who is one of the university’s most important founders, nor its authors, who also have been erased from the university’s conscience.
Watching from afar, I was reminded of Romanian-American writer Elie Wiesel’s words, “without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilisation, no society, no future.” This is effectively what has now happened to SAU. Its current leaders, including the president, have no sense of history or memory, despite their fundamental necessity as a civilisational attribute. Even the iconic programs that gave impetus and identity to the university – such as the lecture series, ‘Contributions to Contemporary Knowledge’ and many others – have been relentlessly dismantled, rendering the university not only non-iconic but also mediocre. But this absence of history, memory and traditions which makes organisations rootless can also be seen in all new private universities too. Most universities today are no longer centres of thought or reflection, but factories churning labour for the job market.
Also read: Manmohan Singh: A Man of Integrity Among the Unscrupulous
It is regrettable that SAU’s essence has been destroyed in recent years, amidst the choreographed timidity and deafening silence of all employees.
It appears that Singh’s specific erasure from the university’s public institutional memory and history also stems from the way mediocre minds generally work. The university’s president, and the people he has surrounded himself with, have surmised that this erasure is expected by the current Indian government. This symbolises a typical thought process only explained through utter subservience and a complete lack of gratitude. However, to its credit, the Indian government suffers from no such amnesia, as is evident when it comes to its clear public statements about Singh.
With this unforgivable act of public callousness and ahistorical collective misbehaviour, SAU and its employees have become as Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey once noted, like ‘a tree without roots… A people without knowledge of their past history, origin and culture.’
As a Buddhist, my thoughts are with Singh’s family and all Indian citizens with a sense of memory and history: “Anicca vata sankhara. (Impermanent, alas, are all conditioned things).”
Sasanka Perera is chairman at the Colombo Institute for Human Sciences and director at Tambapanni Academic Publishers.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
