Founders of Ashoka Should Know that a University Can't be Equated With Hierarchies of a Corporate Office

The response of Sanjiv Bikhchandani, one of the founders of Ashoka University to the criticism that the institution had displayed a lack of moral courage because it did not support Ali Khan Mahmudabad, is of some concern. Ashoka was set up as a Liberal Arts and Sciences University, writes Bikhchandani, and activism and liberal arts are not joined at the hip.

But the ideology of liberalism, Mr. Bikhchandani, happens to be historically aligned to political struggles to realise liberal ideas: freedom, equality and justice. We cannot think of liberalism without remembering multiple struggles against entrenched, entitled, elites whether feudal or colonial. We cannot disassociate liberal ideas, ideals and ideologies, from political resistance to power. The two are joined at the hip.

More astonishingly he writes that he asked Google AI a question; ‘Are all liberal arts universities activist in nature?”. He proceeds to cite the answer with approval. Liberal Arts education, according to a programmed A.I, focuses on a holistic approach to learning, emphasises critical thinking, communication and a broad understanding of various subjects. It aims to develop well-rounded individuals with a strong ability to think critically, communicate effectively and solve problems. The readiness of students to engage in civic activities is not a universal requirement of all liberal arts institutions.

Mr. Bikhchandani concludes from the wisdom dispensed by Google A.I, that activism in Ashoka is a choice and does not go with the territory. The duty of the faculty is to teach an academic course, publish research in a peer-reviewed academic journal, present a research paper in academic seminars, and publish books based on research.

This is academic scholarship. I have no problems with this interpretation of university life, and I speak as an academic who has taught in Delhi University for forty-four years, and tried to inculcate standards of excellence in my students.

Academics are also public intellectuals responsible for, and to the wider society they live in

What one of the founders of Ashoka University does not seem to recognise, is that academics are also public intellectuals responsible for, and to the wider society they live in. They should be conscious, as other citizens should be, of their responsibility to their fellow citizens, particularly to the most vulnerable and the most targeted.

An individual who is purely devoted to his or her intellectual pursuits, and who is indifferent to injustices and inequalities-the spectacle of minorities being harassed by the majority, poverty, misery, violence and the prospect of the country going to war – is a peculiarly self-interested intellectual. What, we may ask, is the point of academic scholarship unless it addresses the malaise of society through thought and action?

In any case, the idea that academics live in ivory towers was disproved in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Take the stance of Emile Zola in the famous Dreyfuss affair that shook France in 1894 right up to 1906. An army captain Alfred Dreyfuss was convicted of treason for supposedly selling military secrets to the Germans in December 1894.

As Hannah Arendt, the famous philosopher suggested, the onrush of public condemnation of Dreyfuss despite scant evidence, heralded the beginnings of anti-Semitism in France. There is evidence to back up her allegation. Much of public protest against the army captain was led by anti-Semitic groups, such as the newspaper La Libre Parole edited by Edouard Drummond that represented Dreyfuss only as a disloyal French Jew.

This was the precise time when intellectuals realised that they had no choice but to exit their respective ivory towers and involve themselves on the side of the righteous. Emile Zola, novelist, journalist, and playwright published an open letter titled J Accuse in Clemenceau’s (the first Prime Minister of France after World War 1) newspaper L Aurore. Zola accused the army and a number of public officials of covering up a botched-up enquiry into Drefuss’s case.

Addressing the President of France he wrote; “This is the plain truth Mr. President, and it is terrifying. It will leave an indelible stain on your presidency…I have said it before and I repeat it now: when truth is buried underground it grows and it builds up with so much force that the day It explodes it blasts everything with it. We shall see whether we have been setting ourselves up for the most resounding of disasters, yet to come.”

Zola concluded the letter, which has become famous the world over, with this paragraph: “I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my own soul. Let them dare then, to bring me before a court of law and let the enquiry take place in broad daylight! I am waiting”.

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A case of libel and a huge fine was slapped on Zola. Later Dreyfuss was pronounced innocent. An academic is not merely a transcendental observer of the theatre of life, as a public intellectual he or she has to be an active participant in struggles against the oppressions of life itself. We have to take sides; the easy path of neutrality is not for us.

We have to be on the side of struggling humanity fighting for nothing less than justice. Academics have to be part of the crusade for freedom from the cruelties of exclusion and marginalisation. The public intellectual cannot be above politics, or be immune to the tragedies of the human condition.

Edward Said in his Reith Lectures on Representations of The Intellectual makes a powerful plea along these lines. He cited the French novelist and philosopher Julian Benda (1867-1956) author of the famous The Treason of the Intellectuals (1927). Benda denounced intellectuals who gave up moral truths and commitment to justice in return for political profit.

According to Benda, wrote Said, real intellectuals are never more themselves than when, “moved by metaphysical passion and disinterested principles of justice and truth, they denounce corruption, defend the weak, defy imperfect or oppressive authority.”

For me, argued Said, the intellectual has a specific role in society. He is “endowed with a faculty for representing, embodying, articulating a message, a view, an attitude, philosophy or opinion to, as well as for, a public. The intellectual’s place is to raise publicly embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma and to be someone who cannot be equated with governments or corporations. The raison d’etre of an intellectual is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug. The individual does so on the basis of universal principles: that all human beings are entitled to expect decent standards of behaviour concerning freedom and justice from worldly powers or nations and that deliberate or inadvertent violations of these standards need to be testified and fought against courageously.”

The public stance of these individuals has to be in tandem with her or his private beliefs. Then only will she acquire some standing in the public eye. The message is that academics/ public intellectuals have to fearlessly take up cudgels to show a mirror to their society. This is the vocation of the intellectual; this is her passion.

The debate on significant public issues has to be conducted in classroom and academic seminars, but academics should also intervene in public debates in popular journals. To dismiss articles written by academics in newspapers and online news portals as non-academic is palpably unfair. We are academics but we are also public intellectuals.

As citizens of the country we bring our academic learning to interpret and judge political events, whether it is the looming spectre of war, or the lynching of minorities, and demand justice. We write for other academics, yes, but we also write for the Indian people, of the Indian people, and we speak to them. What is the point of knowledge if we cannot give our evaluations of earth shattering events such as right-wing populism not only to our students but also the reading public. We will lapse on our obligations to society.

What is the point of all our reading if we do not raise our voices against injustice?

What is the point of all our reading if we do not raise our voices against injustice? To stay away from intervention in public life might even reek of snobbishness. But we must take care of how we approach this task, not as patronising intellectuals who give to society, but as committed citizens of India who want to be a part of a wider debate.

We learn from society much more than we give to society. So let us not have an elitist view of the university, let us see it as the space we teach our students what the difference between information churned out by a media that had become a public relations arm of the executive, is, and knowledge.

Don’t confine young minds and great minds to the cloisters of an elitist university, Mr Bhikhchandani. Let the knowledge generated in your university spread to the whole of India and to the world, even if this is done through social media posts. Glory in the idea that the faculty and students take from and give to society. This will not dilute the rigour of academics, it will just become more communicable.

Let me end this piece with reference to one of my favourite writers Sohail Hashmi. Sohail in an introduction to Saif Mahmood’s book ‘beloved Delhi’ tells us that Mahavira and the Buddha, believed to have lived in the sixth or the fifth century BCE, were the first major figures to challenge the hegemony of Sanskrit in spiritual matters.

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They were the major catalysts for processes that spanned several centuries, and that led to the evolution of a large number of languages in South Asia. Among these languages was Urdu. The processes unfolded across the dusty plains of North India in an epochal sweep and carried with them an amalgam of beliefs, traditions, rituals, cultures, mythologies, music, food, literary expressions and much else.

The mainstream with its many tributaries and distributaries was a celebration of diversities; a river flowing across centuries, meandering, stumbling, and bursting through obstructions. The cultural and social upheaval that truly powered this river was unleashed by the revolutionary decision taken by both Mahavira and the Buddha to communicate with their growing number of followers in the natural languages of the people, the prakrits, and not in Sanskrit, the enriched language of the ruling elite.

This one act, suggests Hashmi, dislodged Sanskrit from its pre-eminent position as the sole arbiter of spiritual matters and made it possible for languages and dialects of the common folk to become mediums for serious intellectual enquiry.

The idea is to spark off a conversation among students.

For the first time questions about who we are, and what is our purpose of existence began to be debated and pondered over by the plebians; by those who were considered to be incapable of understanding the subtle nuances of spirituality.

This should be the purpose of academics/public intellectuals, to speak in a language that communicates the common nature of our political predicament, and what we can do about it. In the process, we can forge an expanding circle of committed citizens who believe in the power of discussion to resolve issues. We resurrect civil society that recognises the competence of the political public to participate in discussions of politics, engage with the state, and offer resolutions of the issue.

Finally, a short observation on the purpose of academics in the classroom. The idea is not to speak down to young minds from the vantage point of superior knowledge. The idea is to spark off a conversation among students. And conversation unlike debate is unending, it has no winners or losers, it cultivates the mind, teaches us to rethink our original presumptions and become more enlightened, more socially conscious, and more responsive to our political predicaments.

Students will no doubt do well in life, but we do not want only success stories, we want enlightened citizens who can speak about the lack of freedom, abysmal inequality and institutionalised injustices in society. It is then that the university becomes a crucial zone of civic and intellectual engagement with power.

I do not mean to sound impertinent, but Sir, a university cannot be equated with the hierarchies of a corporate office. It is a democratic place of learning, conversation, and enlightenment so that young people can become responsible citizens of India, and so that they can become responsive to political exigencies and the bare life our fellow citizens lead.

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