It felt good to freely roam the institution that once led me out, escorted by security guards. But I left with many questions.
I visited South Asian University (SAU), New Delhi, in January this year, two years after having been expelled for allegedly violating the student code of conduct by organising a students’ protest against authorities’ highhandedness in 2022. I entered it as a student of Oxford University. A new wave of respect was in the air, thanks to my new affiliation .
I was surprised when the new SAU president, K.K. Aggarwal, agreed to meet me – many SAU students say that this is an impossible feat. When I met him, I said many students still feel the administration is indifferent to their concerns. He responded by promising to rebuild the trust between the administration and students. He seemed practical and willing to engage.
Two months after that meeting, the student against whom the proctor took disciplinary action for citing Noam Chomsky – who had been critical of Modi – in a PhD proposal on Kashmir politics, quit the programme. A few days ago, the university expelled another student, Sudeepto Das, for “misconduct”. His misconduct was resisting the unreasonable demand of students allegedly affiliated with the right-wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) to stop serving fish in the university mess on Maha Shivratri.
Since 2022, SAU has taken disciplinary action against 13 students, six faculty members, several non-teaching staff and some contractual staff. Not all of these disciplinary actions have been made public. What’s happening at SAU might seem unsurprising amid rising intolerance in university spaces and shrinking academic freedom since Narendra Modi’s rise in 2014. But, how did SAU – an international university established by SAARC nations to promote South Asian integration and peace – fall to this? How do we make sense of this chaos where the university can drop the guillotine on anyone for a whisper?
I have no definite answers, but certain things seem clear to me. First, as an international organisation, SAU’s unique governance structure enables it to operate without any accountability to the democratic institutions of SAARC nations. An effective internal mechanism could ensure accountability, but none exists.
Second, though no single SAARC country can legally control the university’s affairs, India wields enormous leverage over it due to its substantial financial and administrative support. Nothing else can explain the silence of the SAARC secretariat and other SAARC nations while the university slips into a Hindutva bastion.
Discipline without due process
SAU expelled me on November 25, 2022. A month later, it constituted a committee to investigate the allegations in our expulsion orders. I appeared before that five-member committee: Shibnath Majumdar, Sanjay Chaturvedi, Bibhupada Tripathy, Deepa Sinha, and Kapil Sharma. The then acting president, Ranjan Mohanty, did not know that conducting an inquiry after expelling students is a procedural violation, leaving room for the Delhi high court to quash our expulsion orders later.
Lesson learnt, this time, the proctor, Kapil Sharma – under the new president, K.K. Aggarwal, and the new vice presidents, Pankaj Jain, Pranab Muhuri, and Sanjay Chaturvedi – followed a more procedurally sound process: he issued a show cause notice, conducted an inquiry, and then expelled Sudeepto Das.
However, a closer look at the recent expulsion reveals a deeper rot plaguing the university. I was told that both parties filed complaints, but the proctor issued show cause notices only to Sudeepto and the mess secretary, Yashada Sawant, not to the ABVP students. I am in possession of copies of their complaints. Nor did the proctor provide the two students with a copy of the witnesses’ evidence and enough time for a meaningful cross-examination.
Most disturbingly, this entire process made Yashada invisible. She says, “The ABVP students inappropriately touched me while I resisted them.” Further, “The university administration not only failed to provide any support; they even blamed me for the sexual assault, despite eyewitnesses.” The university has a history of insensitively handling harassment complaints. For instance, Yashada’s previous complaint against Ratan Singh – who led the Maha Shivratri incident – for catcalling met a similar fate.
One doesn’t need a magnifying glass to see how the university violates due process in its proctorial proceedings. Not to mention the expulsion orders that merely state the student has violated the code of conduct or committed gross misconduct – without further explanation – puts such students at a severe disadvantage if we wish to appeal the decision. Of course, this is hardly surprising from a university that functioned without an Internal Complaints Committee for two years during COVID, one of the reasons that triggered students’ protests in 2022.
The disregard of procedural safeguards and the university’s slide into becoming a hotbed of the Hindutva agenda are closely connected to the lack of effective accountability mechanisms that could orient the university towards its founding ideals.
Lack of Accountability
When SAU expelled Umesh Joshi and me in 2022, we were unsure of how to proceed. Challenging the expulsion in court was not an easy option, given the university’s immunity from legal process due to its status as an international organisation. First, we approached several Members of Parliament from opposition parties to raise the issue in parliament. However, when they did, the Minister of External Affairs shrugged off any responsibility for expelling students and suspending faculty members, stating that India has no “direct control over…the university,” as it is an international organisation governed by the governing board.
The governing board (GB) is the highest policy- and decision-making authority in the university’s administrative structure. It consists of two members from each SAARC country. As the chief executive officer, the SAU president acts under its direction and reports to it. In short, the GB is meant to ensure that SAU remains true to the ideals enshrined in the international agreement that established the university.
Due to political tensions between India and Pakistan, the GB did not convene for six years, from 2017 to December 2023. The then university administration thus operated without any oversight. It was during this period that there were allegations of financial mismanagement, and the university took arbitrary disciplinary actions against students and faculty members.
However, the GB has proved ineffective in holding the administration accountable. Consider, for instance, the 2023 GB meeting. The press release states that the GB “appreciated the untiring efforts of the Acting President, Acting Vice President, and Acting Registrar of SAU for their active role in successfully managing the affairs of the University during the transitional period”. This transitional period lasted from 2019 to 2023, when SAU had no full-time president, vice-president, and registrar.
Furthermore, the GB functions without transparency. The minutes and decisions of the GB are not in the public domain, nor are the internal regulations that the GB is supposed to follow. During my time, we did not even know who the members were. Even the faculty members remain uninformed.
The international status not only insulates SAU from the scrutiny of the Indian parliament but also complicates access to judicial remedy. Although the Delhi high court quashed our expulsion orders for violating principles of natural justice, it withheld relief for the suspended faculty members, treating the former as an educational matter and the latter as a service matter. Moreover, the current administration has appealed the high court’s decision quashing the students’ expulsion. We now have to wait and see whether the division bench closes its doors to the aggrieved, leaving them entirely at the university’s mercy.
Finally, though India legally lacks control over SAU’s functioning, it bears the entire capital expenditure and 57.38% of operational expenditure. India’s substantial financial and administrative support grants it leverage in shaping the university’s affairs. Such leverage is evident from the predominantly Indian (and also ‘upper’ caste) faculty and administrators, many of whom are expected to demonstrate allegiance to those who hold the whip. However, the silence of the SAARC secretariat and other SAARC nations is more troubling and deepens the complicity.
SAU: More royalist than the king
SAU has left no stone unturned in furthering the Hindutva agenda: requiring students to sign a pledge not to protest; issuing a show-cause notice for citing Chomsky; taking disciplinary action for tweets criticising the university; failing to take action against those who damaged Babasaheb Ambedkar’s posters; and labelling some students and faculty members as “Marxists” during the 2022 protests.
Through this recent expulsion that legitimises the casteist notion of food purity, SAU signals a clear message. Despite its international status and stated objective to promote regional peace and integration, it is no different from any other typical Indian university when it comes to pleasing the right-wing government. Thus, it is no surprise that the ABVP heartily welcomes the expulsion as a reaffirmation of “truth and justice.”
SAU is no longer an international university committed to its ideals. Day by day, it is surpassing its previous levels of parochialism and academic intolerance, while continuing to traumatise students.
What does all this mean for academic freedom in South Asia? How does it impact South Asian regional integration? More urgently, how does it reproduce caste hierarchies? These questions warrant further research to understand how an international institution turned against its noble purposes, setting, in the process, a dangerous precedent for how an academic institution must not function.
Let me return to my visit to SAU in January this year. It felt good to freely roam the institution that once led me out, escorted by security guards. But I left with many questions: Why wasn’t I treated this way before? Don’t the people in charge understand that raising tuition fees, cutting scholarships, and taking arbitrary disciplinary actions affect students, especially those from marginalised communities? How can one be expected to think or reflect in a suffocating environment?
Bhimraj M is pursuing a DPhil in Law at the University of Oxford. He is a Gopal Subramanium Scholar at the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, Somerville College.
First Published on thewire.in