Ashoka University row: Academics convey ‘distress’

New Delhi, March 20

Over 150 academics from top global institutions have written to the trustees of Ashoka University expressing distress over the resignations of political commentator Pratap Bhanu Mehta and economist Arvind Subramanian.

Mehta, who resigned on March 16, also received the backing of former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, who said in a post today that Mehta was like a “thorn in the side of the establishment because he skewered those in the government and high offices with vivid prose and thought-provoking arguments”.

The leading economist said Mehta’s resignation was a “grievous blow to free speech and the Ashoka founders have bartered away the varsity’s soul”. “If you show a willingness to barter your soul, is there any chance the pressures will go away?” said Rajan.

Separately, over 150 academics from Oxford University, New York University, Stanford University, Cambridge University, Princeton University, the University of California, among others, wrote: “We are distressed to learn of Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s resignation under political pressure. A prominent critic of the current Indian government and defender of academic freedom, he had become a target for his writings. It seems Ashoka’s trustees, who should have treated defending him as their institutional duty, all but forced his resignation.” — TNS