Founders never interfered: Ashoka Chancellor

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 21

The Ashoka University establishment reacted for the first time today on the ongoing unsavoury row over the exit of professors Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Arvind Subramanian and said the founders had never interfered with academics and have always stood for intellectual independence.

Parallel to the response of Ashoka varsity leaders today, political scientist Mehta wrote a letter to students saying it was time for him to move on.

Urging students to find missions “larger than the fate of two professors”, Mehta said he had decided to close the Ashoka University chapter.

“The underlying circumstances that led to the resignation will not change in the foreseeable future, in my case, at any rate. So I must close this chapter,” Mehta said to the students noting that although India was bursting with creativity, “dark shadows of authoritarianism are also hovering over us”.

“We will have to find principled ways of overcoming this condition,” said Mehta.

Meanwhile, Ashoka varsity Chancellor Rudrangshu Mukherjee today countered the recent aspersions on the institution saying Ashoka was “committed to academic freedom and intellectual independence”.

Chairman of Ashoka’s Board of Trustees Ashish Dhawan in another letter to students said the institution would keep lines of communication open to understand each other better.

Mukherjee said the Board of Trustees stood for free inquiry, academic freedom and intellectual independence. The university leaders also said they wanted students to continue questioning the world around them, including the university.