Even as the faculty of Ashoka University’s Department of Economics wrote to the varsity’s governing council against the rejection of Sabyasachi Das’s controversial research paper on BJP’s 2019 Lok Sabha victory, another faculty member has put in his papers.
Sources in the know said that the resignation of Pulapre Balakrishnan, another professor of the department who put in his papers on Tuesday, followed Das’s resignation.
Several faculty members, in a letter to the governing council, said that they will not teach students unless the decision is taken back. “The offer of resignation by our colleague Prof. Sabyasachi Das and its hasty acceptance by the University has deeply ruptured the faith that we in the faculty of the department of Economics, our colleagues, our students, and well-wishers of Ashoka University everywhere, had reposed in the University’s leadership,” the letter, which was posted by the department on Twitter, read.
“We urge the governing body to address this immediately, but no later than August 23, 2023. Failure to do so will systematically wreck the largest academic department at Ashoka and the very viability of the Ashoka vision,” it further said.
Two more departments — the Department of English and the Department of Creative Writing — stood in solidarity with Das and wrote to the governing council. “We also demand accountability from the governing board and senior colleagues responsible for this debacle, and seek affirmation from the governing body that it will play no role in evaluating faculty research or make senior faculty carry out this exercise by appointing ad hoc committees or bodies,” the letter sent by the two departments read.
In his research paper ‘Democratic Backsliding in the World’s Largest Democracy’, Das pointed at voter manipulation by the BJP and mass voter deletion in seats it narrowly won. His paper, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, has been debunked. Ashoka University distanced itself from the paper. “To the best of our knowledge, the paper in question has not yet completed a critical review process and has not been published in an academic journal,” it said in a statement posted on twitter.
This is not the first time the varsity has seen a controversy with regards to criticism of the government. In 2021, then vice chancellor Pratap Bhanu Mehta resigned from his position after the trustees said that Mehta’s “intellectual interventions were something they could no longer protect.” Mehta has been a vocal critic of the government.