A chilling precedent: Ashoka University staff on 'troubling' exit of Pratap Bhanu Mehta

Students, faculty members of Ashoka University rallied behind Professor Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who quit the private varsity claiming that his association with the university may be considered a political liability.

The faculty of the university issued a statement saying Mehta's resignation was a direct consequence of his role as a public intellectual and critic of the government. “We are greatly troubled by the scenario. Even more troubling is the possibility that our university may have acceded to pressure to remove Professor Mehta or request, and accept his resignation,” the statement said.

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They said Mehta's exit would set a “chilling precedent for future removals of faculty, curtailing our sense of who we are as researchers and teachers”.

Vice Chancellor of the varsity Malabika Sarkar, in a virtual town-hall meeting on Thursday evening, told students that Mehta was not ready to withdraw his resignation. Sarkar faced questions from the students and faculty members on the role of the trustees and founders of the university in Mehta's resignation, which also led to the exit of Arvind Subramanian, the former chief economic adviser, and professor in the department of economics at the varsity.

The Vice Chancellor told the town hall that she was not a part of any conversation between Mehta and the trustees.

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“The trustees have categorically told me to convey on their behalf that they never asked Mehta to resign,” she said during the nearly two-hour-long meeting.

The students of the university, in their campus newspaper, said that the town hall left many of them discontented and several questions still remained unanswered.

Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram slammed the Modi government over the resignations of Mehta and Subramanian from the university. “What does it say of academic freedom in this country if two distinguished economists have to resign as Professors of Ashoka University? The people of India must rise to fiercely resist the attempt to impose one though all over the country,” he said.

“'BJP Thought' or 'Modi Thought' will wreck the country and turn India into an autocracy,” the former finance minister said.