South Asian University mirrors India’s challenges at home and in the region

Recent incidents at SAU reinforce the view in the neighbourhood that India is no more the region's multicultural, plural model.

India's everyday battles over what people eat, what is allowed, and what is taboo to the point of lynching a perceived offender have been so normalised over a decade that they now seem as ordinary as road rage. Most such incidents are moderately violent, some are murderous, and some fatal. It's par for the course now. So, it should not be surprising that violence over food should seep into a campus, as it did the other day at the South Asian University in Delhi. 

Yet it is  surprising. The institution is not just another university. It was set up under an intergovernmental agreement by SAARC, and is a regional diplomatic project with the following objectives as listed on its website: “[B]uilding a culture of understanding and regional consciousness; nurturing a new class of liberal, bright and quality leadership and building the capacity of the region in science, technology and other disciplines considered vital for improving the quality of life of the people...”

The incident took place on Shivratri, on February 26. Some SAU students observing the day were of the view that the non-vegetarian fare at the college canteen should be served in a separate area, away from their own ‘satvik’ food. It did not work that way. Words ensued, and a satvik student reportedly hit a student mess representative, who argued against food segregation. The police visited the campus on the complaint of the student who was assaulted, a woman. As she was Indian, Delhi was saved the pain of explaining to parents from a neighbouring country a campus incident days after the death by suicide of a Nepali student at Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology at Bhubaneswar in Orissa. 

Still, as a special space for nurturing people-to-people contact in South Asia, the fracas places the institution under an unflattering regional lens at a time that New Delhi's relations with its neighbours are not the best. It serves to reinforce the view prevalent in the neighbourhood that India is no more the region's multicultural, plural model, and casts an unflattering light on the absence in India of a life skill called ‘cultural competence’ that marks truly multicultural societies. In the Global South, Indonesia, for instance, is said to have high levels of cultural competence.

In the 15 years since it opened its doors to students, there have been other incidents too that show that far from ‘building a culture of understanding and regional consciousness’ and nurturing a new liberal and enlightened leadership in the region, SAU is now no different from any other institution of higher education, mirroring India's cultural and political wars  and replicating  the tightening of restrictions on academic freedoms and student life in universities across India. 

It would be easy to blame SAU's condition on the paralysis in SAARC. The university was initiated at the 13th SAARC summit in Dhaka in 2005, by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and was signed for implementation at the next summit in Delhi. It finally got off the ground in 2010. It was a time of high optimism. Even the India-Pakistan chill over the Mumbai 2008 attacks did not derail the project. Delhi seemed a natural choice for the university of the region, because of its offerings — a rich academic culture, vibrant campuses and student community, as well as the capital's layered history, its cultural life, and its cosmopolitanism.

Bold as the experiment was, SAU could not remain insulated. Funding from Pakistan stopped as tensions with India heightened from 2016 — Islamabad's turn to hold the summit remains indefinitely postponed — while the pandemic and economic crises in Sri Lanka and the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan led to the drying up of funds from these SAARC members. It is now almost entirely funded by India, through the Ministry of External Affairs. The governing board, which met in 2023 after a gap of six years, met again this January. Over the years, the number of non-Indian students and faculty has dwindled. India has stopped giving visas to Afghan and Pakistani students.

The truth is that Delhi too is no longer the welcoming destination for South Asia's young people as it was in the 2000s. In hindsight, with India's cross-border ethnic, religious, and linguistic affiliations giving domestic political agendas an important place in foreign policy, SAU may have been better served by being located in some other capital in the region.

India now seems content to let the institution wither along with SAARC. Imagine if Delhi could set aside its domestic wars and its cross-border suspicions, rejuvenate SAU with more finances, invite academics and young people from the region to return, give them the freedom to learn and question, and allow the institution to bloom to its original liberal purpose. ‘Neighbourhood First’ may actually win some hearts for India instead of being seen as a security slogan and a project feast for friends with benefits.

(Nirupama Subramanian is an independent journalist. X: @tallstories.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.