After the exits of Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Arvind Subramanian, Raghuram Rajan has said free speech is the soul of a great university, and by compromising on it, the founders of Ashoka University have bartered away its soul.
By: | New Delhi |Updated: March 20, 2021 3:11:13 pm
Raghuram Rajan said the resignation letters of both the professors suggest that the university founders have succumbed to outside pressure to get rid of a troublesome critic. (File Photo) Eminent economist and former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan has said free speech is the soul of a great university, and by compromising on it, the founders of Ashoka University have bartered away its soul.
Describing from the varsity earlier this week as “a sad development for India”, Rajan wrote in a post on , “Ashoka’s founders should have realised that their mission was indeed not to take political sides but to continue to protect the right of people like Pratap Bhanu Mehta to speak, for in doing so, they were enabling Ashoka to make its greatest contribution to India’s wellbeing –– identifying what is wrong and encouraging us all to remedy it.”
“The reality is that Professor Mehta is a thorn in the side of the establishment. He is no ordinary thorn because he skewers those in government and in high offices like the Supreme Court with vivid prose and thought-provoking arguments. It is not that he has much sympathy for the opposition either,” Rajan said.
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Putting on record his reason for leaving Ashoka University, Mehta had said in his resignation letter that the founders made it “abundantly clear” his association with the institution was . Calling the exit “ominously disturbing”, for academic freedom, Subramanian had sent in his resignation too.
At least two more faculty members are said to be on the verge of quitting.
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