Silence And Choreographed Timidity at South Asian University: Interview of Sasanka Perera by Anushka Kahandagamage and Kaushalya Kumarasinghe. 

Prof. Sasanka Perera

[Sri Lankan academic Sasanka Perera, left the South Asian University on 31 July 2024 which he had helped establish as a SAARC institution. His leaving was consequent to a targeted attack against him as the only Sri Lankan scholar in the university and one of handful of non-Indian teachers in a heavily Indian dominated space. Perera’s leaving and the widespread global coverage it received is significant black mark against academic freedom in India in general. It also marks the steady Indianization of the South Asian University which was meant to be a place of teaching and reflection for all South Asians. In this wide ranging interview, two former South Asian University students, Anushka Kahandagamage based in New Zealand and Kaushalya Kumarasinghe based in Sri Lanka speak to Perera at length about the incidents itself and its circumstances.]

This is the part two of the interview. [Part one can be read here]

Anushka Kahandagamage: Do you believe there’s a conflict between the university’s international character and the expectations or pressures from specific national governments, particularly in relation to sensitive topics? 

Sasanka Perera: Let’s face it. South Asian University is no longer an international University. It is now merely a third-rate local Indian university that happens to have the words ‘South Asian’ attached to its name. You might as well call it the ‘North Indian University for South Asia’ which rings more truthful. One of the most basic issues I always confronted was officials conducting meetings in Hindi and sometimes even in Punjabi. A Sri Lankan Computer Science student once complained to me that his classes were at times conducted in Hindi, which he did not understand. These are among the ground realities.

Look at the facts. SAU’s President is Indian. Its Vice President is Indian. Its Registrar is Indian. Its Director and Deputy Director (Finance) are Indian. Most of its bureaucrats are Indian. The Director of the Institute of South Asian Studies is also Indian. SAU’s rules specifically prohibit this kind of appointments, specifically at the top level. Further, all its Deans are Indian, and all of its Heads of Departments are Indian while all the consultant academics of dubious background hired by the President in recent times are also Indian. The vast majority of students are Indian too. So, what is South Asian or international about this place?

When I was the Vice President as well as in the time of the first President Prof G.K. Chadda specific outreach programs were designed for Sri Lanka and Bhutan because these countries were underrepresented in the student body. There was an immediate increase in student applications and recruitment at the time. But nothing like this has been done in recent times. SAU no longer admits students from Pakistan and Afghanistan. SAU never attempted to attract students from the Maldives to apply where they historically showed little interest in SAU though its government paid its dues.

Kaushalya Kumarasinghe: So, you are saying SAU’s South Asian or internation character is no more?

Sasanka Perera: It is obvious, isn’t it? Yu would have seen that happening during your time at SAU too. SAU’s South Asian character has been dismantled over a long period of time. This has also been possible because there has never been any serious critique of the steady Indianization of the university by colleagues or most students by and large.

As far as I am concerned, this is now a failed South Asian project though it began with considerable promise. All other countries should now officially withdraw from SAU and allow the Indian government to carry this forward as a purely local and very below average institution.

I hold colleagues within SAU responsible for allowing this to happen. The Ministry of External Affairs of India is also directly responsible for consistently deviating from the established norms of appointing Presidents and always appointing Indian political appointees who do not have the foggiest interest or track record in anything South Asian or even global in any other way. Look at the first press conference of the present President. He thought it was very smart of him to hold it at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia. But everyone who spoke including himself were all Indian when the university actually had at least six non-Indian faculty members and plenty of students from countries other than India who could have spoken about the university’s South Asian character with some degree of legitimacy. This did not happen. They were all marginalized.

Let me point to another telling factor of the erosion of the university’s South Asian character: Since early this year, all ‘national’ days of SAARC nations were put into the SAU’s calendar with the promise to celebrate all of them. This was an important decision. But only the Indian Independence Day and Republic Day were celebrated with the participation of the SAU President with much pomp and pageantry. Absolutely no recognition has been given to the other South Asian countries’ national days.

So, the question is, why should any other government fund a university that is now for all intents and purposes an Indian college?

The University picks non-Indian faculty members as targets and more specifically those who have a vision. Comparatively, Indian faculty members, with serious complaints of sexual harassment against them or of academic malpractices are not touched. The Dean of Legal Studies Ravindra Pratap, whose appointment itself is illegal as he did not fulfill qualifications for Associate Professor has charges of sexual harassment against him. No inquiry has been held into these charges. Instead, he was made a member of the inquiry committee against me. At least two students have formally complained against the Head of Sociology Dev Nath Pathak for academic malpractices but no inquiry has been conducted against him either. It is very clear that if you are a vocal non-Indian you will be punished. I would dare the current President to conduct an inquiry against Ravindra Pratap and Dev Nath Pathak by a committee consisting of credible representatives from South Asian countries.

Anushka Kahandagamage: Let us come back to the issue of your PhD student’s research proposal. Did the other professors, the Head of Sociology and the Dean of Social Sciences seem to be ok with the PhD proposal? Was the proposal approved by all the members of the department as per the university guidelines? 

Sasanka Perera: Let’s look at how this process works. Under my direct supervision, and under the guidance of two other faculty members, Ishita Dey and Ankur Datta who are part of the student’s Research Committee (RC), the student wrote a proposal. He presented it to the faculty and students in an open forum and received numerous comments and criticism from faculty members. Then, he revised it, again under my supervision and the guidance of the Research Committee.

Importantly, I had also written to the two RC members especially asking if the proposal had any issues of sensitivity given my relative unfamiliarity of Indian and Kashmiri politics and what is and what is not considered sensitive. I received no advice on this. I assumed this is because there was nothing to offer. And for the record, I must say, I had no issues whatsoever with the proposal and I still do not. It is an excellent piece of work submitted by a bright and very hardworking student. Later, it was presented to the Academic Committee of the Department of Sociology which consists of all faculty members of the department and two members from other departments. All of them approved it formally as the minutes of this meeting show. This includes the Head of Department of Sociology Dev Nath Pathak who then forwarded it to the Dean as there were no issues.

The Dean kept the proposal with him for months without taking any action on it, playing with the future of the student, and thereby showing complete lack of professionalism. It was the Dean, Sanjay Chaturvedi who, in his own wisdom found the now infamous Chomsky quote objectionable. However, and amusingly, he belongs to a department which claims to work on “critical approaches to the study of International Relations”. According to SAU rules if there is an issue with any research proposal, it is supposed to be sent back to the student and the supervisor to revise. As a former Dean, I had done this several times. It is a simple procedure. And there were no issues ever. But instead, Chaturvedi made a formal complaint against me which President Aggarwal was ready enough to proceed with. I am at a loss to understand what had been presented as his enormous experience in institution-building when his name was nominated as the incoming President by the Indian government. So far, none of that experience is apparent in the way he has handled this case.

Be that as it may, what I find far is worse is, neither the Dean nor the Head of Sociology have so far specifically and formally advised the student how he should edit his proposal. He is now in a situation of limbo for months unable to do his research. This is criminal. How can the life of a young university student be so casually wasted by a group of people who call themselves academics? What is the meaning of something so fundamental as the ‘right to education’ in this situation?

This kind of harassment of students without consequence is unheard of in any other university. If it had been a normal public university in this country, these people would have by now been taken to courts.

Kaushalya Kumarasinghe: The student involved in this case has issued an apology. Do you think regular pressures are placed on students and faculty members to conform to certain political narratives? Is there a way to balance academic inquiry with respect for diverse perspectives? 

Sasanka Perera: He has not tendered an unconditional apology as it seems to be popularly understood and reported. He has simply stated n his response to the university that he apologizes if the interview he had conducted has hurt anybody’s feelings. That’s all. For me, this is very normal and reasonable. The issue is not this. What has been done to the student and to me in this situation, are completely unreasonable and woefully unethical. This kind of thing should not happen anyone. These have been witnessed by my own former colleagues in the Department of Sociology as well as the Faculty of Social Sciences which also includes the Department of International Relations and the university in general in absolute and shocking silence. Unsurprisingly for SAU and surprisingly for what is expected from a  decent university that is worth its salt, absolutely no one has uttered a single word. My former department, which I have spent considerable time building, and almost all university colleagues have maintained a very obvious and deafening silence.

Ironically, many of these people within the department and Faculty of Social Sciences were recruited by me, and almost all of them have worked with me on some occasion or another. The lack of concern both at a personal level and fairplay is disconcerting. It is shameful — to put it mildly. But not at all surprising. This is exactly what happened when two of my former colleagues were illegally suspended from the university with two others from Economics and Law Faculties last year.

So, forget safeguarding academic freedom. They do not even have voices of empathy and collegiality when scholars the world over were raising questions on the attacks against me, and my colleagues earlier. And these are all people who wax eloquent about ethics, freedom of expression, public sociology, critical International Relations, academic freedom etc. But more than on any other occasion they have proven to the world, to the alumni and to SAU’s current students that this is all just pretense, and they merely pay lip service to these lofty ideals because they sound intellectually sexy in the global conference circuit.

But there are clear consequences of this silence and what I call ‘the institutionalized and choreographed timidity.’ As a result of all this, no critical and self-reflective research will be conducted by or via South Asian University. I am talking about all departments. Absolutely no one would want to supervise such research given the now clearly established timidity. It is a different matter if some students may want to do such work

So now, SAU is simply not a place for serious politically sensitive but crucial social research. I have heard that the student in the center of this controversy, because of his interest in studying memory in Kashmir, has now been informally advised to study folk dance and music. Unfathomable! So, the way in which SAU balances and deals with such themes has now been totally compromised, and that too from within. SAU is now merely an extension of the Indian state. Or, it is just a  regular government office.

But I must concede, this has not happened due to specific instructions from the Indian government; it has happened because of the interests of people within the university like Dean of Social Sciences Sanjay Chaturvedi, Head of Sociology Dev Nath Pathak, and President K.K. Aggarwal who want to be seen by the state as looking after its interests. This happens when you have clearly mediocre and self-serving people without any vision in positions of power and influence.

Regrettably, this kind of institutional behavior or individuals will always be dictated by Indian interests as no other government or tax-payers in any other country are seriously interested in SAU anymore. As it is, it is only the Indian government that pays for SAU’s upkeep now.

*To be continued…