Dear Superheroes,
This is the most difficult letter I have ever written.
Because I have to tell you, Mummy is a slut. That's why Daddy is moving to Miami to live with his Yoga instructor. It's not your fault, champ. I will always love you. You can come see me during the holidays. Not the upcoming holidays but maybe in a few years time. Don't blame yourself for this at all. Like I said, your Mum is a diseased syphilitic whore who made my life miserable with her constant nagging. But I still love you. You are my super-hero! I know you'll do fine. Just don't marry a diseased syphilitic ho-bag who makes your life miserable. Also always use condoms. I wish I had.
I wanted to write earlier. But we are still processing the train of events that led to my resignation, along with Prof. Subramanian. I was personally overwhelmed by the outpouring of affection and support you have displayed over the last week. Your solidarity means to me more than I can ever express in words. It is affection that will overwhelm me whenever I will remember this week.
Fortunately, remorse is a sentiment alien to Mehta. He will never upbraid himself for letting down his 'affectionate' students. He won't blame himself for having destroyed their dream of graduating from a College with a good reputation.
But the deeper reason why this is difficult to write is this.
Your alma mater is a syphilitic whore who couldn't understand my needs. She was too stupid and provincial and ignorant to understand how to make me happy. She was so fuddy duddy and lower middle class- OMG if only she was more like Tiffany- the really amazing Yoga instructor I've moved in with. But, she can't be like Tiffany coz, let's face it, your alma mater is a desi ho-bag of Bania stock.
This is really difficult for me to write coz she is after all your alma mater. I'm not saying you should hate her. But do make her life a living hell. Tell her she is a petit bourgeois cunt. Compare her unflatteringly to Yoga instructors in Miami with names like Tiffany.
Ashoka as an institution stands indicted before your bracing moral clarity and deep political wisdom.
I'm so glad you called your Mum a cunt. I'm awed by your deep psychological wisdom. Listen, we must get together sometime- not over the holidays because Tiffany doesn't like kids, but maybe in thirty years we could have a drink together. Catch up. Maybe take in a show.
Your protests instantly grasped what we, your elders, failed to adequately understand.
It's like when you shat in your mother's lap. You were just a baby but you were already trying to teach me something which I've only now come to understand. The only proper way to treat that cunt is to shit on her.
Your protest was not about two individuals. It was about Ashoka’s institutional integrity.
Your alma mater is a fucking syphilitic ho-bag cunt of a petty bourgeois Bania who can't even speak Inglis gud.
But it was also about the dark and ominous shadows that loom over India democracy.
India is a shithole. Your alma mater is in India. Boy, are you fucked!
As we worry about Ashoka, you also reminded us that the challenges we face pale in comparison with what our academic colleagues in universities elsewhere in India face.
All Indian alma maters are shit. It's not just you who are fucked, anyone who studies in India is fucked seven times from Sunday. BTW & FYI, I got my first degree at Oxford.
You connected the dots.
Mehta had previously told his students 'if even the two strongest institutions in this country- Bollywood and the Supreme Court- have failed, then you can connect the dots'.
Mehta does not seem to be aware that the strongest institution in India is Parliament which is elected by universal adult suffrage.
Your protest was focussed on Ashoka. But it was about values larger than Ashoka. As many of you know, one of my favourite quotes is from George Eliot, “the right to rebellion is the right to seek a higher rule, and not to wander in mere lawlessness.”
Eliot was writing in the context of the vast majority of Britishers- including all women- not having the vote. The 'higher rule' demanded by Eliot was the one demanded by the Chartists- viz. a sovereign Parliament elected by universal adult suffrage.
Your “rebellion” was grounded in a concern for freedom and democracy.
No. The Students asked the Administration to get you and your friend to take back your resignations. Those young people had a rational and self-interested reason to do so. It is they who suffer- not the Trustees, who are rich and who have many irons in the fire- when their College gets a bad name.
You carried it out with dignity, grace and I might add, based on memes some of you shared, some serious artistic creativity.
But also, sadly, some serious illiteracy.
So what can we, those who let you down, say to you? The first thing I will say is this. In all candour, this episode will be seen to have hurt Ashoka’s reputation.
and thus the value of your sheepskin. Your peers are laughing at you for having been the victims of an obvious swindle.
But in a larger sense Ashoka’s reputation will be enhanced, not by what the University did but what you did. You may lose a couple of Professors. But anyone looking at you will wonder in admiration. The poise and articulacy with which your defended important values and demanded accountability should make anyone want to associate with this university.
But not to pay thousands of dollars to study there. Anyway, these kids can't quit now. They will have to go back to class or their parents lose their entire investment. The silver lining is that some who were planning to go on to Graduate School will decide that they had enough of being swindled and will quietly join the family business and make money so that their own kids can get into good schools and after-school crammers so as to make the cut of a reputable public College.
You are its beating heart and soul and nothing can damage that.
Hearts can be broken. Souls, says Raghuram Rajan, can be bartered away.
Second, it is not for me to intercede in this matter.
Intercede? No. Concede. You could have withdrawn your resignation saying 'the students come first. I will quit after I have ensured the current batch have all got good placements.'
But I imagine your voice will, in the long run make Ashoka a better university and get it to recommit to its ideals and values.
Whereas Mehta's own voice won't.
So your outpouring is already a victory of sorts.
but of the sort that is defeat and humiliation and the breaking of hearts and the soiling of dreams.
You have taught us by example, what we were badly trying to teach you by lectures.
Which was what? Protests are useless if you are paying through the nose to protest and only damaging yourself as a result?
You should be proud of yourselves. You should be confident that you will create a better world. You have already accomplished Ashoka’s mission.
Sadly, that last rings true. The kids have already been cheated. The Founders have moved on. One has a tech Uni coming up in Chandigarh- a place people actually want to live in- specializing in A.I, which is a subject people still have some respect for.
In institutional contexts, principles and values cannot be replaced;
Yes they can. German Universities had very different principles and values while the Nazis ruled the roost. After the War, they adopted different principles and values. They didn't replace all of the teachers but they soon recovered their reputation to a greater or lesser degree.
individuals always can. So my plea to you is this. It is time for me to move on. Teaching at Ashoka, particularly the last couple of years, has been an absolute joy. It reinforced the one conviction I have carried my life without fail: students never ever let you down.
In India, the problem is truant- or Drama Queen- teachers.
So giving up the company of Ashoka students and colleagues, disrupting our lives, and leaving a fine university, is not an easy decision. But it is, for me, the only honourable thing to do, consistent with my values; values I think you share.
This is probably true. Kids will leave Ashoka to better their prospects. They value themselves. That is perfectly understandable.
I also believe it is in the best interests of the university.
Fair point. The guy had become a laughing stock. He is mentally unbalanced. God alone knows what he will do next.
It is often said that you cannot swim in the same river twice.
No it isn't. Plato said 'step'. Heraclitus was saying that a river exists by flowing; the water that constitutes it changes otherwise, instead of a river, you would have a pool.
A College is like a river in that there is a flow of students. Teachers too, though much more gradually, flow in and out. But a teacher should not quit in term-time. That is reprehensible because students are damaged. Swimming in a river is okay but shitting in it is not permissible if people down stream drink that water. Yet, this is what Mehta and his chum have done. They have shown the typical irresponsibility and hysterical egotism of the phoren trained Indian academic who thinks he is too good for his milieu.
In the contrarian spirit of Ashoka, I tried by resigning twice!!
Contrarian? No. Foolish or fraudulent is the mot juste.
I hope even you might forgive me for not wanting to tempt fate again.
Why not go back to work- for the sake of the students- and then resign at the end of the academic year? People would say, 'Mehta is a bit of a Drama Queen, but his heart is in the right place'. Now they say, 'Mehta is a cunt.'
The underlying circumstances that led to the resignation will not change for the foreseeable future, in my case, at any rate.
Those underlying circumstances were wholly foreseeable. Mehta is either a fool or a knave or a knavish fool.
So I must close this chapter. I urge you not to press on this matter. I know you will be disappointed. But if I may exercise one last bit of professorial discretion: your mission is larger than the fate of two Professors.
Your alma mater is a ho-bag and your Gurus were knavish fools. But your mission is larger. You could be knavish fools who take to prostitution.
I hope the Trustees and Faculty will work with you to secure your renewed trust and confidence. With your guidance they will be able to secure the institutional autonomy and freedom Ashoka needs. You embody the courage, reasonableness and understanding of democratic values that will take the university forward. I request you to work with them to make Ashoka a success.
All young Indian people have courage and rationality and they value democracy. Does this mean they will get a good University education? No. For that money, brains, dedication and integrity are required.
We live in complicated times. India is bursting with creativity.
China, more so.
But the dark shadows of authoritarianism are also hovering over us,
China is authoritarian
putting us all in often uncomfortable and sometimes dishonourable positions.
So what? Look at what China has achieved thanks to patriotism and hard work.
We will have to find principled and intelligent ways of overcoming this condition.
We? My bet is Mehta and Subramanian will hightail it for Biden's Amrika where the anti-India lobby will get them cushy sinecures.
Most of us are reduced to lamenting this looming darkness. I leave Ashoka with the conviction that a young generation is emerging that will provide what Vivekananda said we needed. We don’t simply need people who cry darkness.
Which is what Mehta has done.
We need someone who can shine the light.
Which is what Modi has done. He says to kids 'don't say 'I want to be x'. Say 'I want to do x'. The 'Exam warrior' mentality hurts the country. Credentialism represents a massive misallocation of resources and does incalculable psychological harm. Have done with the Academy. Skills training and team work is what can push up the younger generation and the country as a whole. Remember 'Hard Work is better than 'Harvard Education'!
I am confident, all of you can and will.
If you follow Modi, not Mehta.
I am from a small town Jodhpur,
which has over a one million population. Modi's Vadnagar has a population of less than thirty thousand.
and there is a saying in Marwari that begins “Dharam reh si, reh si dhara” (where there is dharma the earth is preserved).
Hindus of Jodhpur fought hard to preserve their religion in that area. Otherwise, Mehta's family may have been forced to flee or convert.
My conversation with you on these matters has been a source of immense pleasure. But the good thing about his conversation is that it continues wherever we are, through the texts I so enjoyed with you this year: Plato, Mahabharata, Montaigne, Hobbes, Marx, Beauvoir, Kant and many others. But what you taught us is something more valuable: that liberal values are more about having a character than they are about professing a creed. It is a character you have in ample measure. I am eternally grateful to you.
Character can do without ignorant conversations about Hobbes and Beauvoir.
Thank you so much.
See ya never!
With the highest admiration,
for my own wonderfulness
Pratap Bhanu Mehta
soon to be of Princeton, Mass- unless Biden's anti-India lobby has tricked me the way Ashoka's founders tricked me.
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