Abandoning Ashoka

The promise of the university no longer rests on its ideals—ideals it has willfully abandoned.

Update: This piece was republished in The Print under the headline “Ashoka University began as a bold promise. The founders have diminished it.”

Cover image: Slightly damaged postcard by Jugnu, photographed by the author.

An experiment can fail again and again before it succeeds—but something deliberated to fail is bound to be a failure. Ashoka University began as a bold promise in 2014, the same year India placed its hopes in a new administration. Critics surfaced early, but the university's rising academic reputation, growing enrollment, and early successes across disciplines defied most skepticism. Its very success became a rebuttal to doubt over its model.

I was a student there for a year, from 2017 to 2018, enrolled in the Young India Fellowship— a postgraduate liberal arts programme, which predates the founding of the university. I arrived from the predictably arcane academic training at the University of Delhi. I was supported by considerable need-based financial aid, and found myself in rural Sonepat, at a liberal arts university. Luxuries come at luxurious prices, and that surprises no one. But, I felt that the library, the rigorous critical writing program, and the top-tier faculty alone had already exceeded the value I had paid. The concept of this university seemed novel because it was.

To this day, I continue to defend this experiment. Building an institution from scratch, and one that demonstrates academic rigor and draws in talent to one of the most unlikely places, is no small feat. This is too often overlooked, and it feels insincere not to acknowledge Ashoka’s achievements, given the scale of the undertaking. Critics often argue that Ashoka is destined to fail because it aspires to be an alternative to India’s public education system, caught between private ownership and the ability to uphold the public good. But that framing is incomplete—and, in my opinion, conveniently distracting from some surprising areas of success.

Defending the promise

Over the years, I have discussed where Ashoka’s ideals have fallen short. Yet, I have also continuously defended it as an institution that was shaping new ideals of what private universities in India can be. Normatively, a state like India can, and should, invest in robust public education systems, while allowing private initiatives especially those like Ashoka, to set meaningful precedents. It only took surprisingly few years for Ashoka to demonstrate successful academic partnerships, research ecosystems, and institutional models. In my cohort, students came from many corners, from Madhubani to Sopore to Tirunelveli, and even as far as U.S. and Ireland. Many of them were mentored with care and intention, and went on to become award-winning journalists, filmmakers, and entrepreneurs. Often, these people came from circumstances that would never allow for escape velocity. To not acknowledge their individual accomplishments would be an act of insincerity. In similar breath, perhaps it is also imperative to acknowledge that many individual successes were thanks to the sustained interest and efforts of the founders of Ashoka University.

“The place seemed to be bubbling with intellectual ferment,” recalled Professor Pushpesh Pant in 2021, lamenting Ashoka’s recent decline. While Ashoka may not have fully matched the liberal arts models of Western institutions it aspired to emulate—at least not immediately—it nevertheless became a credible and increasingly successful pipeline to those academic worlds. I myself went on to obtain a graduate degree from Harvard in 2024—a trajectory shaped in no small part by the foundation, and the gumption, that Ashoka provided.

But there was a bubbling of another kind that had always existed. As Ashoka grew in prominence and intellectual engagement, it also cultivated students and faculty who actively embraced the values of liberal education. Students spoke out against gendered restrictions in hostels, raised concerns against occupational safety issues affecting campus workers, and most notably, protested the unjust exits of their professors. Some resignations in the university passed quietly. Others—such as those of Vice Chancellor Pratap Bhanu Mehta, former Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian, and economists Sabyasachi Das and Pulapre Balakrishnan, made national headlines. In parallel, we alumni were witnessing the fast churn of faculty members who had been central to our academic journeys. Faculty turnover is to be expected over the years, especially as many academics were guest faculty. But the sheer number of exits, and the untimely nature of many of them, gave the impression that an academic sanitation unit was quietly keeping vigil.

An arrest and a message

In May 2025, Professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad, Chair of the Political Science Department, was arrested over a Facebook post that raised critical questions about militaristic nationalism in the wake of the terrorist attack in Pahalgam. It is worth noting that Prof. Mahmudabad did not speak against India’s military response to Pakistan. Rather, he questioned the political framing of the event and voiced concerns on behalf of Indian Muslims. The questions were political because he is a political scientist studying those very groups.

His detention has sparked outrage among hundreds of students and alumni, but Ashoka University has remained silent, refusing to publicly support him. Mr. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, one of the key founders of Ashoka, recently responded to an alumnus who had criticized the institution’s silence following the arrest of Professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad. In what he himself describes as a “cruel as it may be” response, Mr. Bikhchandani delivers a message that is, in fact, deeply cruel, both in tone and implications for Prof. Mahmudabad.

He portrays Ashoka’s students, alumni, and faculty, including Prof. Mahmudabad, as indulging in “activism,” which he sharply distinguishes from a liberal arts education. He recalls a time in his liberal arts education when there was little to no activism. But since the 1960s, this has simply not been true of American liberal arts colleges and Ivy League universities—institutions Ashoka is modeled after. Liberal arts education centers on critical thinking, the questioning of dominant norms, and exposure to histories of oppression, inequality, and power. That naturally orients students toward social progressivism, if not always political radicalism. A high-performing higher education institution will, by design, produce elites who go on to shape business, politics, media, and the arts. And in the absence of any meaningful affirmative action, universities everywhere largely recycle elites rather than produce them from scratch. For the most part, this has also been true at Ashoka. But exceptions are truly exceptional, and I affirm this by experience.

Dichotomy

In liberal societies governed by liberal regimes, social progressivism often becomes the etiquette of the elite. Since World War II, many liberal norms have globalized. Whether it’s Sciences Po in France, Ashoka in India, or Harvard in the U.S., these institutions produce graduates who are largely ideologically aligned—often embracing values like diversity, inclusion, and civic responsibility. And when liberal regimes come under challenge, universities with contrasting or critical scholarship often bear the brunt. Historical moments may sometimes bring this tension to the fore and sometimes not, but such is the pattern.

I decided to write this essay because I was thoroughly disappointed by how Mr. Bikhchandani diminished the very promise that Ashoka created. He deigns the purpose of a university and lowers the vision that defined Ashoka. It is tragic, that the university professors, committed to the idea of Ashoka, find themselves having to carefully explain to its founders that what they have built is too large, too vital, and too promising to be abandoned or diminished.

Mr. Bikhchandani claims that activism and liberal arts education are not “joined at the hip.” To support this, he turns to Google, asking: “Are all liberal arts universities activist in nature?” and then builds his stance on the AI-generated response. His appeal is not to academic tradition, historical precedent, or lived experience, but to artificial intelligence. Yet it is the very prompt he uses that betrays a crisis of imagination. He is being asked about moral courage, about the university’s role in moments of political repression—and instead he answers a question that was not asked: whether all liberal arts institutions are, by definition, activist.

What is the syllogism here? Even if activism and liberal arts are not synonymous, they are hardly unrelated. Liberal arts education—by its very structure—cultivates critical thinking, dissent, and moral inquiry. So yes, activism may not be mandatory, but it is certainly not alien to the tradition. “The fundamental point I am making,” he continues, “is that activism at Ashoka is a choice and it does not go with the territory. You can be a great liberal arts university and not be activist. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar.”

Mr. Bikhchandani notably overlays his organizational analysis with that of Info Edge, the multi-sector conglomerate he founded. Since he speaks from life experience, and the experience of being a “founder” of organizations in general, there may well be some hard-earned wisdom in his words. But drawing direct parallels between Ashoka University’s obligations and those of corporations like Info Edge is a flawed analogy. Educational institutions have fundamentally different missions: they exist to foster critical inquiry, intellectual risk-taking, and societal engagement objectives that diverge sharply from corporate priorities like brand protection and regulatory compliance. Priorities may just converge on some organizational issues but Info Edge is not a university, let alone a private, liberal arts university. This is a categorical error of nearly all orders.

He then continues: “In the private sector, we generally stay away from what are termed as ‘Politically Exposed Persons.’ Should Ashoka have such a policy?” But the concept of “Politically Exposed Persons” originates from financial regulation, intended to flag risks of corruption and bribery. It is not meant to refer to scholars whose entire academic compendium is devoted to the study of politics—like Professor Mahmudabad, a political scientist whose research focuses on Indian Muslims and the workings of state power. Do the founders of Ashoka not see the trap they are setting for scholars? Political science, and many other disciplines within the liberal arts, require engaging with contentious political realities. To penalize and abandon scholars for doing so is to undermine liberal arts.

Ashoka University, the Enterprise

I imagine the pressure to represent a university must be immense. University presidents today are being called upon to be braver—to act as a firewall between the wrath of unfavorable governments and the integrity of elite educational institutions. Obsequious behavior at the mere hint of political controversy, therefore, has not been well received by academic colleagues, alumni and students. Ramachandra Guha, who I first read at Ashoka, tweeted upon a controversy over an exit: “In its journey thus far, Ashoka University had shown much promise. They may have frittered all that away by the spinelessness of their trustees, who have chosen to crawl when asked to bend.”

And yet, given the disproportionately higher pressure placed on a small number of trustees, how can Ashoka respond tactfully and still ensure its survival? That is the real question many have asked, and few may have answered. Here, we must meet Mr. Bikhchandani with empathy, and offer him paths that do not demand heroism from him, but do insist on principle.

At Harvard, I had the privilege of being Professor Steven Pinker’s Teaching Fellow—an extraordinary opportunity to help teach his course Rationality, named after his bestselling book. That semester, in the wake of student protests, Dr. Pinker proposed a new policy emphasizing time, place, and manner restrictions on demonstrations. It was one of those issues I changed my mind about due to considerations of tact and respectability. It is a middle path between what many would call “activism” and the enterprise of the university. The proposed policies were incorporated by Harvard in 2025, along with an institutional decision to not weigh in on controversial public policy matters. This, perhaps, is an option—tactful, principled, and always available to an institution like Ashoka University. Perhaps it can meet the “activists” in the middle. Nonetheless, it is both imperative and tactful for Ashoka University The Enterprise to not hire political scientists who face ire for studying politics.

Funding challenges are understandable. I have always acknowledged the quandaries and pressures that founders face. In his reply, Mr. Bikhchandani understandably emphasizes his frustrations. It takes immense effort to raise funds for a university. Critics may not fully grasp how difficult that work is and I, too, am far from ever having done it. But still, one must ask: how much money is really traded off when a few academics stand by principle? Is there some optimum point where ideals can safely be compromised? And doesn’t political controversy, too, come at the cost of credibility, just a different kind of expense?

Abandonment

I wish to convey to Mr. Bikhchandani and the founders of Ashoka: what you have created is original, valuable, and deeply needed. Many, like me, are invested in its survival and growth. As Professor Amita Baviskar wrote of the founders and trustees: “They failed to appreciate that the institution they started had acquired a life larger than their fears.”

To articulate Ashoka’s originality, one only needs to look at its name—drawn from Ashoka the Great, the Mauryan ruler. After witnessing the devastation of war, Emperor Ashoka turned toward non-violence, tolerance, and the pursuit of knowledge. A university bearing his name ought to have imagined itself as embodying that same spirit of inquiry, moral reckoning, and commitment to the greater good. My year at Ashoka was, in every way, exceptional—intellectually rigorous, emotionally expansive, and, at times, almost caricaturally enjoyable.

What we are witnessing now is willful abandonment. And so I put the word abandonment next to the university I once graduated from—not because I abandoned it, but because it abandoned itself. It has strayed too far from the ideals it once aspired to, creating in the process an awkward, uncertain middle, neither brave enough to protect its scholars, nor honest enough to say it won’t.

In saying that Ashoka has abandoned itself, perhaps I am indulging in activism. I don’t know if it was liberal arts or activism—those two things that are not joined at the hip. But I do know there was once a place where I studied Ambedkar, Hegel, Keynes, de Beauvoir, Gandhi, and Arendt. I made friends for life in a year that felt magical. I did not abandon it. It abandoned itself.

Back of the postcard. Artwork by Jugnu. Photographed by the author.