On February 26, 2025, Yashada Sawant, an Indian student from the South Asian University (SAU) was publicly assaulted by Ratan Singh and a gang of goons with clear affiliations to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). The attackers’ grouse was that fish was being served on Maha Shivaratri and Sawant’s ‘crime’, as the university’s mess secretary, was trying to stop the fish curry from being thrown away by them.
This is when the assault ensued, with Sawant being punched in the face and inappropriately touched by these students, who are yet to be punished by the university. What’s more concerning is that the university does not have a good track record on women’s safety.
The university’s canteens have always served both vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. On the day in question, special arrangements had also been made for those observing the religious holiday. While there have always been on-and-off caste-based arguments over the ‘purity’ of food, they had never reached the depths of the recent incident.
Sadly, this is not the first such case. Since SAU’s current India-nominated President K.K. Aggarwal, who has no experience in running an international university, took over, his tolerance and even sponsorship of absolute parochialism, especially where the Hindutva agenda is concerned, has led to this deplorable state of affairs.
In her recent detailed tweet, Sawant has clearly described the role of different university officials who have attempted to sweep numerous sexual harassment complaints under the carpet. The same proctor, who was reprimanded by the Delhi high court in an earlier case for not following SAU regulations, still holds the reins and has been instrumental in pushing the overtly misogynistic agenda in the university.
SAU’s South Asian sensibility dismantled
South Asian University was established by the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in 2010 with taxpayer money from all eight member countries. Therefore, the legal and institutional ownership of the university is with SAARC.
It was meant to be a secular, English language university where no single political ideology, language or any one form of nationalism was to dominate. Its founding provisions and principles were meant to preserve its South Asian character. The intention of the university’s founders was to bring in an element of parity and equality in the broader space of inequity and hegemony in which the university is physically located.
Unfortunately, notwithstanding these laudable efforts, a mere 15 years into its establishment, the downward spiral of the institution has gained a worrying pace. The race to the bottom is driven by the incumbent president, with alarming signs of an imminent crash. The bottom line is: SAU is no longer effectively owned by SAARC and it is certainly not South Asian by any stretch of the imagination.
In its cultural and social outlook, the university has become blatantly North Indian, to the extent that it is making students from other regions in India feel extremely unsafe. While Aggarwal and his handpicked coterie of yes-men and women are dismantling the institution, its academics have stood by in tacit support, hiding behind lofty pronouncements in the regional and global conference circuit….
https://thewire.in/education/neighbourhood-lost-the-end-is-nigh-for-south-asian-university
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