Sasanka Perera
(Initially published in The Wire, 02 January 2025: https://thewire.in/education/an-entity-without-memory-public-erasure-of-manmohan-singh-at-south-asian-university)
When former Prime Minister of India Dr Manmohan Singh passed away on 26th of December 2024 at the age of 92, incumbent Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi posted the following on X: “India mourns the loss of one of its most distinguished leaders, Dr. Manmohan Singh Ji. Rising from humble origins, he rose to become a respected economist. He served in various government positions as well, including as Finance Minister, leaving a strong imprint on our economic policy over the years. His interventions in Parliament were also insightful. As our Prime Minister, he made extensive efforts to improve people’s lives.”[1] This statement by Mr Modi, despite the vastly different leadership styles, approaches to politics, as well as the very different ideological and political sensibilities encompassing the nation, the region and the world the two political parties they represent indicate, is extremely significant. However, given Dr. Singh’s local and global stature, Mr Modi’s words are hardly surprising; in fact, they clearly indicate what should ideally be the norm in mainstream politics, and in the realm of public decency. Hence, it was only to be expected that political and ideological divisions would collapse as local, and world leaders, both past and present, united to pay tribute to Dr. Singh, a clear demonstration of the respect he commanded in politics and life. It is also in this light that India’s Union Cabinet as a collective referred to Dr Singh in a resolution as “Dr Manmohan Singh has left his imprint on our national life. In his passing away, the nation has lost an eminent statesman, renowned economist and a distinguished leader.”[2] Also significant is that the central government declared seven days of national mourning as a mark of respect and accorded him a state funeral.
In stark contrast to this outpouring of grief and respect at the national and international levels, the usually loud and persistent X and Instagram handles of South Asian University, as well as its website was pronouncedly and abjectly silent on Dr. Singh’s death and his life. One could question why a university in India’s national capital nominally led by SAARC, but in reality, run today solely on Indian funding and based on Indian interests, should have any interest in a national leader of India. The answer is simple as it is self-evident: without Dr Singh’s political intervention and leadership, South Asian University would not have come to being, in Delhi or elsewhere. So, in very real terms the university owes its very existence to the man whose passing it institutionally and conspicuously decided to overlook, as the world mourned.
One major reason Dr Singh is remembered in India, and at all strata of society at that, is as the country’s architect of economic liberalization. One may agree or not agree with his neoliberal principles, but anything happening in the Indian economy today would be inconceivable if he had not taken the first step. This is to say, the present is always built on the past and memory, like hindsight, helps us look and see things more reflectively and cautiously. But South Asian University does not seem to take heed of this uncontested truism and has decided to bury any memory of Dr. Singh. Its attempt to relegate Dr Manmohan Singh to oblivion is akin to standing on shaky ground, on which the present or a stable future cannot be created.
Dr Singh should have been important to South Asian University on multiple grounds. One, he was a nationalist, regionalist and globalist at one and the same time. It is in his regional incarnation that former Foreign Minister of Pakistan Mr. Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri referred to Dr Singh’s well-known wish that “he looked forward to the day when it would be possible to have breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul.”[3] In this sense, more than any other political leader from the region, Dr. Singh more clearly epitomized the regional underpinnings of what South Asian University was supposed to be – a regional intellectual platform where the divisions between nation states in South Asia would diminish – in the classrooms, in students and teachers’ activities and even in the food served in the canteens. The fact that these expectations were once partly achieved and now have been almost fully dismantled, and why and how this happened is a discussion for another day. Two, it was Dr. Singh who ensured that the university was established in the first place when it had merely been a lofty idea floating around the region for a long time, co-authored by well-established South Asianists such as Dr. Ashish Nandi, Dr. Imtiaz Ahmed, Mr. Kanak Dixit and others including, much later, myself. The university’s website still notes – almost grudgingly – “the idea of establishing a South Asian University (SAU) was mooted by the Prime Minister of India at the 13th SAARC Summit in Dhaka in 2005.”[4] Dr. Singh was the 13th Prime Minister of India, from 2004 to 2014. I say ‘almost grudgingly’ here because there was a time in this same historical context the university identified Dr. Singh by name, and not relegated him to a nameless and cold single-sentence reference as it has done today.
While this erasure has happened on multiple fronts, South Asian University’s social media still keeps abreast of very ordinary and mundane occurrences and events, including routine ones it engages in. They also vociferously flash as ‘news’ incidents related to its current president, varying from receiving awards to opening a Yoga Center in the university. Compared to such ‘news’ with which the university’s social media feeds abound, there is still nothing on the man who is one of the university’s most important founders apart from its authors, who also have been erased from the university’s conscience. Watching from afar, I was reminded of Elie Wiesel’s words, “without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.” This is effectively what has now happened to South Asian University. Its current leaders, including the president, have no sense of history or memory, despite their fundamental necessity as a civilizational attribute. Even the iconic programs that gave the university’s initial impetus and identity such as the lecture series, ‘Contributions to Contemporary Knowledge’ and many such others, have been relentlessly dismantled, thereby rendering the university not only non-iconic but also mediocre, to say the least. But this absence of history, memory and traditions which makes organizations rootless can also be seen in all new private universities too. For most universities are no longer centers of thought or reflection, but factories churning labor for the job market. It is indeed regrettable that South Asian University and its sense of an ideal university clearly existed for a very brief time before it was dismantled in recent years amidst the choreographed timidity and deafening silence of all employees.
It appears that the specific erasure of Dr. Singh from the university’s public institutional memory and history also stems from the way mediocre minds generally work. The university’s president and the people he has surrounded himself with, have obviously surmised that this erasure is expected by the current Indian government. This symbolizes a typical thought process only explained through mediocrity, utter subservience and complete lack of gratitude. However, to its credit, the Government of India suffers from no such amnesia, as is evident when it comes to its clear public statements about Dr Singh.
With this unforgivable act of public callousness and ahistorical collective misbehavior, South Asian University and its employees have become asMarcus Garvey once noted: “A people without knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”
As a Buddhist, my thoughts are with Dr. Singh’s family and all Indian citizens with a sense of memory and history: “Anicca vata sankhara” (impermanent, alas, are conditioned things).
[1].https://x.com/narendramodi/status/1872328464658808947?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1872328464658808947%7Ctwgr%5E931a274f8038f901c93aad787f74218a0ee81e4c%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pmindia.gov.in%2Fen%2Fnews_updates%2Fpm-condoles-passing-away-of-former-prime-minister-dr-manmohan-singh%2F
[2]. https://www.business-standard.com/india-news/cabinet-hails-manmohan-singh-as-eminent-statesman-distinguished-leader-124122700584_1.html
[3]. https://www.news18.com/world/breakfast-in-amritsar-lahore-lunch-kabul-dinner-pak-leader-recalls-manmohan-singhs-wishes-9170453.html