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This article is intended as a response to ‘AMAANAT not JAAGIR.’ There is no doubt that Ashoka is an “endeavour of profound optimism”  and idealism. Without a sense of idealism, no planning for the future can take place, and there can be no poetry with which to ultimately govern for. The trouble arises when we question who gets to write this poetry, who it is recited to and who gets to privilege the prose.  The inspiring poetry of creating a “top-100, non-profit, non-governmen

Ashoka University is an intergenerational quest of idealism without illusions   Educational institutions are endeavours of profound optimism; they believe human capital is the only renewable national resource, nations must be their own light (आत्म दीपो भव), and systematic study offers children the most powerful path to overcome or leverage their opening balance. Ashoka University aims higher than optimism: Idealism without Illusions. History suggests that adding success to id

Maria Corina Machado is now a Nobel laureate with her win arriving on the heels of months of lobbying by Donald Trump. From boasting of ending seven wars, which included making tenuous headway towards peace in Gaza, to gathering endorsements from global leaders, and even calling Norway’s finance minister  for his support, there is little Trump has not done to assert his claim—seemingly all for naught when Machado was selected instead. But is her win truly more palatable? What

Ashoka’s student body is divided, and not by choice. What goes on to shape these choices lies within the institution, putting students at multiple ends — physically and figuratively — of this university.  Take, for example, the first weekend of the Workers’ Protest on the 30th and 31st August. Two striking scenes lay bare inside and outside the university space. While protesting students and workers  sat outside, waiting for the administration’s response on the demands set, a

Dheeraj Sanghi, the newly appointed Dean of Student Affairs, informed the student body that the Governing Body  mandated the revised policies on Residence Life  and Disciplinary Proceedings  on 12th August. The Board Trustees, a group of businessmen who regularly donate to the university, backed the updated policies. The Governing Body consists of seven business executive-founders, the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor, and the Secretary to the Government of Haryana, Department

When governments choose to treat their youth as expendable, they unwittingly create the opposition they fear the most. In Sri Lanka , it was the young protestors who camped outside the president’s office for months, forcing a government to resign. In Pakistan , the decades-old ban on student unions is being challenged, breathing new life into the country’s political discourse. Over the past decade, a pattern has emerged across South Asia: policies and practices that shut yout

On September 23rd, 2025, there was a protest at O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU), Sonipat, regarding persistent threats to women’s...

Who is an Ashoka student? I asked myself this when I wrote my admissions essay. On a campus where  more than 94% of undergraduates  come...

This summer in Ashoka was more eventful than any– with unilateral policy decisions, unjust suspensions, and mold (lot and lot of it), I...

George Orwell, in his 1946 essay titled   Politics and the English Language , tears apart the jargonistic writings found in modern...