At the Stroke of the Midnight Hour…

Parampara, Pratishtha, Anushashan. Ye iss Gurukul ke teen stambb hein…Par koi bhi kaamyaabi itni aasaani se nahi milti. Har badi kaamyaabi ke peeche ek bohot bada balidaan hota hai…Agar koi bhi student yaha ki parampara aur anushashan ko todta hua pakda gya to vo ussi vakt yaha se nikaal diya jayega…To agar aaj yaha aap mein se koi ye balidaan dene ke liye tayyar nahi hai, to vo Gurukul ke iss gate bahar jaa sakta hai.

(Tradition, Honor and Discipline. These are the three pillars of this school…But, no success comes this easy. Behind every big success, lies an immense sacrifice…If any student here is found desecrating this school’s principles of tradition and discipline, they will be immediately expelled…So if there is anyone here who is not willing to make these sacrifices, they are free to exit these gates and leave Gurukul.)

Presented outside their context, these lines could easily pass for the kind of pronouncements that Ashoka University’s administration has come into the habit of making these days. These are in fact excerpts from an iconic monologue in Aditya Chopra’s film Mohabbatein (2000), delivered by a strapping Amitabh Bachchan who plays the role of Narayan Shankar, the strict and impermeable principal of India’s most prestigious educational institute, Gurukul. The film is a classic Bollywood drama about the conflict between love and fear where Shankar enforces discipline and furthers tradition through fear and Raj Malhotra, Shah Rukh Khan’s dreamy portrayal of a footloose music teacher, challenges Shankar and teaches Gurukul’s students how to love. He influences the stories of three young couples who navigate loss, grief, desire and the consequences of choosing to stray, ultimately testing the power of love against the school’s strict code of conduct. 

It is hard not to be reminded of the moment we are in at this university while watching Mohabbatein. What are the pillars that buttress this institution? What are our big successes and what sacrifices are we being called upon to make to realise them? And what happens to those that,  like Karan, Vikram and Sameer from the film, are not willing to sacrifice for the sake of tradition, honour and discipline? By now, the answers to these questions are probably becoming eerily apparent to Ashoka’s students. Especially since the new “Student and Parent Declaration,” which demands that we accept the new versions of Guidelines and Regulations on Disciplinary Proceedings, Policy on Disciplinary Records for Purposes of NOC (No Objection Certificate), and Residence Life Policy before 13th August, holds true to the last bit of the quote: if the students and their parents are not ready to consent to what we are identifying as undemocratic policies, they may not attend the upcoming Monsoon semester. On the eve of the deadline to submit this declaration, we must remember how this hard line drawn by the university is intrinsically linked to what it now wishes to make its driving principles: Tradition (and a culture of surveillance), honour (a manufactured loyalty that leaves no room for questioning), and uncompromising discipline. That this comes at the cost of what the university promises to foster during its admissions process — intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, academic rigour, open-mindedness, resilience, tolerance, and teamwork — remains the most troubling aspect of this project.

The two of us have witnessed this insistence on conformity grow systematically through our college careers. Since Prof. Das’ unceremonial exit, the university has made attempts to transpose its anxieties about being watched onto the students by watching them. The students were soon to be inculcated into this culture of watching/being watched, one step at a time. The watershed moment came with the introduction of the main gate scanners in the spring of 2025. This provision was introduced without any prior consultation with the students, and they were forced to comply without questioning. Their resolute response involving a week-long agitation resulted in a temporary suspension of the security measures and a review by a standing-committee. What followed sets the stage for where we are at currently: raids in student residences increased and became more intrusive and undignified, seemingly minor violations (like cross-access) resulted in disproportionate punishment, and the Residence Life Office was given the right to expel students from campus housing on the grounds of mental health concerns. We now know that these overnight shifts in the administrative culture were a precursor to a new, more pervasive system of surveillance which waited in the wings to make its debut on 30th July 2025. 

The new version of the Residence Life policy, the Disciplinary Guidelines, and the NOC policy, have fundamentally restructured the university administration’s approach from being a support system,  which takes punitive measures only when required, to one that presumes guilt and bad faith on the part of students from the outset. In accordance with the new policies, students are now expected to submit mental health fitness certificates and medical prescriptions, they are expected to consent to being “checked” (read: frisked) during quiet hours anywhere on campus, they are not allowed to make an audio or video recording of the warden inspecting their rooms, they are at risk of facing disciplinary action for peacefully protesting, they are at risk of having their NOCs withheld due to any suspension on disciplinary grounds (even minor ones), and they are expected to consent to having their right to leave campus be revoked for up to seven days due to main gate infractions. No stone is left unturned. From the four walls of their rooms to the roads outside and adjacent the university, these rules are meant to tail them wherever they go. The Vice-Chancellor’s promise (29th January 2025) to us—that student consultation will be essential to the university’s policy initiatives after Spring 2025 semester—did not apply to these policies, and the “Student and Parent Declaration” that is due by 11:59 PM tonight will ensure that this remains the case in the future as well. We are all watching the collapse of Ashoka administration’s relationship with their student body in real time. 

The declaration completely defeats the purpose of the word ‘consent’ in ‘consent form’. If the university is confident that this policy is in favour of student welfare, then why should it be accompanied by a mandatory undertaking that, if left unsigned, can delay our entry into the monsoon semester? If raising the stakes by introducing consequences to not signing the document suggests that the administration knows this decision will be unpopular, why take it at all? The university seems to think that the only way to get Ashokans to follow rules is to force them between a rock and a hard place. What leads to this conception of the average Ashokan? Why is there such grave distrust in our judgement? One has to admit that over the past year, the campus has been plagued by very real concerns about substance abuse, sexual violence and declining mental health. On several occasions, Ashokans have been found desecrating the honour code which requires us to adhere to university-mandated policy on such matters. These instances have often been cited by the administration in justification of the increasingly invasive surveillance measures. The university’s chosen method of tackling very real and frightening concerns is an exceedingly paternalistic strategy that is willing to resort to any degree of repression to discipline a purportedly vacuous and infantile student body. No faith is placed in strengthening the honour code—because how can they be expected to negotiate with a student body that they already consider beyond reproach? There is no place for integrity in the way the administration deals with this student body—we are neither capable of displaying it, nor do we deserve it. The way these new policies have been introduced without notice or student consultation, and the degree to which they go to make sure that a student is never dealt with independently—our parents are called at every minor digression, doctors need to testify to our mental fitness, reaching the CADI (Committee Against Disciplinary Infraction) quorum no longer requires our vote—speaks to this shifting attitude. 

Why would students, the only stakeholders in this conflict aside from the wardens who actually live here, not want this campus to be safer, more accessible, and livable? Our request that student consultation be included in decision-making is not a rejection of the realities of disciplinary digressions on campus, or an unwillingness to abide by the rules. It is merely a sincere request to have a say in shaping the place that becomes our home for four years. It is hurtful that in the minds of many, especially those who are charged with the responsibility of looking after us, the students have become figures of impropriety and petulance. Central to the Ashokan philosophy is an unrelenting conviction in the power of transformation. When it comes to the new policy and the assumptions that undergird it, this conviction seems to have disappeared. The reason this policy has been a cause for concern is because it operates entirely in the register of ‘is and always will be’. The certainty with which it sketches boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable behaviors, opinions, and most alarmingly, people, undermines Ashoka’s longstanding faith in the fact that change is possible. The capacious, holistic and tolerant Ashoka that we hedged our bets on lives only in its students and its “About Us” page, not in its policy. 

Everything changes tomorrow. If enough students sign this declaration, we write off this university to a machinery that is so caught up between preserving its future and escaping its past that it has lost complete sight of its present. The uncomfortable truth that this university’s leadership must confront is that education is not a consumer gratification service. It is true that a university must respond to the expectations and pressures of its times. As India’s cultural and political paradigms shift, we—students, faculty and administrators alike—will be called upon to reconsider the frameworks that have so far been guiding the governance of this campus. If those expectations, however, can only be met through the creation of a regressive, surveilled and potentially unsafe campus, then all of Ashoka’s stakeholders must pause and reflect on whether this maneuver represents the principles on which this university was built. How is frisking students at will, on suspicion, compatible with free and liberal thought? How can a university that encourages the study of protests and public movements endorse a clause in its policy that cracks down on peaceful dissent? How is it that a university which uses its students to advertise admissions cycles does not think they are capable of holding a civil and successful negotiation? 

What made this university different from others at its inception was its determination to be comfortable with discomfort. Ashoka’s mission—relics of which are still found in the architecture of its older classrooms and the lectures taught in them—was to turn every platform into a bastion of debate. The way in which these new policies have been rolled out stands testament to the fact that this principle is no longer a priority. While admonishing Raj for letting his students taste freedom (use public spaces at their will, enter and exit their school by choice, interact with the opposite sex—all rights that stand at risk in the new residence life policy), Narayan Shankar claims that in the war between love and fear, fear always wins. But even those who demand respect through fear must ultimately fold to the power of love and living in difference. To scan and surveil students who have been made defenseless through code is easy, but working with them to create conciliatory and dignified policy initiatives is difficult. We call upon the leaders and administrators of this university on the eve of Ashoka’s descent into a new chapter of darkness to be like Raj—a teacher who took up the challenge of preserving his students’ right to lead holistic, rigorous and happy lives even if that came at a staggering personal cost. Is that not what Ashoka is ultimately about? The intersecting arcs of our emblem bind us together in relationships of responsibility that cannot be successful without mutual respect and integrity. The students of Ashoka University are willing to do all that they can to repair the fissures in this pact and to ensure that this institution lives up to its dhamma of liberal thought and education. Will its administration take this leap too? 

Tonight, at the stroke of the midnight hour, Ashokans will be faced with a decision about their homes and their lives that will feel insignificant; but it is critical that we pay attention to why it’s not. It does not matter whether or not we sign the undertaking. What matters is whether or not we have a say in determining the policies that directly affect our experience of this university, our ability to be members of its community, and our willingness to strive to protect the values that it embodies. As it stands today, we do not. To us, this is what these new policies represent: a complete erasure of the student made possible only by making her completely visible to all degrees of unfair scrutiny. Like in Gurukul, it is our sincere belief that at Ashoka too, love will prevail. It is a belief that comes from the faith that we continue to, some might say foolishly, instill in those who built this university from the ground up. To give up hope and to assume that the individuals sitting across from us are callous, unkind, and unthinking might be the university’s view of its students, but we refuse to let it be our view of this university and its leadership. 

The authors are undergraduate students at Ashoka University.