THE COMMON MESS in South Asian University, established in 2010 as a joint initiative of eight SAARC nations, is shaped like a large capital letter ‘L’.
Not unlike the agitated atmosphere outside, food was an emotive issue on campus leading up to the day of Mahashivratri, to commemorate the Hindu god Shiva. But catering to its broadly multinational and multifaith student population, the mess staff had set up both vegetarian and non-vegetarian meals.
Overseeing the management was Yashada Sawant, a master’s student in Sociology and the elected mess secretary. Some had already started their meals when Ratan Singh, a PhD student in Computer Science, walked in. Donning a tilak on his forehead, Singh was accompanied by ten other men, allegedly affiliated with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the Hindu right-wing paramilitary body, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The day before, one Hindu student had warned on the campus WhatsApp group that there should not be an inkling of non-vegeterian food on campus. SAU does not have a student union - unlike other public colleges in the city, political parties do not have a formalised presence on campus. Yet, ABVP has allegedly granted support to a group of sympathetic students.
Upset at the sight of the fish curry, Singh called for the mess manager. The manager, I was told, wanted no involvement - he was only a worker and the mess was managed by students exclusively. Singh then made the mess manager call the Dean of Students, Navnit Jha. In photographs on public fora, Jha has been seen huddling with Singh and others in the group who have claimed association with the ABVP. But the ring would not go through. Singh’s patience had run thin, and that is about when the instruction came that his affiliates had been waiting for. “Throw the fish curry!”, Singh ordered.
Yanking Yashada aside, the men attempted to pick up the tin-plated container filled with food. Within moments, chaos had ensued. Sudeepto Das, a student from Bangladesh pursuing his PhD in Economics who came to Yashada’s defence was beaten up. In a video that went viral on social media, Yashada could be seen being brutally assaulted, her hair being pulled by several men, as Singh continues to flank his fists at her. A guard is seen attempting to pull Singh away.
“Ratan Singh touched me inappropriately,” Yashada told me in March, “One guy held both of my hands. Ratan Singh punched me in my face. I was screaming at them to stop.”
The audacity had not come arbitrarily. For several months, Yashada had pressed university authorities to take action against Singh for verbally abusing and sexually harassing her on at least two other occasions. The tussles had often started off from political disagreements around Hindu majoritarian imposition in the international university. Email threads and documents available with us indicate that the first written complaint against Singh had been sent to the Proctor, Kapil Sharma, and subsequently forwarded to the University Complaints Committee (‘UCC’), the institute’s sexual harassment redressal body as early as April 2024. Yet, on at least three separate occasions, the university either did not act at all, or referred Yashada from one redressal body to another - in both instances, no actions had been conclusively taken against Singh.
Yashada was incensed. “At every point, I have sent you complaints, you did not take action!” she told Sharma and Jha who arrived and left shortly after, without offering any words. Around 4:15 PM, Yashada made a PCR call. When the police arrived, they were first greeted by Sharma, Jha and another faculty at the gate. I was told that the police first asked her to write a statement along with the administration. After she refused, she was taken to AIIMS Delhi for a medico-legal certificate.
The next day, Yashada was off to the Maidan Garhi police station with a lawyer and alumna of the university. When they requested to file an FIR, both informed me that the police outrightly refused. The police, they said, stated that since SAU was an international university with “immunity”, only the proctoral committee could approach them to file an FIR for offences within the university campus. When they met the Station House Officer, the same script was repeated.
The “immunity” argument was not something either were hearing for the first time. Since 2014, a few years into SAU’s establishment, I was told that the university had flouted its own procedures in multiple instances of student grievance redressal and administrative decisions affecting staff - yet challenging these decisions had been nearly impossible, partly because of the diplomatic immunity donned by SAU administration, and the weakened position of international students and faculty in the varsity.
This incident, however, was stranger in ways more than one - the police was claiming ‘immunity’ to not initiate a complaint against a student who had potentially assaulted another Indian student. “It is as if once you entered the university gate, the law of the land ceased to apply,” the lawyer and alumna said.
That day, it wasn’t until Yashada and the lawyer spoke about calling the media that the SHO finally registered a complaint and provided a diary number.
WHEN SASANKAR PERERA, a Sri Lankan sociologist, joined SAU as one of its founding faculty, bearing the vision of South Asia’s first international university, a “world class institution of learning”, the idea of “immunity” for administration and faculty seemed nothing out of ordinary. Working for a brief stint previously at the World Bank, Perera was aware this was standard practice in international organisations - except one key difference. ‘Immunity’ applied in the World Bank and other international organisations to non-citizens of the host country. Thus, Perera did not have immunity while working under the World Bank in Sri Lanka. But in SAU’s case, I was told, ‘immunity’ had been negotiated most rigorously by the Indian representatives.
The immunity is legally rooted in two documents. First is the Headquarters Agreement, signed in November 2008, nearly two years before the university’s establishment between the Indian government represented by the Ministry of Education and SAARC. In furtherance of the agreement, a gazette notification of the Ministry of External Affairs, published in January 2009, a copy of which is available with us, states that “in pursuance of the decision of the Inter-governmental Steering Committee of the SAARC, it is expedient to accord the Project Office and officials thereof, and the South Asian University, its President, Registrar and faculty members the privileges and immunities in India similar to those contained in Articles II, III, IV, V, VI and VII of the Schedule to the United Nations (Privileges and Immunities) Act, 1947.”
Second is the South Asian University Act, enacted that same month, which grants to the University, the President (the counterpart of a Vice-Chancellor in Indian colleges) and academic staff and on occasions their dependants and family members “such privileges and immunities as the Central Government may notify under section 3 of the United Nations (Privileges and Immunities) Act, 1947.”
“I think the premise upon which this was written into the laws of the University was reasonable,” Perera told me, “So that when people come from other parts of the world there is an expectation that they can carry on their duties without being entangled in litigation. But it has become something very different.”
In July 2024, after working for thirteen years at SAU, Perera and a PhD scholar he was supervising were served notices after the latter’s thesis proposal was found carrying an interview of Noam Chomsky being critical of the Modi government. Alleging “choreographed timidity” by his colleagues on the issue, Perera quit in September 2024. Last month, the scholar, who had been working on Kashmir’s ethnography and politics also quit citing “personal reasons”.
The show-cause was only a tipping point for Perera. Due to the immunity, administrative and disciplinary disputes inevitably land up in internal redressal mechanisms, and these are processes that appear to be unviable. Most procedures lack coherent modules of conduct and are organised in a non-accountable, arbitrary fashion, he alleged. When Perera’s disciplinary inquiry began, one of his foremost demands was to have a representative from the Sri Lankan High Commission to attend the hearings. But SAU flatly refused, so was his request to keep a record of the meeting. Later, Perera recalled that the written submissions by colleagues and members of the administration supplying evidence against him were “completely different” from what truly happened.
“There is no space for any kind of reasonable procedures when it comes to this kind of thing. The lack of ethics and lack of legal practice has been institutionalised,” Perera told me.
Perera has certainly not been the only staff member to have suffered.
Two years ago, SAU effectively forced out one of its last remaining Pakistani employees. Speaking to me in April, Anwar Ul Haque, SAU’s last Pakistani deputy registrar who joined the varsity in 2012 alleged that SAU systematically withheld responsibilities from him, and claimed that the administration also made another Pakistani employee’s life “very difficult.” In 2016, shortly following the Uri attack, Haque recalled that he was afraid of his life and his family’s well being. “I would go to office locking our flat from outside. My son, who is a special child, and my wife would stay inside,” Haque told me, alleging that despite repeated requests to the administration to provide him security, and allow him to stay on the campus guest house accommodation, SAU did not help him in any manner. After twelve years serving in the varsity, Haque claims that his interactions as a senior administrative staff had garnered more and more friction. The tipping point came when SAU withheld four months of his salary when he returned after an earned leave in Pakistan to tend to health issues. In protest, in September 2023, Haque submitted a voluntary early retirement resignation, something he later stated he was compelled to do due to SAU’s illegal withholding of salary. In December that year, Haque wrote to withdraw his resignation, claiming that it was done under “compelling circumstances”, but SAU had swiftly approved his VER. In January last year, the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi shot off a letter to Aggarwal, the president, requesting SAU to reinstate Haque to “continue representing Pakistan” since his VER was under “compelling situation.” But SAU had already notified the home ministry to cancel Haque’s visa - he was given fifteen days to pack up and leave the country. Haque left in such a hurry that most of his luggage would only reach him a year later in Pakistan. Two years later and in the safety of his home country, Haque was now open to speak about SAU and the absence of any redressal mechanism for him. At the moment, I found that only three existing staff members are non-Indian.
A detailed questionnaire to SAU’s Proctor Sharma on the allegations raised against the university by Haque and Perera went unanswered.
YASHADA ALLEGES that the first time she was harassed by Ratan Singh was in February 2024. It was the day a student from Nepal objected to the removal of a table tennis in the hostel compound to install a makeshift temple for havan. Within five minutes, Yashada, who was with the student, recalled that “four-five men” led by Singh stormed in to intimidate the student. In the confrontation that ensued, Singh catcalled her, a video clip of which was shared with The Leaflet. Over the next two days, she recalls meeting both President Aggarwal and the Proctor Sharma, and breaking down in front of both of them. She alleges that Sharma blamed her for having started the conflict. “I told them that you cannot say this to a woman who is coming to you with a complaint of sexual harassment," Yashada said.
A month passed without any actions until Yashada shot across the first written complaint against Singh. “I have spent a month in absolute fear and also anxiety with regards to my safety on campus,” Yashada wrote, stating that seeing Singh each day on campus with a “smirk on his face” made her feel that “he knew what he was forgiven for.”
“What surprises me is how I was never contacted by any administration member after knowing the depth of the problem,” she wrote. The email was forwarded by the Proctor to the UCC. After Yashada wrote again to the UCC attaching three video clips of the incident and demanding a response within five days, as SAU’s Rules Governing Issues of Sexual Harassment provide for, she received an email stating that the incident did not fall within UCC’s mandate. The complaint was forwarded to the Proctor and into a void. Another email to the UCC went without a response.
“Unlike regular Internal Complaint Committees which have students, the UCC does not have students,” said Apoorva Yarabahally, a former student at SAU, “They have a student observer whose only job is to observe the proceedings without any decision making power. Somehow, the UCC always succeeds in concluding that the complaint before them simply does not constitute sexual harassment.”
Over the year, Yashada alleges there were instances when Singh and his colleagues either told other students that she filed made-up harassment complaints, hampering her credibility as a victim, or commented inappropriately about her clothes. Three months before she was attacked by Singh in the mess, Yashada also recalled that another engineering student, Divyam Dubey, also alleged to be affiliated with ABVP, mockingly messaged on the university’s student group that he would not attend a student meeting on deciding the month’s mess menu since Yashada might put a sexual harassment allegation against him. “Personally, for me these texts have been traumatizing,” she wrote in an email to the UCC in November last year. She also noted that her past complaint, having been ignored by the university, had “ given the men immunity to do whatever they want and hunt women down for filing complaints, stigmatizing the UCC process.”
The UCC simply forwarded the matter to the Gender Sensitisation Committee, a body which does not have clear-cut powers to punish, which also did not inform her of the initiation of any proceeding. For the second time, her complaint had gone into a void.
A PART OF THE REASON Yashada may have become a target of right-wing students was also the changing political personality of SAU. From a secular, international disposition, SAU not unlike several public universities in the country, seems to have come under a tightening grip of Hindu majoritarian forces. In 2022, the biggest protest in SAU’s young history broke out when students started a sit-in demanding increase in stipends and scholarships and extension in course duration on account of the pandemic. Distastefully, the administration began a clampdown, expelling several students - one such student collapsed on campus, spending a week battling for life in an ICU. In the aftermath, the administration became starkly intolerant towards protests: new students, including Yashada were made to sign an undertaking foregoing any right to protest. Within her first month, Yashada recalls having an odd discussion with the Proctor, where he asked her to not hang out with “left leaning people”
Some time later, when she attended a silent vigil organised by an Afghani student in support of the Palestinian struggle, Yashada was called before the Proctor again, who warned her to not participate in “political meetings”.
Subsequently, certain students, alleged to be receiving support from the ABVP and the RSS, have organised religious and political activities - the installation of a temple in the sports facility being a recent example of this. ABVP Delhi has publicly supported Singh: “SAU students fasting on Mahashivratri were harassed for their choice of food,” it wrote on X, flouting a hashtag #MaoistsAgainstMahashivratri. The administration seems to have chosen to remain aloof to overt ultra-religious activities on campus - at least three students vouched for Singh’s concerning closeness with Jha, the dean of students. One masters student alleged that on Mahashivratri after Yashada was assaulted, even as SAU imposed a curfew upon students from exiting the gate, right-wing students were allowed to exit the gate and give interviews to the press. In these interviews, it was claimed that Yashada was accused of filing false harassment complaints. Jha did not respond to detailed questions posed by The Leaflet.
“I think there was always a certain hint that SAU would also become a university where Hindutva is protected,” Perera said, noting that it was always an Indian majority university, “Out of fifty or so faculty, only about four to five were from overseas, although among students, about half were overseas.” The skewed numbers in the faculty and administrative staff, including the registrar, played a role in the sanctioning of Indian conservative thought on campus. Perera recalled that in 2011, when plans to set up a temple in the campus were first floated along with proposals to invite religious figures to deliver talks, he, as the vice president of student affairs, had rigorously opposed. “I don’t mind setting up a temple,” he had stated back then, “But then we have to do the same for everybody else.” There would have to be religious sites for Christians, Muslims and Buddhists too, a proposal, he claims, was vetoed by senior Indian colleagues.
This skewed ratio between Indian and overseas students has further worsened with the introduction of new courses relating to engineering, where students are provided no exposure to social studies. It is also illegal.
Rule 26.2 of the SAU Rules, 2013 published in a gazette notification states that “not more than 50% of the students will be admitted from the host country”. This legally mandated balance has been completely thrown off.
But the apprehensions surrounding how the immunity can be imposed has prevented a statutory challenge to SAU’s administrative decisions to change the student demographic.
Similar allegations of other legal violations by SAU are difficult to brush off. In Yashada’s case, the administration seems to have clearly violated SAU’s Policy and Rules Against Sexual Harassment, the only applicable law for internal sexual harassment adjudications. Rule 6.2(v) of the Rules indicate that if a complaint is made orally, “the person to whom the complaint is made shall be responsible to reduce it in writing and to get it authenticated with the date and signature of the person who made the complaint.” Yashada claims that the first time she broke down in front of the Proctor after the catcalling incident, her oral complaints had not been written down.
The complaint against Dubey, which was forwarded to the Gender Sensitisation Committee, also seems to have been done illegally. Rule 6.2 mandates that after the UCC receives a complaint, it ‘shall’ communicate the complaint to the defendant, seek a written response, and forward the response to the complainant. Thereafter, a UCC report is to be compulsorily prepared, and only the final report is to be shared with the Gender Sensitization Committee, which would then forward the report to the complainant. The only other role of this Committee, under Rule 4.1(1) is to “propose the University’s policy and guidelines relating to prevention of sexual harassment cases and other acts of gender discrimination.”
In Yashada’s case against Dubey, there is nothing to suggest that the UCC sought a response from Dubey, or ever prepared a Report. The matter was simply forwarded to the Gender Sensitisation Committee which never had the authority to adjudicate over such matters. Dubey did not respond to questions posed by The Leaflet.
Perera has alleged that SAU has also violated its own rules governing several appointments over the years. The SAU First Rules, 2013 mandate that if the president appointee is an Indian, the vice-president appointee must be a non-Indian. But this was violated during the very first president’s tenure when an Indian professor was appointed as vice president. “I want to be on record to state that this is illegal,” Perera recalls telling the president at that time. Further, the rules also suggest that if the registrar is an Indian person, the director of finance and deputy registrars are supposed to be non-Indians. However, SAU currently employs only one non-Indian deputy registrar, a Bhutanese citizen, and one assistant register from Nepal.
Immunity has ensured little to no legal challenge to any of these administrative illegalities.
OVER A MONTH after she was assaulted in the mess, Yashada was yet to receive any communication from the police regarding her complaint, not even regarding the appointing of any investigating officer for her case. She has also put in two written complaints to Sharma and the UCC against Singh, and deposed once before the UCC in March, without any further communication from them.
On the morning of April 1, she woke up, in fact, to a show-cause notice issued by the university asking her to respond to ten points of allegation against her. The notice alleges, among other things, that she “made offensive remarks against Hinduism and fasting devotees” and that she had been “involved in the anti-establishment activities which were previously limited to closed spaces and whats App groups.” Despite video footage showing Singh attacking her, the notice also alleges that Yashada “scratched” Singh’s fingers with her nails and “continued shouting and insulting the fasting devotees gathered for the satvik meal.” Das, who was with Yashada, has also been served with a similar notice raising six points of broadly similarly worded allegations of “anti-establishment activities” and offending Hindu “devotees”.
In her response, Yashada has reiterated with video evidence that she was sexually harassed and inappropriately touched by Singh during the confrontation. Das has also responded.
“Like other students, when I joined SAU in 2023, I did so with hope in my heart for a good quality education and a space for fulfilling my academic aspirations,” she wrote in her reply, “Unfortunately, it is due to the politicisation of the University by Indian right-wing idealogues who bully, verbally abuse, assault and are publicly aggressive that common students like me are under much distress. The administration has turned a blind eye towards this, and continued silence would result in the destruction of an institution of excellence.”
Singh told me in April that he “will not be able to reply” to detailed questions posed to him. The article shall be updated once he does.
To Perrera, SAU’s reign of impunity has little cure - the vision of an international university on South Asian soil is one he has all but given up on. Other member states, he believes, have simply lost interest, “partly because there is nothing they can do, partly also because they have no money they can pump in.” Perera has written to two former secretaries of SAARC to consider the violations in SAU in the past years - just as Yashada’s complaints to the administration, his letters have met a gaping silence.
“Informally I must tell you,” Perera told me as we parted, “people now consider this as a lost cause.”
Note: A previous version of the article stated that Sasanka Perera previously worked at the World Health Organisation. It has been updated to reflect the correction that he worked for a stint with the World Bank instead. The error is regretted.