The Crisis of Courage in India’s Liberal Universities
Ashraf Sheikh | 03 March 2026 | The Wire
I am an alum of Azim Premji University (APU). For years, I thought of its motto, “Towards a just, equitable, humane and sustainable society,” not as a branding, but as a serious commitment. It was not decorative language. It shaped how we were taught to think. We were trained to interrogate power, to question dominant narratives, to sit with uncomfortable histories. We were told that institutions are moral actors, not merely administrative ones. Justice was not an elective theme; it was the through-line.
Which is why recent events have felt less like a disagreement and more like a fracture…