New Delhi: A second-year student at Delhi University’s Lady Shri Ram College wound up at former ambassador Deepak Vohra’s lecture by accident. She and a friend had a free period. More than offended at his remarks, she came out bewildered.
“It was a sad attempt at being funny. He was delusional. All he did was talk about how good India is,” she said. “As an economics student, I knew what he was saying wasn’t true. All of it felt like a lie. It was unhinged.”
Moments from retired IFS officer Deepak Vohra’s lecture at the campus have been shared and re-shared. A screengrab of his presentation, in which he refers to India’s moments of freedom– where 1947 appears to have been given the same weightage as the inauguration of a Subhas Chandra Bose statue and the inauguration of Ram Mandir– is all over social media. Reddit posts are talking about the decline of LSR. Meanwhile, students seem to be acutely aware of the falsehoods that were propagated—from the inflated image of India that was presented to his comments on the “freedom of the Indian soul.”
In response to a question from ThePrint, Vohra said he had no idea why his lecture prompted this kind of reaction.
According to the student, Vohra even referred to himself and the country in the same vein. “Every second, 6,000 UPI transactions are made in me,” he is known to have said.
His talk was replete with references from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, and each slide was punctuated by either a joke or a Bollywood song. For the student mentioned above, it was an insult to her intelligence.
“When it’s an ambassador speaking, you have expectations. He literally spat on those expectations,” she said.
The very next day, she attended another lecture, which had only 15 people—whereas Vohra gave his lecture to a packed auditorium.
“The next day, we were told about AI, geopolitics, and the fact that GDP is not the lens through which India should be viewed. We know the truth. We’re not stupid,” she said.
According to students, for the most part, Vohra received a reasonably positive response— except for a smattering of giggles and expressions of bemusement. They also referred to him as being “flirtatious”. He described an author next to him as “not his girlfriend”.
Also read: LSR was a labour of love for Lala Shri Ram. He even picked library books himself
Death of liberal education in India
The lecture was organised by the BA Programme Department as part of their annual academic event. While some students were merely amused, for others it represents something sinister—and is part of an ethos.
“I think this stems from the inherent fact that our college loves to call itself apolitical and feminist,” said Gayatri Veer, a second-year student of English. “Those two words can’t be put together. It’s shameful, and we’re better than this.”
According to her, a group of students approached one of the professors in order to facilitate a visit to the principal, to discuss the issues they had with the lecture. “We were advised not to. We were told that it isn’t a concern we should be taking up by ourselves,” she said.
The backlash was largely been restricted to messages circulated among students and certain news reports.
“It was horrendous. The audacity to spew such blatant misogyny, and the complicity of the audience, including students, was appalling. He went on to say, “I will rename myself as Mohammed Deepak, that would allow me to have four wives, so that I can marry your principal because she is beautiful and I am handsome,” reads a comment on a Reddit post. “And yet, at the end of it all, he was rewarded with a standing ovation. If anything signals the death of liberal education in India, it is this.”
The student quoted above, on condition of anonymity, left after she saw that Vohra was being applauded.
“How can he not have been vetted? This isn’t something that happens overnight,” said Veer. “The student council doesn’t feel like a body that’s representing students.”
She also mentioned a lecture by feminist scholar Nivedita Menon, who visited the college in an unofficial capacity and “took her session on the lawn”.
“These are the kinds of voices we want to listen to. It was disrespectful that she had to take her lecture on the lawn, but he was given this kind of platform despite his controversial history,” she said. As of 2022, Vohra was on the verge of prosecution for “alleged financial bungling in Indian diplomatic missions.”
The LSR alumni community has also come forward. “Institutions stand for a vision of the future, which its leadership hold in trusteeship for the next generation. LSR stands for values which thousands and thousands of women have contributed to. It is not for anyone to insult and destroy,” reads a statement that has signatories like Nivedita Menon and Ayesha Kidwai.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)