SAU action over PhD proposal: Sri Lankan prof said he conveyed all facts to envoy, she denies it

On April 23, Sri Lankan High Commissioner Kshenuka Senewiratne had expressed her “concerns” with SAU president K K Aggarwal regarding “an intended inquiry” against Perera. She also wrote a letter to Aggarwal on May 12.

In response to The Indian Express report on her letter (August 4), the High Commissioner said she had not known that the SAU action was linked to the research proposal citing criticism of the NDA when she raised concerns with the university.

However, Perera said he had conveyed the details of the issue to High Commissioner Senewiratne. “I must unqualifiedly state that her claim that I have not ‘divulged’ to her (details) about the proposal of the concerned student and its quotation of Prof Noam Chomsky’s criticism of Prime Minister Modi is being economical with the truth, to say the least,” he said, adding that he “kept the High Commissioner informed of all aspects of the inquiry process”.

When asked about Perera’s claims, Senewiratne told The Indian Express that she did not recall “receiving any text messages mentioning this particular reference of what Chomsky said about PM Modi from Prof Perera”.

“There was no mention of the criticism of the PM by a noted linguist both in the written and the verbal communications presented to me by Prof Perera. Neither has the university informed me about this when I gave my representation to them. I have not initiated any communication from my side to the university post my communication on May 12,” Senewiratne said.

She reiterated that if such a reference was received, no representation at a diplomatic level would have been made.

In his statement to The Indian Express on Saturday, Perera referred to his communication with the High Commissioner over text messages on April 13. “A formal inquiry has been instituted on the claim of violating professional code of conduct and violating laws of the host country. None of this makes any sense. In the first, it is for supervising a student whose work deals with Kashmir. There is a quotation from a well known US scholar on the Indian PM…,” Perera wrote to the High Commissioner.

Following this, Perera said he met the High Commissioner in her office on April 18 and “expanded on it”. “I also suggested that she go through the documents I had at hand at the time – hard copies of which I took to the meeting – so that the entire case was clear, including inferences to Prof Chomsky and the Prime Minister. She did not hesitate to tell me categorically that she did not need to see these. I was neither requested to furnish anything else at the meeting or subsequently,” Perera said.

He said he had also conveyed to the High Commissioner that “… the bone of contention for the university was the criticism of the PM in a quote from Prof Chomsky, which was used by my student in his proposal… This was not my opinion or that of the student’s, but a quotation used as per regular academic practice in social sciences.”

SAU is an international university sponsored by eight South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation countries, and Sri Lanka is a member state of its governing board. Perera taught sociology at SAU and was a founding member of the department at the university. The SAU had earlier said that while an inquiry had indeed been initiated against Perera, “no PhD proposal led to the resignation of a professor”.