By The Wire Staff
New Delhi: “I dedicate this whole Ram Katha to Harvard University,” said spiritual leader Morari Bapu at the end of a nine-day Ram Katha held at the university’s Sanders Theatre last month.
The katha and an accompanying academic conference had taken the university by storm in the months leading up to it, with professors alarmed by the university’s endorsement given the event’s religious nature, The Harvard Crimson reported.
The Ram Katha ran from August 15-23 and was funded by TRUDANA – a UK-based charity run by Lord Dolar Popat’s son Paavan Popat. The charity also paid for the academic conference. However, the event got mired in controversy after the extent of involvement by the Mittal Institute came into question.
An email to faculty with involvement in South Asian Studies at Harvard University advertising the event prompted concern, then outrage. Finally, the university was forced to scrub its name off the event. But the damage seemed to have been done.
The controversy
On June 18, several faculty members received an email invitation to ‘The Living Ramayana’ event. The email described the nine-day Ram Katha by Bapu, with more than 1,000 people expected to attend. The email raised concerns about the use of Harvard and its Mittal South Asia Institute to facilitate what the faculty viewed as a religious rather than academic activity.
The timing of the event, scheduled before the start of the fall semester, also raised questions about its intended audience – “primarily a non Harvard audience and a non-academic ambition” a statement by the faculty said.
The invitation also mentioned an accompanying academic conference, to be held in short evening sessions from August 16-18, but provided few details. Further, a set of activities in Hindi was scheduled from August 20-22, involving scholars and reciters invited by Bapu.
Concerned about the nature of the event, some faculty members approached the principal organisers – Diana Eck, Swayam Bagaria and Hitesh Hathi – seeking details about the Ram Katha and the conference. They also sought information about the event’s sponsors, donors, funding and how the event had come to be organised.
Faculty members approached colleagues on the Mittal Institute Steering Committee, some of whom revealed that they had not been consulted for the event’s planning. They found that few, if any, were able to provide information about the planning process or the rationale behind the event.
It later came to light that the Ram Katha and conference were being funded through charitable entities by Lord Popat and his family. The donors had initially approached faculty at Harvard Divinity School, but the school had declined to host a katha.
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