Disintegrating Regionalism:
Some weeks ago, I saw grainy photographs circulating on social media of individuals from Colombo’s Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (RCSS) and New Delhi’s South Asian University (SAU) holding up what appeared to be a document, with the caption that the two organisations had signed a Memorandum of Understanding. Ordinarily, it ought to have been a celebratory moment for regional academic cooperation in research and publication. RCSS was conceived in an era when South Asian multilateralism held genuine promise while the latter came into being when these ideals were deteriorating. In any case, theoretically at least, such institutional linkages are usually meant to foster cross-border dialogue, trust, and shared intellectual rigor.
Unfortunately, however, this specific partnership arrives at a time when both institutions have fallen from their apex. As such, far from indicating a synergy of intellectual powerhouses, the pact resembles an alliance of convenience born out of necessity in an era of institutional decline. It raises urgent questions about what SAU seeks to salvage, and why RCSS would risk mortgaging what remains of its institutional capital.
The Anatomy of Dual Decline
To understand the true sense of this MoU, one must confront the ground reality of the two signatories.
Once a vibrant, premier Colombo-based think tank that catalysed Track II diplomacy and groomed a generation of security analysts across South Asia, RCSS has long since drifted from its zenith. It was the organization that offered me my first research grant to conduct field research in Kathmandu and Colombo at the height of its reputation and much later I served on its International Research Committee. Sadly now, beset by structural funding cuts, inability to attract and retain bright young minds, and an inability to consistently attract top-tier researchers or groundbreaking projects, it has operated in a lower gear. Of late, it has mostly focused on presenting lectures by visiting academics and diplomats who happen to be passing through Colombo. Yet, despite its diminished intellectual output and stature, RCSS has largely retained a relatively benign, independent public image in Sri Lanka.
Conversely, South Asian University, which I helped establish and was part of for over a decade, was initiated as an ambitious joint enterprise by SAARC member states. It was expected to be an ivory tower intended to embody a pluralistic, pan-regional ethos offering high-quality advanced training to young people across the region. For about nine to ten years since its inception, it lived close to its expectations and became an institution of repute which nevertheless had a long way to go. Today, that founding vision and the initial success stories have been dismantled. SAU has suffered an acute institutional decline, increasingly marred by internal controversies, a chilling erosion of academic freedom, a student-unfriendly administrative climate, and troubling governance optics. More critically, its once-celebrated regional cosmopolitanism has given way to a heavily domesticised, north Indian majoritarian administrative and cultural ethos in terms of funding, staff and student recruitment, programming, and public persona. My interest in the news of the MOU between the two organizations came mostly from my close association with and observation of the two over a long period of time.
The MoU’s Strategic Use for SAU
For the India-dominated administrative and academic apparatus steering SAU at present, this partnership has little to do with rigorous strategic studies. Instead, it has everything to do with reputation laundering.
As SAU’s regional credibility has frayed, alienating scholars of repute who now view it as an extension of a singular national-project spearheaded by parochial Indian nationalist interests rather than a multilateral SAARC institution, it faces a severe legitimacy crisis. That it is legally and formally still considered a SAARC organisation is irrelevant. If RCSS wanted a sense of SAU’s reputation, all it needed to do was to undertake a simple online search. Even easier would have been to request one of the many freely available Generative AI programs if SAU has a sound reputation for academic freedom, student services and intellectual output. When I posed the question as to what concerns a Colombo-based think tank — I purposely did not refer to RCSS — should bear in mind when considering signing an MOU with SAU, one of the artificial intelligence programs I consulted offered the following summary assessment: “the central problem is not that RCSS has chosen to cooperate with an India-based university. It is that RCSS has chosen a partner whose recent institutional record raises fundamental questions about the very principles of critical inquiry, academic independence and regional intellectual dialogue that the agreement ostensibly seeks to promote.” Intriguingly, it actually referred to RCSS even though my query did not.
It is truly unfortunate that RCSS did not even undertake an exercise this simple despite being a think tank and a research organisation for strategic studies. However, by partnering with external organizations such as RCSS, particularly those in neighboring capitals like Colombo and touting these events across social media, SAU attempts to project an illusion of ongoing regional connectivity and academic vitality, which does not exist in reality.
It is in this context that one can understand the numerous requests for assistance regularly sent by students facing extreme difficulties in the university to officers in the foreign services of South Asian countries, regional University Grant Commissions or their equivalents, journalists and political leaders offering evidence of grievance. Obviously, this results from the fact there are no acceptable systems of grievance redressal within the university. As a constant, these emails flag what appear to be real student concerns as neither SAU nor the governments of the countries that ostensibly fund it care for their wellbeing. In a September 2024 interview, I described this situation in SAU as similar to “a concentration camp” where people had “no rights” and the institution itself had “no sense of ethics or propriety.” It is therefore extremely regrettable that RCSS has signed an MOU with this entity.
The RCSS, with its once-reputable legacy of research and dissemination and unblemished public standing in Sri Lanka, serves as a convenient vehicle for SAU’s image rehabilitation. It is apparent that SAU has recently launched a campaign to collect MOUs from all kinds of sundry organizations across the world and to invite mostly Indian-diasporic actors from such institutes in the West to visit the university. This effort allows SAU to signal to the academic world that it is still actively engaged in regional and global outreach and scholarship despite the converse being the reality. In this context and with particular regard to RCSS, SAU is effectively utilizing the historical reputation of a Sri Lanka-based think tank to mask its own domestic and institutional controversies. In short, SAU gains a veneer of internationalism or regionalism which it has largely forfeited at home.
What RCSS Stands to Gain — and Lose
For RCSS, the reputational ledger is unfortunately far more lopsided. What can a Colombo-based institution genuinely gain from an arrangement with an entity weighed down by systemic institutional baggage including corruption, compromised academic freedom, and an insular overly India-centric bureaucratic culture despite claims of South Asian regionalism?
The answer is, nothing of enduring intellectual value.
While RCSS may harbor quiet hopes that aligning with a heavily resourced SAARC institution might alleviate its own chronic funding constraints or inject momentum into its depleted programming, the price tag is too exorbitant. For one thing, SAU is no longer effectively SAARC, but practically North Indian and very much Hindu in its orientation.
The latter reality is exemplified by the fact that the University now hosts a Hindu temple in its premises — a demand that was resisted from within for a long time, and also has no religious edifices for other South Asian or Indian religions. By hitching its wagon to an institution widely criticized for stifling dissent and abandoning its multilateral mandate, RCSS trades away its most precious remaining asset: its independent reputation.
Ultimately, any kind of association is a form of endorsement and a considered choice. When a historically respected independent entity in our country chooses to validate an utterly compromised institution in India, it signals to the broader regional and global academic community a critical indifference to institutional decay and governance failures. If RCSS was seriously interested in having an MOU with an Indian institution of repute, that country offers plenty of options that would be worth considering despite their relative decline in the recent past. There likely would have been positive consideration from these institutions too, given RCSS’s reputation, if approached through correct channels.
The Case for Withdrawal
Institutions, much like governments, are ultimately judged by the company they keep. For an entity with a track record in strategic studies, this should have been self-evident. For RCSS, clinging to a partnership with the highly problematic SAU does not offer even marginal, short-term institutional or intellectual sustenance. Besides, the MoU signing and its broadcasting across social media comes at the catastrophic cost to its long-term integrity.
To safeguard its legacy and self-respect and any future potential to reinvent itself as a genuine, objective voice on South Asian strategic studies, RCSS must exercise courage with intelligence. It should critically review this engagement, which has seemingly been undertaken without due diligence, hurriedly and on compromised advice. That review should be far more realistic and objective in the context of publicly available information on SAU’s decline and consider a clean withdrawal from the MoU. A once elite member of Colombo’s intellectual community cannot afford to lend its fading historical prestige to whitewash the systemic failings of a once great South Asian project that has by now completely lost its way. If RCSS wishes to reclaim its stature, it must link its future to transparency, academic freedom, and partnerships of true substance — not cast its lot with sinking ships.