Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

In this picture, my great grand uncle, Sir J C Ghosh, scientist and the founding Director of my alma mater, IIT Kharagpur, the first IIT. Also the place where my dad worked for half a decade. So did two of my uncles. Two of my cousins preceeded me in studying here and two of my cousins, women engineers, went to study here after me. Seated (L to R): Meghnad Saha (Astrophysicist) Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose (Biologist & Physicist) Sir Jnan Chandra Ghosh (Chemistry Electrolysis and lonization) Standing (L to R): Snehamoy Dutta (Physicist) Satyendranath Bose (Bose Einestein theory) Debendra Mohan Bose (Physicist) NR Sen (Physicist & Mathematician) Jnanendra Nath Mukherjee (Chemistry, Colloid Chemistry) NC Nag (Biologist) In the telemetry room of the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Bengaluru headquarters, screens pulse with real-time data from a lunar orbiter navigating the Moon’s shadowed craters. Algorithms, refined in Indian laboratories, guide autonomous corrections with pre...

Throughout my academic journey, I have been fortunate to be offered several leadership roles. Each one has been deeply fulfilling, and each has come with a profound sense of humility. Yet every role has also carried an unspoken price—one that is rarely discussed openly in public or scholarly conversations about academic leadership. That price is the expectation of performative neutrality. Because leaders are seen as speaking for the institution, we are implicitly—or sometimes explicitly—told to relinquish a public voice. No provocative social media posts. No sharp public commentary on matters deemed “controversial.” The assumption is that institutional representation demands silence on the issues that matter most. Consider, for example, the ongoing Israeli military campaign in Gaza, which many scholars of decolonization and international law have described as genocidal. Or the broader pattern of U.S.-backed Israeli settler-colonial violence and aggression, including recent actions invo...