New Delhi, IIT Mandi has ordered an inquiry into a controversial Bhagavad Gita-themed poster on its campus that said Shudras should “serve higher classes”, with Director Laxmidhar Behera attributing it to students’ interpretation of the scripture and distancing the institute from its contents.
In an email to the IIT Mandi community on Sunday, titled “Outright condemnation of recent poster display within campus”, Behera said he was “shocked” to learn about the poster displayed during Janmashtami celebrations on September 4 and stressed that it had not been endorsed by the institute “in any manner”. Behera said the institute was committed to upholding “the values of equality, social justice, scientific temper” and other principles enshrined in the Constitution. “The institute strongly condemns any form of caste based discrimination,” he said in the email, seeking cooperation from the campus community to “stand together against such biases/discrimination in any form”. The poster also carried a verse from the Bhagavad Gita which said the four divisions of human society were created according to the “three modes of material nature and the work associated with them”. The IIT director said ISKCON strongly opposes caste discrimination and teaches equality.
Behera said he had been away from the campus and returned only on Saturday, and came to know about the controversy on Sunday morning.
Because of cruelty to animals, in 2023, he asked students to pledge not to eat meat while claiming that landslides and cloudbursts in Himachal Pradesh were occurring.
A year earlier, soon after his appointment as IIT Mandi director, a video surfaced in which Behera claimed to have helped rid a friend’s family of “evil spirits” by chanting holy mantras.
