How do you speak of labour, or ecological justice when the land beneath your classroom was once farmland acquired through coercive state facilitation? When the university’s chancellor is a billionaire and a ruling party MP? When critical thinking is part of the brand, but not of governance? Being able to answer these questions shapes every decision I make as a teacher and scholar inside one of India’s premier private liberal arts universities. And they signal broader contradictions that are now foundational to India’s expanding private higher education sector.