I didnt want to add my opinion to a matter I have no evidence on. But there were a few points I wanted to raise while we all get together and support Gaurav and Rashmi in their crusade.

I followed with amused interest on IIPM and the rising ire of the bloggers and my interest reached a new high when Gaurav Sabnis resigned from IBM for standing by his freedom of expression.

Now I condemn wholeheartedly the response of IIPM students who have not shown any kind of etiqutte or moral ethics that any student ideally should. While I do appreciate they have full right to express themselves in whatever manner they deem appropriate, they do not have the right to slander another person.

This is exactly what Gaurav Sabnis did in his first IIPM post. There was no substantiated evidence that he had to claim anything about Arindam Chaudhari. I have no clue who Arindam is or what he does, but to say that he is a fraud without any evidence is not what a responsible blogger would do.

Update: Forgive me if I sound as if it is entirely Gaurav’s fault, it isnt but there were a few words that were used quite losely which as a popular blogger with a huge audience was sure to invite attention from the IIPM ‘legal cell’.

But the worst part was the response from the so-called IIPM students, I do not know who they are (being so anonymous) but leaving such disgusting messages about Rashmi or threatening to burn some IBM Thinkpads is a very nasty response from a university that is serving a legal notice to a blogger for doing exactly the same thing -albeit more decently and eloquently.

(Students being the representatives of the University, and if it is true that the Dean sent a mail saying the students are threatening to burn IBM Thinkpads, then I do hold the university responsible for not taking action against the students who act in violent disregard of morality and slandering the university’s name in that process).

So, the point comes to the resignation. What I am disappointed about is that it seems to me that it sends out the message that IIPM has gained ground because of their ‘gundaism’ and that Gaurav had no choice except that to protect his freedom of expression. Moreover, it seems to be interpreted as the bloggers being the meek helpless victims.

But if IBM did not ask him to remove those offending posts nor ask him to resign, I do not see any reason why he should. Instead, he might have simply stood by his claims (with evidence) and let them do what they said they would. Nobody stood to lose more than IIPM by this violent behaviour of so-called management students. Moreover, with evidence, nobody would be more embarassed than the ‘law enforcement officials’ who sent a legal notice to Gaurav. If truth is to speak louder than words, we need to be responsible for our words by substantiating them.

Also, there seems to be a curiously anonymous andy who is not willing to show who he/she is but instead accuses rashmi of not being professional. I would only suggest him to first be responsible for his comments by stop being anonymous and rebutting the claims without vindictiveness or slander.