For over two centuries, Mumbai’s Asiatic Society, founded in 1804, has stood as one of India's greatest repositories of learning. It has been a sanctuary of rare manuscripts and civilisational memory. Yet, its recent election will be remembered less for a change of office-bearers than for the collapse of an intellectual order that had come to mistake custodianship for ownership. The sweeping victory of Vinay Sahasrabuddhe’s Asiatic Tomorrow panel is not merely an institutiona