Once bastions of dissent, Indian universities now face a suffocating environment of surveillance and censorship

Criminalisation of academic discourse and erosion of academic freedom threaten the very essence of higher education in the world’s largest democracy.

Students of New Delhi‘s Jawaharlal Nehru University protest against the violence on the campus in April 2022. Indian universities have been witnessing an attack on their democratic setup and are being targeted for imbibing and enabling a culture of resistance. | Photo Credit: MOORTHY RV

On March 6, at around 5 pm, as the sun was setting, a crowd of students gathered at the Jamia Millia Islamia campus to protest the discrimination of farmers. Slogans were chanted, and more and more students joined in. Students were seen holding placards saying “Fair Price for Farmers”, “MSP ko Lagu Karo”, “Fraternity”, and “Kisaan Protest against Corporate Raj”. Guards stood around the students, speaking constantly into their wireless radios, monitoring their movement. Earlier in the day, security outside the campus was beefed up. Half an hour later, the protest was disrupted by the guards, and within no time, the students were dispersed. As darkness enveloped the campus, the chorus of sloganeering died.

Universities have been the sites of dissent throughout world history. In India, they have been at the forefront of various movements, both during the colonial period and after Independence. The non-cooperation movement in 1919 was the first political movement in the country to witness substantial student involvement. It provided an impetus for youth leaders to hold the first All India Student Conference in 1920 and consolidate growing student movements across the country. Against the academic discrimination of Indian pupils, the first student strike in undivided India took place in 1920. These student movements also produced a generation of politicians, including former Vice President Venkaiah Naidu, former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, among others.

A culture of resistance

But Indian universities have been witnessing an attack on their democratic setup. They are being targeted for imbibing and enabling a culture of resistance. The clampdown on dissent in universities has instilled fear among academics, researchers, and students. They fear that if they express their opinions that do not match the larger majoritarian view, it could land them in jail. And so Indian campuses are turning into chokeholds.

In a 2023 update to its Academic Freedom Index, Sweden’s V-Dem Institute noted that India is among 22 countries and territories out of 179 in the world where institutions and scholars have “significantly less freedom today than 10 years ago”. India was behind its neighbours Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Myanmar. In India, academic freedom started to decline in 2009 with a drop in university autonomy, followed by a sharp downturn in all indicators in 2013, the report says.

Professor Apoorvanand, who teaches Hindi at Delhi University, believes universities have become the “ideological platforms” of the current regime. “This is part of BJP’s agenda to have one official ideology, that is, Hindu nationalist ideology. Any voice that differs from the majoritarian view is not allowed. People with different opinions are labelled ‘traitors’ or ‘anti-nationals,” he said.

In December 2023, an order was issued by the administration of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) that putting up wall posters and staging dharnas within 100 metres of academic buildings can lead to a fine of up to Rs.20,000 or expulsion, while any “anti-national” act will attract a Rs.10,000 fine.

“If we look back at history, in Soviet Russia and China, universities were turned into propaganda tools of the government, and that is what is happening in India right now,” Apoorvanand said.

There have been several incidents of violence in Indian universities. In February 2016, JNU became the centre of public outrage when, in a student protest over the conviction of Afzal Guru, slogans were raised that were deemed “anti-national”. A sedition case was filed against Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid, and Anirban Bhattacharya. Investigations carried out by the Delhi government and JNU revealed that controversial slogans were raised by outsiders. The arrested students were granted bail.

In 2017, clashes broke out in Delhi University’s Ramjas College when a literary event called “Cultures of Protest” was disrupted by students, allegedly from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the RSS’ student wing. Student leader Umar Khalid was invited to speak at the event but could not due to the tense situation that unfolded. On December 15, 2019, during the anti-CAA/NRC protest, the Delhi Police along with paramilitary forces entered the Jamia Millia Islamia campus and the Zakir Hussain Library, thrashing and beating up students. Hundreds of students were injured in the attack. In 2020, protests erupted again in JNU when masked assailants attacked students and staff.

On February 9 this year, a clash erupted between students in JNU regarding the dispute over the selection of election committee members at the School of Languages. Several students were injured in the incident and hospitalised. Videos circulated on social media depicted a man wielding a stick and attacking students.

Saffronise, corporatise, privatise

“During the UBGM (University General Body Meeting), ABVP tried to disrupt it, and after the meeting was over, they intimidated students with sticks and rods and even broke the sound system we had hired. Many students were injured, and I was hit on the forehead with a kada,” said Sourya, a PhD student at the Centre for Law and Governance at JNU. He sees these attempts of violence from the broader perspective of attacks on the democratic imagination of universities.

“Whenever students have tried to raise their voice, there has always been an attempt to silence them. Campuses are places where we imagine a different type of world is possible. The current regime is insecure about the opposition by students,” said Sourya. “After the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, there has been an attempt to saffronise, corporatise, privatise, and centralise education. The NEP 2020 was bought in during lockdown without any discussion in Parliament.”

Before 2014, JNU’s students could organise marches anywhere, and have meetings and discussions, said Ayesha Kidwai, a linguist and professor at JNU. “There was an atmosphere of vibrancy. Post-2016 JNU violence, we saw the criminalisation of dissent happening. We saw the witch-hunt of those who don’t agree with the government and how students were pulled up for expressing dissent. A new manual has come into place, which is basically to cripple the voices of dissent. There’s no freedom of speech, no freedom of movement. This is a state of total repression,” Kidwai added.

In 2019, Jamia Millia Islamia witnessed the first-of-its-kind student uprising against the CAA/NRC, in which thousands of students participated. The walls were painted with slogans and murals, and there was a huge deployment of security forces around the campus. There were road blockades and barricades in place to restrict student movement. The situation escalated when police and paramilitary forces entered the campus and beat up students, even those who were studying in the library.

“Jamia and its students have been criminalised over recent years as it is a minority institution. Even if we see the involvement of students in politics, the consequences can be graver for them than for a student from any other institution,” said Manisha Sethi, a professor at the Centre of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre in Jamia Millia Islamia. “If there is no space for oppositional politics, where are the next generation of leaders going to come from?” she asked.

Kanishk*, a professor at Jamia Millia Islamia, said that the current academic space that has shrunk over the years is “suffocating”. There is an “institutional mechanism” to control student minds. “There is also a censorship and monitoring of research topics chosen by students at the university,” he said. “A week ago, I was organising a talk on hate speech and one of my superiors told me to remove the word ‘hate speech’ because it can cause trouble.”

Walls were painted with slogans and murals during a protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the National Register of Citizens (NRC), and the National Population Register (NPR) at New Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University in February 2020. | Photo Credit: SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA

Jaya*, a research scholar at Jamia Millia Islamia, said: “Protests are fundamental to our Constitution and are the backbone of democracy. On the birthday of Faiz Ahmad Faiz, we were not allowed to have a gathering to commemorate the poet. The administration didn’t allow it. Police in civilian clothes even entered the university campus to keep a watchful on students.”

It is considered that government institutions have relatively more autonomy than their private counterparts just because the taxpayers’ money funds the former ones while the latter ones follow a strict business model. The line has been blurred now.

‘I resign’

Last year, Ashoka University, one of India’s premier liberal arts institutes, invited a backlash when Sabyasachi Das, an assistant professor of economics at the university, resigned. Das had written a 50-page paper titled “Democratic Backsliding in the World’s Largest Democracy” that suggested potential electoral “manipulation” on several seats during the 2019 general election. The university distanced itself from the paper, saying it has “not yet completed a critical review process”.

In 2021, one of India’s renowned political scientists, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, resigned from his position of Vice-Chancellor at Ashoka because the administrators viewed his association with the varsity as a “political liability”. Mehta, in his resignation letter, wrote: “My public writing in support of a politics that tries to honour constitutional values of freedom and equal respect for all citizens, is perceived to carry risks for the university. In the interests of the university, I resign.”

Sumana Roy, an author and a faculty member of English and Creative Writing at Ashoka University, said that “there is a culture of surveillance and censorship” in place. “Contrary to public assumption, the faculty and students at Ashoka University have continued to fight for our right to various kinds of freedom, spearheaded by the Academic Freedom Committee.”

“What is most disturbing is the centralisation of power: a kind of one state, one kind of education policy. The federalist nature of our country is precious to its survival; I have been noticing a kind of uniformity being forced on the education system at all levels, beginning from primary school,” she added.

Over the past few years, Delhi University has made several changes to the syllabus of many courses. In 2021, Delhi University’s academic council dropped Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi and the works of two Dalit authors, Bama and Sukirtharani, from its undergraduate English course. This came into effect after the implementation of the NEP of 2020. Later, in its History course, papers on “Brahmanisation” and “inequality” were removed. And in the last year, the Delhi University academic council decided to remove Muhammad Iqbal from its Political Science syllabus.

“Ever since the Ramjas incident happened back in 2017, Delhi University colleges have had an Internal Quality Assurance Committee, through which students have to seek permission for organising any kind of event. The voices that are critical of the current dispensation are not allowed,” said Sanatan, a history student at Delhi University. “The university has a very rich history of resistance. What we are seeing currently is an attempt to crush it.”

Manik Gupta, president of Delhi University’s AISA (All India Students Association) unit, echoed the sentiment: “Post-2014, institutions such as JNU, Delhi University, Jamia, and Aligarh are targeted for raising their voice. This is a disturbing trend.”

Security everywhere

On January 22, when Ram Mandir was being consecration in Ayodhya, a banner was unfurled at Pune’s Film and Television Institute of India. It read: “Remember Babri, Death of Constitution”. A day later, a mob forcibly entered the campus and started beating students, injuring many. Mayank*, a student at the institute, was one of the injured. “It was around 1:30 pm, and I was busy with my project when I received a text on a WhatsApp group that outsiders had barged to the campus. When I went there, I saw 15-20 people wearing saffron scarves. The security guards were also there. I asked the guard to take them out when a guy from the mob attacked me, hurling racial slurs, and I fell to the ground. They kicked me relentlessly and shouted Jai Shri Ram,” he said.

The growing incidents of criminalisation of dissent in Indian universities have left students and academics in a state of alienation and fear. The fear is so deep-seated that teachers are “self-censoring” even inside classrooms because they don’t know if they are being recorded or surveilled.

Apoorvanand said: “We are living in a dystopian time. It’s about the vulgarisation of what we know education to be. You will lose sense of what knowledge is: of history, science and literature. There is an attempt to rewrite history to fulfil the fantasies of the past. What we must, as teachers, do is maintain the sanctity of classrooms. To expose students to all authoritative sources and knowledge and make classrooms safe enough to discuss different ideas because universities are supposed to be safe spaces for unpopular ideas.”

*Names changed to protect identity.

Mir Umar is an independent journalist based in New Delhi.