Editorial: Reclaiming campus freedom

An international index has listed India among countries where academic freedom is “severely restricted”. In the 2026 edition of the Academic Freedom Index (AFI), India finds itself in the undesirable company of nations such as crisis-ridden Pakistan, war-torn Ukraine, and Indonesia, a flawed democracy.

That India’s position is a notch above completely restricted countries like Afghanistan, Turkiye, Syria, and Zimbabwe is not something to cheer about or find solace in.

The report by Scholars at Risk Network, an international not-for-profit organisation that monitors attacks on higher education, puts the Indian government in the dock and holds it responsible for expanding its "authority over higher education, influencing university governance, leadership appointments, and academic priorities".

The University Grants Commission acquiesced and proactively sought to be a cat’s paw for the government in carrying out its agenda. The report described the statutory organisation as a "primary vehicle for state influence", which led university administrators to take actions that stifled campus discourse, including dismissing faculty members, cancelling academic events, and enforcing new policies restricting student expression.

Several recent cases of suppression of dissent in academic spaces were widely reported in the media and discussed across the country.

Student activism, in particular, has borne the brunt of stringent action by university authorities and the police.

Student and youth organisations that are part of the larger right-wing Sangh Parivar too played a major role in mounting attacks on campus activism, especially on issues such as national identity, caste, and religion.

The eruption of pent-up anger over the prolonged attacks on student activism and the stifling of freedom of expression on campuses is one of the causes of the July GenZ protests that rocked the nation and its political establishment.

It is not that the powers that be do not understand the importance of academic freedom in fostering innovation and generating new ideas and insights relevant to nation-building. It is a mistaken notion that the state can suppress academic freedom in humanities institutions while simultaneously promoting the freedom to innovate in engineering and medical institutions.

Premier STEM institutions cannot escape the palpable pall of silence and conformism that has descended on the higher education system. In an atmosphere of intolerance and retributive action, risk-averse, careerist scholars would rather choose safe, state-directed research over radical ideas.

One indication is the myth-based, Indian Knowledge Systems-related research projects being pursued in IITs to please the BJP-led government.

Studies have also pointed out how institutional and individual academic freedom directly drives the volume, quality, and creative output in academic institutions, including STEM institutes.

Along with the Academic Freedom Index, India’s unenviable decline in other interrelated international indices, such as V-Dem’s democracy index and RSF’s Press Freedom Index, leads to the difficult-to-refute inference that authoritarian tendencies are getting increasingly entrenched in the nation’s body politic and governance systems.

The government, however, does not appear to be in a mood to introspect, relent, and initiate course correction by restoring university autonomy and allowing, if not actively enabling, dissent by faculty and students. A top priority should be preventing the criminalisation of student protests and activism.

Instead of resorting to strong-arm tactics that bring international disrepute, the state should consider nurturing and growing a right-wing intellectual ecosystem that can take on its ideological opponents in the battle of ideas.