Engineering Dissent: The Contemporary Politics in IITs and NITs.
Aswindev C
The past few years witnessed many attempts by university administrations across the nation to suppress dissenting voices of students. This is evident from the student struggles happening from Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai to Jadavpur University in West Bengal and Ambedkar University in Delhi to Mahatma Gandhi university in Kerala. Students who questioned the commercialization of education and saffronisation of academic spaces have faced the wrath of the administrations. In state universities this onslaught is led by the Governors in their capacity as Chancellors and in Central universities it is directly through the university administrations. Premiere institutions like the IITs and NITs which have historically discouraged student activism have been no exception to this trend.
Saffronisation in NIT Calicut and the student struggles
The National Institute of Technology, Calicut (NITC) had cancelled its annual cultural festival Ragam and the technical festival Tatva in the last academic year. This year the administration allowed Ragam to be conducted however on one condition, that any reference to Rajan or his legacy should be avoided. NIT Calicut, formerly known as the Regional Engineering College (REC), has been conducting Ragam, its annual cultural fest, since 1987. The festival was started in the memory of P Rajan, a student of the institute (then REC) who was taken into custody by the Kerala Police in 1976 during the emergency. He was never produced in front of a court. The legal battle by his father reveled that Rajan was held in police custody in the infamous Kakkayam camp and died due to custodial torture. Friends of Rajan at REC started the All Kerala Rajan Memorial Light Music Competition in 1977 to commemorate Rajan, which later became Ragam.
The appointment of the director seemingly aligned with the Sangh Parivar has marked a shift in NIT Calicut’s administrative posture, leading to a series of decisions that have drawn widespread student protests and public criticism. The Kozhikode district committee and the chathamangalam local committee of the SFI have conducted several marches to the NITC gates on different issues, the most recent one being against the appointment as dean of a professor who had publicly praised Nathuram Godse the killer of Mahatma Gandhi, through a social media comment. Previously, in 2023 a programme of the ABVP was hosted in the NIT campus under the disguise of a club activity. Whereas the code of conduct for students bans all kinds of political expression, the event part of ABVPs campaign was allowed to happen in the institute. In the same year an MoU was signed with a Sangh Parivar run journalism organisation.
Earlier in 2024 Vysakh Premkumar, an undergraduate student was beaten up by Sangh Parivar supporters in the campus while he was holding a placard which stated ‘India is not Rama Rajya’. Instead of taking disciplinary action against those who physically assaulted a fellow student the administration suspended Vysakh, who got assaulted, for one year. The suspension order cited ‘lowering the esteem of the institute’ and ‘creating unrest in the campus’ as reasons for the action. However, the administration was forced to withdraw the suspension order following strong protests by the students.
In March 2024 a circular was issued to impose night curfew on students. This also meant students would not be able to use academic facilities like libraries during the night. Even the late night eateries were closed down citing concerns over students dietary habits and sleep schedule. Already these institutes infantilize the students by restricting them from expressing their political opinions. The said circular wanted to control every aspect of their living as well. It was met with protests from students. Five students were imposed with a hefty fine of 33 lakhs for leading the protest.
If the past two years is any indication the intention of the NITC administration is very clear, as they are on the one hand promoting Godse supporters and giving space to the ABVP while on the other hand is suppressing students who stand for their basic rights to access library and their freedom of movement within the campus.
Safety of women in campuses
The crackdown on student expression and autonomy, as seen at NIT Calicut, is part of a broader trend where administrative control extends far beyond political activity. Increasingly, institutions are justifying restrictive measures in the name of discipline or safety yet these actions often undermine, rather than ensure, the well-being of students. Nowhere is this more evident than in the experiences of women on campus, whose safety concerns are often met with curfews and restrictions on movement instead of systemic protections.
In NIT Trichy a girl student was sexually harassed in her hostel, by a person who was hired to repair the wi-fi facilities in the hostel. It was only after protests and widespread outrage on the issue that action was taken on the complaint by the student. The warden after receiving the complaint asked the students not to ‘blow it up’ and allegedly made remarks about the dressing style of the survivor. The warden had to later apologise on these remarks after student protests.
In 2019 a female student of the same institute was raped by a local person as she and her friends were turned away from hostel due to reaching after night curfew hours. This incident is an example of how rules which are made to supposedly ‘protect’ the students acts against the students interests. In many campuses across the country the movement of women students and their access to facilities like the library are restricted in the name of ‘protecting’ them.
In November 2023, an IIT (BHU) woman student was sexually assaulted on campus.In IIT Madras a woman student was attacked by someone in the night as she was returning to the hostel. The institute indeed took measures to increase the lighting in the roads and to install CCTV cameras throughout the campus post this incident. However the then Dean Students in an email had advised the female students to follow certain protocols like not moving alone inside the campus or taking the bus if they were alone which led to widespread criticism among the students as it shifts the responsibility to the individual to take precaution rather than the system. In IIT Madras, a former male student-who was out on bail for stalking a woman student-illegally entered one of the women’s hostels, despite having been officially barred from the campus following a complaint by the survivor. Following this incident chintabar a progressive students’ collective organised a protest gathering against sexual harassment.
Necessity of building organised student movement
Many of these institutes enforce strict codes of conduct or “honour codes” that explicitly prohibit political expression. In some cases, these policies outline specific disciplinary actions for students who participate in or organize protests. Despite this, students across various campuses have continued to organize spontaneous mobilizations on a wide range of issues from mess quality and fee hikes to cases of sexual harassment, administrative negligence, and student suicides. However, in most of the cases such protests happen only after students are pushed to a breaking point. It often takes a tragic incident like a student’s suicide, an unjust disciplinary action, or a sweeping rule that strips away basic freedoms to spark collective outrage. There have been courageous individual acts of defiance as well, like Dhananjay Balakrishnan, Governor’s award winner at the IITM convocation who used the platform to raise protest against Israel’s genocidal actions against the Palestinians or Vysakh Premkumar of NITC who stood with a placard that read ‘India is not Rama Rajya’.
These voices individual and spontaneous mobilisations point toward the importance of building a strong progressive, democratic and secular student movement in the campuses. The role of the student movement on the campuses is not only limited to interventions on day to day issues, but also in building solidarity among the students, defending the rights of students and pushing for inclusive and student-friendly policies while also introducing students to the larger democratic movement.