The Attack on Academic Freedom and Autonomy 

Prof. Surajit Majumdar

The recent arrest and prosecution of a faculty member of Ashoka University for his social media remarks was only the latest overt piece of evidence confirming the trend in India today of academic freedom and autonomy getting increasingly circumscribed. It is by no means an isolated instance and nor are such actions the only way in which this trend is expressing itself. 

Academic activity in higher education institutions, or the process of development and dissemination of knowledge, is central to the progress and development of any modern society. The autonomy and freedom of those who participate in these processes, at individual as well as well as at collective and institutional levels, are essential foundations for this. The pursuit of truth is a collective pursuit and the efforts of participating individuals contribute as well as gain from those of others involved in it. The battles between alternative ideas based on reasoning and evidence and the repeated questioning of established perceptions are also integral parts of the mechanisms by which this process moves forward and is imbued with an energy. The organizing of academic activity also involves also involves institutional decision-making, for instance on academic curricula, that can only be internally generated by that process if it is to be effective. Democratic self-governance of institutions of higher education and the freedom of individuals to arrive at, hold and put forward their independent academic views are two ends of the spectrum of rights that academic activity has to enjoy in order to serve its social function. The freedom to articulate their views not only within the academic sphere but also publicly is also important as it is through this that public discussion also gets enriched and more informed. 

While all the above have universal recognition at the level of abstract principle, including in India in the legal framework governing higher education, the realization of academic freedom and autonomy has to always confront an essential truth – that the academic sphere does not and cannot exist in isolation from its larger social context. The general context that Indian higher education has confronted for a long time has been one of a society in transition. On the one hand, India has been a nation marked by tremendous and multi-dimensional inequalities within and existing a world order marked by great inequalities between nations. On the other hand have been the aspirations for changing these realities that emerge from and exist within that same context. The pursuit of ‘truth’ has always therefore always reflected the confrontation or conflict inherent in this contradictory reality. Academic freedom and autonomy in the truest senses of these terms have thus never been something that could therefore be taken for granted. They have always involved a struggle and their existence at all times can only be talked about in a relative sense. However, even though there was never any golden age in India in this regard, there can be no question that the current context is different and unprecedented in terms of the scale and the range of the assault on academic freedom and autonomy.  

The advent of neoliberalism and the increasing privatization of education had already begun to change the landscape over the last three decades such that even the meaning of ‘autonomy’ started getting grotesquely distorted in higher education policy. The autonomy of institutions did not necessarily mean in this new conception the freedom of the community of scholars who make up the institution. Instead it was about granting liberty to those running these institutions, or their ‘managements’, to subject the activity of these communities to the imperatives of financial resource mobilization and profiteering. Democratic self-governance of course was inconsistent with private institutions which were either run to generate a profit or had to be depend for their financing on profits made in other activites. In public institutions too, the ‘retreat’ of the state was observed only with regard to its funding responsibilities, but this was accompanied by increasing use of the available levers of control to micro-manage institutions. The conditions attached to whatever funds were provided, the regulatory powers vested in bodies like the UGC, and the control over the appointments of Vice Chancellors and through them the control over university level decision making – all of these became the instruments of this erosion of autonomy.  

What has increasingly become true after 2014 has been the fusing together of these very same instruments into a comprehensive strategy of imposing a very specific agenda on Indian higher education. To turn the system into a organized mechanism of propagating a particular ideology, to impose on it one particular version of the truth without that version being required to stand on the strengths of its logic and consistency with evidence, and at the least the destruction of the higher education’s system potential to generate or nurture any challenge to the larger conspiracy to erode India’s secular democracy – these have all become the core objectives shaping education policy and are clearly reflected in the NEP 2020. In addition to the instruments of direct control over Universities and their academic life, we have also seen academics become victims of the increasing misuse of the general coercive apparatus of the state and the criminalization of views and opinions simply because they are different from what is liked by the Government. These two trends for example has overlapped in the concerted attempts to extend to teachers the restrictions on their individual freedoms applicable to government servants under their conduct rules. Several academics are also facing incarceration and prosecution for simply their views and opinions.  

From what you a can study as a student to the research areas that you may chose to work on for a PhD; whether you can get ‘selected’ for an academic job or not and if you do get in whether you will get promoted or not, and whether your research projects will secure funding; will you be able to speak publicly or express your views in writing in academic or media publications; will you be assigned responsibilites related to the administration of academic activity and decide on these along with your colleagues, and whether your ‘expertise’ will be sought or not by different bodies; who you can interact with academically, etc. – in each of these spheres, which are also the phases of any individual’s academic journey, the dark shadows of the attack on freedom and autonomy can be seen and felt. From the Hindutva regime’s perspective, this emaciation of the higher education system has acquired increasing urgency because of yet another aspect of Indiamn reality. This is that on the one hand there has been a significant expansion of higher education enrollment in Indian in the last two decades despite the public funding deficit, and on the other is the stark failure of the development trajectory to create the conditions for satisfaction of the aspirations for employment and economic and social mobility that have driven this growth. Putting a lid on the potential this contradictions has of becoming an additional factor impelling a challenge to the regime’s agenda has therefore acquired a special priority. For the same reason, the struggle in defence of academic freedom and autonomy must, and inevitably will, also acquire urgency and intensity. 

Prof. Surajit Majumdar is the president of the JNU Teachers’ Association