Academic freedom has become a central issue of concern in India. Many have blamed the illiberal political climate in the country and the quality of individual institutions in question for the decline in academic freedom. While all of these are important factors, the question of academic freedom is complex and cannot be easily answered.
Not many have, nevertheless, noticed the V-Dem Academic Freedom Index (AFI) published in 2023 in which India is ranked in the bottom 20-30% category below countries such as Libya, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Chad, Bhutan, Ukraine, and Palestine. In the 2024 report published a few days ago, India is further pushed to the 10-20 % category placed between Rwanda and South Sudan.
The situation is so dire that even the reputed institutions do not fully comprehend, practice, and respect academic freedom as a fundamental right. Faculty members can get fired for reasons as silly as publishing a critical piece, supporting a cause, clothing in certain ways and even smoking! So, what explains this?
Medieval India and Europe
India and the West historically had two distinct traditions of education. Colonial experience, however, changed the way India learned and taught.
India had a number of great universities, many of them centuries older than any in the West. Some of them, such as Nalanda and Taxila, attracted scholars from across the globe. India had its share of brilliant rational and materialistic thinkers, mathematicians, scientists, and geographers.
After this glorious era, the Indian system of higher education began to decline into mindless ritual and repetition. It became regimented along the lines of caste and a strict code of conduct came into place that opposed the spread of enlightenment. The notorious edicts in Manusmriti and other ancient texts embody this decay.
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As a result, education merely enabled a person to become the guarantor and maintainer of tradition and not its challenger, disruptor, or reformer. It emphasised rote learning and ritual while discouraging creativity. It routinely punished students for questioning authority and ritual. Critical thought was suppressed as feudal allegiance was constantly demanded.
The West, on the other hand, followed, with steadfast astuteness, the ancient Greek tradition of education. It was largely secular and focused on the individual rather than communities. Massive events such as the French Revolution made sure that education shaped the public by enhancing enlightenment and reason. While this was in no way perfect, the freedom to think and publish was cherished and promoted. The separation of church and state led to more secular and rational thought.
Modern higher education in India
The persistent nature of the ancient Indian tradition insisted that children take up their parents’ professions. Even those educated in the West came back to settle in India, keeping the ancient rules of privilege intact. Education was either a means to achieve ‘a dream job’ or a choice of the parents. It was rarely a process of enlightenment. Even in modern India, everyone expected students to follow their parents’ footsteps. An engineer’s child becoming an engineer, a professor’s child becoming a professor, and a doctor’s child becoming a doctor was still the norm. There were no laurels for unsettling the apple cart in India.
Modern India witnessed attempts from progressive sections to educate people from all quarters of society – people from lower-castes, workers, women, rural folk – which yielded mixed results. The modern democratic state, with a constitution that promised equal rights to all, aspired to usher in a revolution. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar recognised early on that political democracy hinges upon social democracy and that social democracy is closely linked to equal opportunities for all – including the opportunity to study. Whatever little has been achieved today is a result of this effort.
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Modern science evolved with the strength of values such as falsifiability, objectivity, proof, and, finally, the concept of peer review. Whatever is not supported by proof is not acceptable. Similarly, concepts like equality, fraternity, freedom, rights, rule of law, aesthetics, and many more complex ideas came to define the humanities and social sciences scholarship.
The university in India
What exactly are the institutions of higher education and how are they different from other institutions such as a home, village, city, neighbourhood and residential societies? Universities could very well belong to what the French philosopher Michel Foucault elaborated as heterotopia pr the ‘other places’. Universities are where new ideas are tested and that testing requires encouragement and a collaborative atmosphere. What one cannot discuss at home or in society, one must be able to discuss at the university.
Institutions like like Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and visionaries who founded aspirational universities such as Rabindranath Tagore (Visva Bharati), Jamsetji Tata (IISc), and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (Aligarh Muslim University) were attempting to create enlightened spaces. Nevertheless, the spirit of academic freedom and free inquiry has petered out gradually.
Most other universities, however, had no such ambitions. Some of them have been wary of imbibing the harder part of the idea of a university. Others were simply unaware that the idea of a university was a far deeper one than they had initially imagined and no number of glittering edifices would be able to capture it. Yet others were there for purposes unrelated to enlightenment in the first place.
All of these led to an atmosphere of scepticism and fear among academics who constantly worried about the implications of their work and indulged in self-censorship. A large number of them have been weak and vulnerable. This nagging fear of retribution led to silence marking the times, what I call the ‘era of the silenced academic’. This situation is even more alarming in the private universities where no job security is assured. Interestingly, it was all very much in line with what a traditional Indian family taught its kids: “be a good child and never question your elders”.
The era of the silenced academic augmented the process of anti-enlightenment skilling in disciplines not limited to engineering, medicine, and information technology. A large number of coaching institutes and ed-tech businesses followed. All that mindless drilling took a heavy toll on the mental health of students and ultimately paved the way for a society where independent thought is penalised.
In the process, the idea of a university changed too. A university has become a place where the government in power is venerated by sycophants. The word ‘critical’, though widely used as in ‘critical theory’, aroused suspicion. The last decade under the current regime, which is opposed to criticism of any kind, streamlined the process that was already underway. A vicious government, lack of occupational freedoms and securities, and deep socio-cultural intolerance have all contributed to the frozen silence of the Indian academic.
The way forward
India must think of a system that defines the rights, tenure, duties, and privileges of academics and make its academic pillar as strong as the judicial, executive, and the legislative ones. The 1915 Declaration of Principles – a document that proclaimed the principles regarding freedom of speech and tenure – by the American Association of University Professors is one such example. This document remains the Magna Carta for the western academic system.
If India wants to produce some excellent universities and aspires to become a genuine Vishwa Guru, a teacher of the world, it should strengthen its academic pillar. The government and the academic bureaucracy should enable this process wholeheartedly instead of getting insecure about academics critiquing the system. They should realize that critical thought is a product of great value and nothing else can compensate for it. Constant governmental intervention in the everyday life of universities must stop.
More importantly, ensuring job security and regular, decent payment for academics across different kinds of institutions – public, private and institutions where the two work in partnership – is a necessary and unavoidable first step. Legal protection must be ensured to make this work. Ad hoc exploitation of teachers and temporary appointments must give way to regularised positions. Academic appointments must be made fair and academic institutions should be better regulated to make sure that a fair and open internal system is always maintained.
It is high time India turns an ancient, regimented nightmare into an inclusive, rational, and democratic dream. The era of the silenced academic must end, and the time has come for the academics to fearlessly express their views.
Vinod Kottayil Kalidasan is an academic and his current academic research is on universities and the education system in modern India. Views expressed are personal.
