Mumbai: In April last year, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) suspended Ramadas Prini Sivanandan, a PhD scholar with the development studies department, for participating in a protest rally in New Delhi.
For taking part in a student-led rally, Sivanandan was accused of engaging in “political activities”. The institute called him “anti-national” because the rally criticised the BJP-led government’s National Education Policy (NEP) and even invited “investigating agencies” to take action against him.
Sivanandan, a young scholar from a Dalit community in Kerala who received a Union government grant to pursue his PhD, had little choice but to approach the Bombay high court for his reinstatement.
Last week, however, the court sided with TISS’s administration and rejected his petition.
Sivanandan says this order must be challenged in the Supreme Court because it is “no longer an individual’s fight, but a matter that will have larger implications for the student community”.
In a detailed 24-page order, the division bench of Justices M.M. Sathaye and A.S. Chandurkar of the Bombay high court observed that since Sivanandan was receiving a Union government-funded fellowship, his political participation should attract action.
The order also stated that while Sivanandan is free to have a political view, “so is the institute”.
Sivanandan argues that these two observations go against the very ethos of an educational space: “The fellowship is not a charity but a right of a student who has cleared a competitive exam.”
He points out that the fellowship is paid to a research scholar to ensure that they do not need to take up a job to sustain themselves and can instead dedicate their academic years to their research.
“Research that, in turn, helps in the nation-building process,” he adds.
But he is instead being punished for simply exercising his constitutional rights, he contends, asking whether the constitution was more important than an honour code of or a circular issued by any given educational institute.
“At any cost, TISS or any university’s honour codes and circulars cannot override the Indian constitution,” he says.
Additionally, an educational institution is meant to be a “non-partisan space”. “How can a university align itself with one kind of politics?” he asks.
TISS has claimed that the protest rally, under the banner of ‘Parliament March’ and which Sivanandan participated in, issued pamphlets saying “Save India, Reject BJP”. The institute accused him of using the name of TISS on a placard, an accusation Sivanandan has denied.
“I participated in the capacity of the then-general secretary of the Progressive Students’ Forum (PSF), a student collective at TISS. Nowhere did I claim I was representing TISS,” Sivanandan shared, a stance he took in his response to both the committee at TISS that suspended him and before the high court.
Sivanandan first came to TISS in 2015 when he enrolled in a master’s program at the institute’s Mumbai campus. Since then, he has completed his MPhil from TISS and subsequently also enrolled in the PhD program.
“In the past, there was at least a pretence of the institute being a democratic space. But in recent years, no student-led events are permitted here,” he points out.
Also read | Crackdown, Suspension, Invitation to Probe: The TISS Playbook of Curbing ‘Anti-National’ Activity
In January last year, when the Modi government decided to make the consecration ceremony of the Ram temple in Ayodhya a national affair, filmmaker Anand Patwardhan’s National Film Award-winning documentary Ram ke Naam was widely screened across different university spaces as a mark of protest. The film recalls the brutal violence that broke out in Ayodhya and spread across different parts of India following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992.
At that time, Sivanandan, who had met with an accident and was recovering from a complicated surgery, was not in a condition to participate, let alone organise a screening on campus.
However, he posted his views on social media, stating that a film like Ram ke Naam should be viewed to understand the brutal truth of the demolition.
This social media post has been used against him, and the institute has called his stance “anti-national”.
Sivanandan says some of the drastic changes at the institute came soon after the Union education ministry took over last year, following its decision to bring all institutions that receive over 50% of its funds from the government under its jurisdiction.
He says the situation on campus now is such that students sitting together in small or large groups are immediately dispersed. “Students could very well be discussing their group projects, but their coming together is seen as an attempt to destabilise the institute’s administration,” he says.
These views are shared by many students who have studied at TISS over the years and have witnessed the space slowly change.
In its suspension letter, the institute claimed that Sivanandan had been warned several times and served notices for organising a Bhagat Singh memorial lecture with “controversial speakers”. While TISS has not identified who these controversial speakers were, they included Magsaysay award winner Bezwada Wilson, journalist P. Sainath and retired Jawaharlal Nehru University professor and former editor of the Economic and Political Weekly, Gopal Guru.
At the start of each academic year, TISS used to conduct elections and a student body would be elected by students. However, in 2024, the elections were cancelled and class representatives who insisted that student body elections should be held were intimidated, Sivanandan alleges.
In August last year, TISS decided to ban the PSF, but when students pushed back, the one-page ban notice was withdrawn.
Sivanandan says the institute is looking for creative ways to “criminalise students” for their critical views. “As long as your thoughts align with the government’s, the institute is fine. Everything else is termed ‘anti-national,’” he says.
What TISS has done is to show that a student on a government fellowship criticising the BJP is “political and should not be done. Which I cannot agree with; to live in India, I should not be directly or indirectly forced to take a BJP membership or be a sympathiser,” he also says.
Sivanandan’s activism has come at a cost. His PhD was abruptly halted, and the fear of criminalisation looms large. He says his family back home worries for him.
“Not just them, I too worry about my future. Educational spaces that are meant to encourage critical thinking are suddenly punishing us for questioning and raising our voices. This is unprecedented and will have much larger repercussions on the education system,” Sivanandan says.
