Dousing the spark of free enquiry on India’s campuses

In 2024, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party in Karnataka raised its objections to the ‘tweaking’ of a purported quote from the state’s poet laureate, Kuvempu, emblazoned on the entrance to residential government schools. The change exhorted students to ‘question everything’ (dhairyavagi prashnisi), while the original had asked students to enter the temple of learning respectfully, ‘with folded hands’ (Jnana Degulavidu, kai mugidu olage ba). This was instantly declared as one more example of the newly elected Congress’ anti-Hindu stance. As the literary critic S G Siddaramaiah immediately pointed out, Kuvempu had used no such words in his original poem Pakshikashi, but the change was definitely warranted in our times. 

Perhaps today the commandment at places of learning should be ‘Thou Shalt Not Know’. When the formidable power of the judiciary was used to defend the Indian court system against calumny in the Standard VIII NCERT textbook, it was asserting this commandment. Students should not know of the grinding delays of the courts. A judge who speedily exonerated himself from sexual harassment (Justice Ranjan Gogoi) and another who ‘burnt notes’ in his Delhi home (Justice Varma) could prejudice tender minds. However, minds are never too tender to know what the State today mandates: that ‘the evil that men do lives after them’ while ‘the good is oft interred with their bones’. Thus, Moghul rule is now painted as unadorned tyranny; ‘Partition Horrors’, emphasising the role of some villains, will be taught from Standard VII. 

There was a more violent insistence on ‘Thou Shall Not Know’ at Azim Premji University this past week. And here, it was the ABVP that was the self-appointed custodian. If Kashmir was dropped from the Delhi University syllabus in May 2025 since ‘Kashmir is resolved’ (sic), what purpose is served in revisiting the heinous crimes of Kunan Poshpora, 1991? Fidelity to Shakespeare be damned: the evil of some men, especially when they are from our armed forces, must be interred with their bones. But it was the alacrity with which the administration turned on its own students and the Spark Reading Circle at APU that are alarming signs of what infects cultures of teaching and learning today. By filing an FIR against its own students, the APU administration buttressed the cause of the vandals in disallowing discussion on violence against women in Kashmir. 

Turning universities into sites of worship rather than places of enquiry and learning was pioneered by the JNU administration. Since 2016, it has been at war with its own students and teachers, ruling by decision rather than consultative norm building. The previous vice-chancellor, M Jagadeesh Kumar, engaged with the symbolics of ‘occupation’ throughout his tenure. He mounted, in 2017, a Wall of Heroes to 21 decorated soldiers, making JNU the first university to comply with the Ministry of Human Resources and Development’s (MHRD) ‘Vidya Veerta Abhiyan’. In the name of restoring purportedly ‘defaced’ walls, he wiped clean JNU’s magnificent mural art. And in response to the illuminating discussions on nationalism that JNU teachers mounted in the turbulent months after February 2016, Kumar asked for a tank to be rolled on to the campus to ‘instil’ nationalism. 

Instead, an orange-robed Vivekananda statue was unveiled in 2020. A statue may not have the looming bulk of a tank, but it serves several purposes – planting a flag in ‘enemy’ territory and sacralising it. This was followed up by a statue of Vidyaranya on the campus, unveiled with due attention to its ‘sanctity’ by the current vice-chancellor, Santishree Pandit, and a representative of the Sringeri Matha. 

One more statue to Shivaji is promised at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Centre for Security & Strategic Studies in the School of International Studies, which will draw lessons from his era to understand the ‘concept of Akhand Bharat’ and his ‘struggle for Hindavi Swaraj’ (sic). This physical occupation is accompanied by aggressive renaming, surveilling, and patrolling the kinds of knowledges to which students may be exposed.

But last week, the VC was emboldened enough to bare the hopes of the upper castes when she scoffed at the self-inflicted ‘victimhood’ of Dalits (and Blacks). JNU students had, since 1975, uniquely instituted well-conceived ‘deprivation points’ to ensure the diversity of their student body. The UGC guidelines would have protected such students from harm and continued discrimination. But those students who demanded justice have been rewarded with detention and FIRs.

The public university was not meant to be a mere department of the State. There was a founding commitment to autonomy, as defined in the report of the Radhakrishnan Committee (1948). ‘We must resist, in the interests of our own democracy, the trend towards the governmental domination of the educational process. Higher education is, undoubtedly, an obligation of the State,  but State aid is not to be confused with State control over academic policies and practices. Intellectual progress demands the maintenance of the spirit of free inquiry.’ 

This was written at a time when the ‘private university’ was an oxymoron, not even a distant possibility. But even the initial promise of a private university such as APU – as nurturing what the public university can no longer ensure, a space for open teaching-learning – now lies battered. And this time, the assault from within has matched the illegitimate attack from without. 

(The writer is a retired professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.