An anatomy of control in Indian and US university spaces

It is worrying to see academic spaces come increasingly under attack from, and fall prey to, government intervention. However, the indomitable spirit of protest that exists in a university still appears to persist.

On April 21, Harvard University sued the Donald Trump administration over the freezing of funds, marking a sharp escalation in the ongoing standoff between academic institutions and the US federal government.

While Harvard is at the forefront, the US is also seeing a consolidated pushback from academics against government intervention. Never one to hold back, Trump has lambasted the 300-year-old university, calling it the ‘worst and most incompetent’, accusing it of hiring ‘leftist dopes’.

Interestingly, name-calling when confronted with an opposing view is not unique to US politics or its run-ins with the education system. Closer home, the Right-wing has maintained a continuous onslaught on Left-leaning academia in India.

They do so through a distinct ‘Right-wing vocabulary’, Raju J Das of York University, Toronto, observes that “‘Sickular’ and ‘pseudo-secular’, born of the opinion of the fascistic RSS, refer to the fact that Indian secularism is a demented version of minority appeasement….The right-wing people and the government refer to progressive university teachers and students in JNU (and elsewhere) as the ‘tukde-tukde’ gang….‘Urban Naxals’ and ‘intellectual terrorists’ are widely used to refer to academics and activists who fight for the poor and who defend democratic rights.”

US universities, accustomed to relative autonomy, are reeling from Trump’s barrage of changes. India, where university spaces have long been subject to government intervention, is no stranger to this. It has only increased post-2014. Notably, India has more public universities than private ones, and both lack the deep pockets of Ivy League colleges. Public universities, thus, look to the University Grants Commission (UGC) for funds, and private universities look to it for accreditation – and therefore, legitimacy. The UGC falls under the ambit of the education ministry.

In the US, Secretary of Education and WWE co-founder, Linda McMahon, is legally bound to put out a yearly list of nationally recognised accreditors. Trump, however, plans to fire ‘radical Left’ accreditors, replacing them with those reflecting ‘US values’. The POTUS has already begun to use funding squeeze as leverage against universities, and plans to ‘tax endowments’. 

In India, at times, university curricula and functioning have become part of election promises. In 2014, the University of Delhi (DU) saw tension over the Four-Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP), which was meant to replace the three-year one. While there was pushback from staff and students, the vice chancellor steamrolled the programme through. He reportedly had the support of the Congress-led UPA government.

The BJP made it part of its poll manifesto to roll it back. Then came the pressure, and DU caved, only to be brought in later under the NEP 2020 – but that is a different story.

Increasingly, campuses are coming under police surveillance. There has also been an uptick in police presence, allegedly to crush dissent. “The desired end result is a populace which is too scared or tired to resist,” says a sociologist teaching at DU.

In The Crisis of University Autonomy in India: A Critical Reflection on the Policy Framework, Chetna Trivedi notes how the Indian State, helmed by the Narendra Modi government, acts towards university spaces. Trivedi describes a two-pronged approach – a “frontal attack on the universities that includes muzzling dissents and punitive measures against not conforming ideas and voices to the ruling dispensation and establishment”.

The second is through “capturing the internal functioning of the university.” Such dominance is ‘concretised through the appointments of BJP loyalist VCs’. 

In 2024, the ministry of education directed central universities, including JNU and DU, to include a member from the Ministry on the Executive Council. The Union government can also appoint heads to deemed universities like TISS.

Instances of ‘frontal attacks’ are plentiful: In 2018, cops raided official university residences of two academics, Satyanarayana and Pavana, for suspected Maoist links. Saibaba of the DU was illegally jailed for 10 years for suspected Maoist links. He died soon after his release. In March 2021, Ashoka University ‘nudged’ Pratap Bhanu Mehta to resign. He said the founders made it clear he was a ‘political liability’.

Author Ramachandra Guha’s appointment to Ahmedabad University had to be scrapped after the ABVP (RSS’ student wing) protested it.

Two years back, during an attempted screening of the banned BBC documentary India: The Modi Question at JNU, the administration allegedly cut off the power, and the students were attacked by Right-wing groups. The documentary questioned Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujarat riots when he was chief minister.

Academic life in Indian universities and freedom of progressive thought, Das says, are facing Right-wing attacks in various forms: vandalisation (of symbols of progressive thought); criminalisation; militarisation; observation (for surveillance purpose); cancellation (of academic events); prohibition (of certain texts); devaluation (of progressive ideas); intimidation; coercion; de-politicisation (threatening Left-wing student politics); Hinduisation (of academic personnel); termination (of employment of progressive academics), deprivation (of funds for higher education); and Right-wing ideologisation.

With Trump, it’s similar. He is making a push for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) courses to be dropped – sweetening the deal with funds – and has repeatedly said that US universities are now hotbeds of ‘anti-Semitic’ protests, targeting free-thinking individuals protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza, which a UN committee found ‘consistent with genocide’.

Authoritarian regimes thrive on creating the idea of an ‘other’ to consolidate support for the vision they espouse. However, the university space has always pushed back. The Students’ Federation of India (SFI), which is associated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist), still has enough teeth to move the Supreme Court against government actions, as it did over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

In the US, protests are gaining momentum, with protestors at Columbia University chaining themselves to the gates, outraged over the detention of two Palestinian student activists by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). An Indian student is suing the Trump administration over possible deportation, after his immigration status was revoked.

While it is worrying to see academic spaces come increasingly under attack from, and fall prey to, government intervention, the indomitable spirit of protest that exists in a university still appears to persist.

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