Azher Ahmad & Maleeha Shafi
In a country where the Constitution guarantees the right to free speech, the Indian university is fast becoming a paradox, where critical voices are either disciplined, disappeared, or dismissed. Over the past decade, a steady, almost surgical dismantling of academic freedom has unfolded across India’s higher education institutions. What we are witnessing is not simply censorship from above, but a structural self-sabotage, where universities are being remodelled to reproduce compliance over curiosity, nationalism over knowledge, and fear over freedom.
FIRs have become the new curriculum. Professors are suspended for quoting Ambedkar, students arrested for commemorating dissenting figures, and entire departments reprimanded for hosting talks deemed “anti-national. In 2020, masked mobs assaulted over 30 students and faculty at JNU, and not a single arrest was made for weeks. More recently, in June 2024, Delhi University professor Ashok Vohra faced legal action for allegedly “objectionable” content in his lectures, which was a content rooted in philosophical analysis, not incitement.
This erosion of such rights is mirrored in international assessments. The Academic Freedom Index, 2025, developed by Scholars at Risk and the V-Dem Institute, ranked India 156th out of 179 countries, placing it below countries with far less democratic credibility like Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Yet the more troubling shift may be the one that does not show up in numbers: the chilling effect, the silence that now defines faculty rooms and student unions. As Judith Butler writes in The University in Ruins, authoritarianism does not only arrive with arrests—it arrives when people begin to censor themselves, pre-empting punishment by withholding thought.
At the heart of this transformation are the state’s education policies, particularly the NEP 2020 and the Draft UGC Guidelines. While these documents speak a language of excellence, flexibility, and global standards, they embed within them the grammar of control.
When the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 was launched with celebratory fanfare, it was described as a visionary reform, a long-overdue overhaul meant to transform India’s education system for the 21st century. Embracing buzzwords like “flexibility,” “autonomy,” and “excellence,” the policy painted a picture of an inclusive, meritocratic, and research-driven academic landscape. In practice, the policy is riddled with gaps that threaten academic freedom, institutional independence, and the democratic spirit of higher education.
Consider Section 9.2 of the policy, which asserts that higher education institutions will be granted autonomy in academic, administrative, and financial matters. This claim is fundamentally undermined by the proposal to replace existing statutory bodies like the UGC and AICTE with the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI)—a centralised regulator with sweeping powers to accredit, fund, and penalise universities. In practice, this centralisation sidelines state governments, violating federal principles and reducing universities to implementers of centrally designed frameworks. Even Section 19.2, which promises Boards of Governors “free of external interference,” remains hollow in the absence of structural clarity, leaving ample room for political appointments and ideological capture.
While the policy outwardly celebrates “light but tight” regulation, it covertly entrenches bureaucratic oversight. Faculty are granted “freedom” to design pedagogical approaches (Section 10.11), but only within approved frameworks, making academic independence conditional. Similarly, Section 10.14 promises merit-based tenure and promotion, but fails to outline safeguards against political or ideological bias. These absences are not incidental; they enable environments where dissent is delegitimised not through open bans, but through procedural ambiguity and institutional fear.
Recently, the University Grants Commission came under critical scrutiny for its guidelines on higher education. The southern states, such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu, criticised it for its alleged interference in the institutions of higher learning. There are several controversial sections in the guidelines that have attracted widespread protest among the intelligentsia. Concerns have been raised regarding the appointment of vice-chancellors in universities. On the one hand, the 2018 guidelines stipulated that for anyone to become a VC, they must possess a distinguished academic background either as a professor in a university or have ten years of experience in a reputed research or academic organisation, with proof. On the other hand, the new guidelines allow the entry of industrialists and bureaucrats, which would compromise the future of such institutions.
Similarly, the constitution of the committee that decides the appointment of VCs is undemocratic and arbitrary. The governor has to select the three-member selection committee, thereby cutting the state higher education department, which was responsible for the selection of such panels. This is in stark contrast to the principle of federalism. This has led to the politicisation of heads of institutions and faculty appointments, who have to toe the party line in power. This is a worrying trend for its role in silencing those voices that speak truth to power. In 2018, the JNU administration issued show cause notices to 48 faculty members for their participation in protests against the VC. This seemingly has taken away the right to dissent, and many are awaiting justice. This is against the spirit of intellectualism and inquiry that constitutes the foundation of knowledge production.
Equally worrying is the casualisation of academic labour. The removal of the 10% cap on contractual faculty has enabled widespread precarious hiring, fragmenting job security and silencing faculty through economic vulnerability. India has consistently been performing badly on the academic freedom rankings for its clampdown on free speech and dissent. Raising questions, without being labelled ‘anti-national,’ is the sine qua non of any modern democracy. The latest report says that it is primarily anti-pluralist parties in the government that contribute to the decline in academic freedom. The commission has made it clear that noncompliance would result in the debarment of the institutions from crucial funding or even the removal from the list of recognised universities. Therefore, as a result of this, universities that do not toe the official line would be punished.
In universities such as DU, JNU, and Jamia, in the past, students have been treated with utter disgust for their dissent. Under 19 (1) a, the Supreme Court has recognised that the right to hold public discussions falls squarely under the scope of the right of free speech. Criticising the government in power does not amount to a violation of the national interest. Neutrality is a sin, especially in an era where there is too much fake information. Taking sides, albeit objectively, is vital for the intellectual growth of the country. The larger aim of censorship is to create an army of andh bhakts, who, owing to their lack of credible knowledge, are ill-equipped to question and hold the government accountable.
The concurrent introduction of “Professors of Practice”—drawn from corporate sectors and often exempt from reservation norms—further entrenches exclusion. These shifts are not merely administrative; they represent a transformation in the class composition of the academy, privileging capital and punishing critique. Even for those who remain within the system, the bar for entry has been subtly raised in ways that disproportionately affect marginalised scholars. The new requirement for meeting four out of nine “notable contributions” for faculty positions—including lab development and community impact—privileges those with institutional capital, elite networks, and funding access. The idea of merit here is not neutral; it is a mechanism through which caste and class privilege are reinforced, even as the language of inclusion is maintained.
This lack of protective mechanisms stands in sharp contrast to global norms. In the United States, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) plays a watchdog role, investigating cases of academic suppression and publishing public censures of institutions that violate norms. In the European Union, several states have established ombudsman mechanisms specifically to deal with academic grievances, ensuring that universities cannot act arbitrarily in hiring, curriculum design, or disciplinary procedures. These institutions provide a crucial check on power—a safety valve that India’s system sorely lacks.
We are, in many ways, producing the very silence we fear. The tragedy of the Indian university today is not only that it is being stifled from above, but that it is learning to stifle itself. In the absence of institutional safeguards, in the absence of enforceable rights, silence becomes the safest curriculum. That, silencing opinions as Aurde Lorde reminds us in The transformation Of Silence into Language, is the most dangerous outcome of authoritarian governance is the transformation of the subject who begins to monitor herself.
“We are not just silenced; we are trained to silence ourselves,” she writes.
Azher Ahmad is a student at the University of Delhi, and Maleeha Shafi is a Postgraduate student of Political science at Kashmir University.
