Earlier this month, Prof. Apoorvanand of Delhi University faced an unusual demand: to submit for prior scrutiny the full text of a speech he was to deliver on the theme ‘The University under a Global Authoritarian Turn’ at The New School in New York. His leave application to travel was escalated to the Union ministry of home affairs. The professor refused to comply with what he rightly saw as an assault on academic freedom. The university’s demand was not mere bureaucratic overreach, it was yet another reminder of the shrinking space for dissent and debate in Indian academia, now increasingly shaped by the heavy hand of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s authoritarian project. Since Narendra Modi assumed office in 2014, India’s academic institutions have been caught in a systematic and ideologically driven campaign of interference and intimidation.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its ideological mothership, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), have sought to reshape the university as a vehicle for majoritarian nationalist indoctrination. At the heart of this shift lies a sustained effort to impose a Hindutva worldview on education. School and university curriculums have been ‘saffronised’— history books have been rewritten to erase the contributions of Mughals, references in school textbooks to the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat have been excised, Mahatma Gandhi’s opposition to Hindu nationalism has been obscured. In universities,........

© National Herald