Hamid Ansari’s warning

In his remarks at the Panjab University convocation last Saturday, Vice-President Hamid Ansari did well to caution against dark clouds over academic freedom. A few days earlier President Pranab Mukherjee had spoken against fostering of the intolerant Indian because the country has been a bastion of free speech and expression since ancient times. Both dignitaries felt compelled to voice their disquiet over the near-continuous cycle of police crackdown, violence and unrest in some of the country’s leading universities since the new government weakened the fence separating religion from the state. It began with state-approved vigilantism on the streets against inter-religious marriages and cow slaughter. The dominant social and political perch of the self-anointed watchdogs ensured their extra-legal efforts to impose a social code were not countered vigorously enough.

But the response was energetic and forceful when the same ploy of imposing all-enveloping conformism was attempted in universities. Despite its shortcomings, the Indian education system has allowed the socio-economically disadvantaged, the intellectual dissenter and the firebrand agitationist the space to flourish. Without this enabling atmosphere in universities, Cabinet Ministers Arun Jaitley, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Venkaiah Naidu would not have earned their political spurs by active opposition to the then Congress government. At that time, the state’s response was based on the narrow consideration of preserving the government in power.

The motive behind the assault on academic freedom this time is qualitatively different from the suppression of the 1970s. The intent now is to impose everlasting, lock-step conformity with half-baked conventions of political Hindutva on both the faculty and the students. Anyone who falls out of line — Gurmeher, Kanhaiya or Nivedita Menon — will be mercilessly pilloried as a lesson to others. The Vice-President recognised the danger when he said: “Strong intellectual work can only be done in an atmosphere where scholars feel free to take risks and challenge conventions”. Clinical psychology has confirmed that countries have paid a steep price for muzzling dissent. The unintended consequence of forcibly foisting a homogeneous, blanket worldview has often sent nations into civil turmoil. Some never recovered. The two wise men of Indian politics were cautioning against such an eventuality.